Hasta La Creative!

AdFreak’s top honors this week in the Kinkiest Restaurant Ad category go to the Kona Grill chain (and its Minneapolis-based agency, Gabriel deGrood Bendt) for this blackmailesque photo of fork and chopsticks in bed together. The idea is that Kona Grill is “a place where opposites attract,” though it’s not self-evidently obvious that forks and chopsticks are opposites (rather than, say, variations on the same theme). Another ad in the series pursues the illicit-affair theme with the headline, “Meat lover and sushi lover caught swapping plates.” In still another, “Adventurous foursome shares each other’s spicy tuna rolls.” If nothing else, all this naughtiness makes it plain that Kona Grill is not what you’d call a “family restaurant.”

—Posted by Mark Dolliver

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The U.S. arm of Japanese ad giant Dentsu has inked a deal to buy McGarryBowen, a 6-year-old Madison Avenue indie shop long rumored to be on the block. One executive familiar with the matter noted that the management team at McGarryBowen will remain intact, and the agency will become a wholly owned unit of Dentsu Holdings.

LONDON – Dawn Airey has poached the Sky 1, 2 and 3 director of programmes Richard Woolfe for the top programming role at Five’s main channel.

In her many appearances this week, Sarah Palin is on a speed date with history, upending protocol as she goes.

LONDON – Seb Bishop, the one time ad agency art director and founder of pay-per-click ad firm Espotting, has been appointed the chief executive of the international operations of (Red), the brand set up to help raise funds to fight Aids in Africa.

(TrendHunter.com) While the ancient Egyptian pyramid discovered this week certainly isn’t, um, new, it most definitely merits a mention. The Egyptian pyramid was found by archaeologists in an area south of Cairo. Despite…

(TrendHunter.com) Google is at the innovation wheel again. This time their mission is to make it impossible to IM in the buff.

Video and voice will be part of the new Gmail live chat video program. It requires a plug…

D-day -1: Michel Desjoyeaux concentrates on his objective.

The campaign is for TBS clothes staging Michel Desjoyeaux in his preparation for Vendée-globe 2008.

Advertising Agency: Dufresne-Corrigan-Scarlett, Levallois-Perret, France
Creative Director: Guillaume Gamin
Art Director: Nicolas Bry
Copywriter: Nicolas Dubois
Photographer: Vincent Fournier (for Carole Lambert)
Published: November 2008

D-day -29: Michel Desjoyeaux trains his breath.

The campaign is for TBS clothes staging Michel Desjoyeaux in his preparation for Vendée-globe 2008.

Advertising Agency: Dufresne-Corrigan-Scarlett, Levallois-Perret, France
Creative Director: Guillaume Gamin
Art Director: Nicolas Bry
Copywriter: Nicolas Dubois
Photographer: Vincent Fournier (for Carole Lambert)
Published: September 2008

D-day -57: Michel Desjoyeaux studies wind.

The campaign is for TBS clothes staging Michel Desjoyeaux in his preparation for Vendée-globe 2008.

Advertising Agency: Dufresne-Corrigan-Scarlett, Levallois-Perret, France
Creative Director: Guillaume Gamin
Art Director: Nicolas Bry
Copywriter: Nicolas Dubois
Photographer: Vincent Fournier (for Carole Lambert)
Published: September 2008