Hasta La Creative!

SINGAPORE – Global research firm Synovate has appointed Pamela Welch as key account director in Southeast Asia.

Back in April, we posted some Swedish Fish print ads from JWT with the tagline, “A friend you can eat.” Here are three TV commercials from the same campaign. They try a little hard to be hip and offbeat, but the spot above, with the proverbial hungry plane-crash survivors on the snowy mountaintop, is amusing—perhaps the best cannibalism-themed ad since this skin-care one. In other cannibalism news, the Monday after Thanksgiving is probably as good a time as any to ask yourself: “How many cannibals could my body feed?”

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Under its classic slogan “There is always a clever mind behind it,” German paper The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is running a campaign depicting various “clever minds.” At left is UN Chief Inspector Mohamed ElBaradei in a state of exceptional transparency.

LONDON – Microsoft Advertising has appointed Katherine Ellis and Caroline Mastoras to the roles of FMCG category development manager and travel category development manager respectively.

(TrendHunter.com) As I sit here writing this, my husband is downstairs playing Guitar Hero. I’ve often thought of more useful ways he could spend his recreational time (like learning to play the real guitar, for instance).…

It’s common during the holidays to wish you could be many places at once: everywhere you’re obligated to be, and everywhere you actually want to be.

(TrendHunter.com) Malaysian designer Ding Yong’s Spring 2009 collection is aptly titled ‘Metamorphosis.’ As Jill Sherman has noticed, Yong’s designs bear a striking resemblance to caterpillars–insects that go through a…

LONDON – Elizabeth Arden is sponsoring the online advent calendar on IPC Southbank’s website womanandhome.

LONDON – Electrical retailer Comet is planning to use customer review comments in its online and offline marketing campaigns after introducing-user generated content to its website.

Mono has launched an online campaign so convoluted and off-kilter for Herman Miller’s Embody chairs … I dunno, maybe it’s a brilliant concept that I’m just too stupid to understand. I knew I was in trouble from the first line of the press release, which promised to “change the way you think about chairs. Or perhaps, to change your chair to help you think.” I generally don’t think about chairs, I just sit in them. That’s me: thick-skulled and lazy-assed. There’s a site called thoughtpile.org—it looks like something the Rand Corp. or Dr. Evil would devise—where ideas on various subjects “grow” as users “pile” them on. The idea that gets the most votes wins a chair. Not just any chair, but the Embody, which Herman Miller “has spent six years perfecting” because it “supports the mind and body.” It took them six years to make a chair? What did they sit on while they were waiting, the floor? Actually, Embody chairs are kinda cool-looking in a retro-industrial-futuristic way, like something astronauts would sit in while savoring mugs of Tang. If they are mind-expanding, maybe I should check them out. People are always telling me I think with my rear end.

—Posted by David Gianatasio