Hasta La Creative!

Surprise! Cartier doesn't like hats that spoof the brand's scripted logo by repurposing it as an insult derived from a slang word for female genitalia. According to the Daily Beast, a Parsons grad student originally made two "Cuntier" beanies as a personal gag because some people at a Cartier store were being mean to his friend. But then he started to produce a handful more because people seemed to think the caps were funny enough to buy. Cartier, ever in touch with reality, responded by sending the student a letter demanding he stop, and thereby proving the original point that Cartier is, of course, not in the least bit stuffy and does not take itself too seriously at all. The baffled student reportedly acquiesced, making him less litigious than the fashion satirists behind other renegade brands like The South Butt and Chewy Vuiton.

I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to believe that anyone reading this post is actually quite relieved that they didn’t experience adolescence in the world of social media. I was told this past weekend that some AgencySpy readers thought I was in my mid-40s. (Really?) But, I’m in my mid-20s, and much of my time in high school was spent on MySpace, joining Facebook when I first got my college email address.

Though I don’t have kids, I attended a panel about cyber-bullying and social media this afternoon. Admittedly, something I’ve been quite interested in is how people just a few years younger than I am are using the Internet to communicate in ways completely different from me. I’ve never felt older than when I realized instant-messaging wasn’t a thing anymore, and I was totally shocked when the media linked some recent teen-suicides to name-calling on social media. Is social media an actual concern for adolescents, or is the mainstream media just turning the Internet into the villain?

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

While the tenure of many agency-client relationships are shrinking, here’s one that’s 30 years old and still going strong: Ackerman McQueen and the NRA.

The Oklahoma ad agency has been the agency for the gun-rights group since the early 1980s — making it one of the longest-running collaborations in advertising history. A piece on the relationship was a Public Radio International feature this week.

Ackerman McQueen’s roots are at the George W. Knox advertising agency. In 1954, Ray Ackerman bought the shop from Mr. Knox, and in the early 1970s, he was joined by the father-and-son team of Marvin and Angus McQueen.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Focus sur Augusto Esquivel, un artiste basé à Miami qui compose des sculptures en utilisant des centaines de boutons suspendus par des fils de pêche. Des créations réussies représentant des objets divers, du distributeur de bonbons à la célèbre Joconde. A découvrir en images dans la suite de l’article.

A poorly frosted cake is a tragedy in The Martin Agency's new ad for Cool Whip. "Mistreated Cakes," which breaks today and pushes Cool Whip Frosting, plays out like a PSA on behalf of the "millions of innocent cakes [that are] mangled, mistreated and hurt" by rival frostings, which just aren't as smooth. Images of sloppy cakes give way to a shot of a supermarket freezer full of Cool Whip Frosting, as a plaintive male voice explains, "There is something you can do." After a lush close-up of Cool Whip Frosting being spread on a chocolate cake, the ad shifts back to a sad sack of a birthday cake just as one of its candles topples over. "Please help," implores the voice, amid sparse piano notes. "Cool Whip Frosting. Together, we can change the way cakes are frosted." Martin senior copywriter Bob Meagher said the mock-PSA approach stemmed from a simple idea: What if a cake had feelings? To get the mood right, Meagher and senior art director Pat Wittich watched old PSAs and, yes, baked a cake. The ad, which targets moms whose families bond over dessert, will run through May during shows such as Food Network's Cupcake Wars and ABC's Grey's Anatomy, according to Marjani Coffey, brand manager on Cool Whip at Kraft Foods.

Rovio is catapulting itself onto a TV screen near you.

The company is bringing its Angry Birds characters to an animated series, “Angry Birds Toons,” that will be available on broadcast TV in several countries outside the U.S. starting March 16, and in the Angry Birds app and on Comcast’s Xfinity On Demand the following day. Activision, BlackBerry, Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures will be the initial advertising partners with more deals expected to close in the coming weeks.

“I think this signals a huge step forward in our evolution from gaming company to media company,” Michele Tobin, Rovio’s head of brand partnerships and advertising in the Americas, said.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

"Sometimes you gotta eat people, America. That's how business works." Old Spice has a charmingly roguish new executive director of marketing, who brings a uniquely authentic vision for selling Old Spice Wild Collection "smell products." That's because he's a wild animal. But luckily, he has a futuristic wolf-to-human translator voice box contraption strapped to his neck, so he can explain himself to you, and why he's so awesome at what he does. His advice? "Follow my twitters" and "Readings my blog" to learn more about Old Spice. Failing to do so could result in your being swiftly devoured. Bring in the meat sacks! The campaign, by Wieden + Kennedy, follows the recent snarling-wolf- and screeching-eagle-heavy ads for the client's Wolfthorn and Hawkridge scents.

Mr. Wolfdog saying hi. I'm proud to be Old Spice’s first nonhuman Director of Marketing and look forward to being even prouder. End tweet.

— Director Wolf Dog (@DirectorWolfDog) March 11, 2013

Paper? Pa-per? What the hell is that? Leo Burnett's ad for French toilet-paper brand Trefle celebrates parchment in its various forms, presenting a woman who reads printed books, puts sticky notes on the fridge, plays sudoku with a pencil and draws pictures on a paper pad with her daughter. Her doofus husband prefers doing all such activities on his tablet computer, and he admonishes her time and again for being old fashioned. But he gets his comeuppance while sitting on the can (that's Cannes in French). The toilet paper runs out, and when he calls for a refill, she slides his tablet under the door, its display aglow with the image of fluffy T.P. ("Paper has a big future," says the on-screen text.) I picture the wife in the hall, rolling—for lack of a better pun—on the floor with laughter. So, you can wipe the screen, but shouldn't use the screen to wipe? Wish I'd known that years ago.