Hasta La Creative!

The Viral Video Awards are coming to Ad Age’s Digital Conference next month, and this year we’re adding a new wrinkle: You get to help decide who gets one.

Humor has been making branded videos go viral since, well, at least since Terry Tate started enforcing office etiquette for Reebok in 2002. For this year’s Viral Video Awards, we’ve decided to honor the “funniest” branded videos along with most-watched campaigns, brands and agencies.

We’ve picked six of the funniest of the past 12 months, from traditional brands like Liquid Plumr and AT&T to a public service announcement from Melbourne transit system. Some have appeared on TV (AT&T) and some were made to take advantage of the capabilities of the web (Old Spice).

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Another social app is calling for your attention. This time it’s Vine, a video-sharing app that’s a lot like Instagram melded with Twitter, but with video. The Vine app is not the point of this piece — not in particular, anyway.

The point is your time, which is not unlimited. In reality, there’s likely a pre-determined amount of social media that will fit in between the other aspects of your life. Some people will fall on the heavy side of this scale, while others will fall on the lighter side. Regardless of the amount of time you allow for social tools and sharing, though, there is a “budget” for said time.

My girlfriend often teases me about the processes tied to social sharing, and the time commitment that it requires: “So you’re going to photograph this old van in Camera+, add filters, then import the shot into Instagram, write a comment, add a location from FourSquare, add hashtags, and then tweet about it?? That’s five minutes of your life that you just devoted to a beat-up 1970’s van.”

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(TrendHunter.com) Comic books characters were never really thought of as regular people, and they’re made to appear extremely extraordinary. Artist Greg Guillemin’s ‘The Secret Life of Heroes’…

Publicis Groupe has installed a new North American CEO of Digitas, shortly after the agency was merged with LBi.

Tony Weisman, who’s been at the agency for six years overseeing the north and west regions, is replacing Colin Kinsella. The move comes on the heels of the agency’s merger last month with Publicis sibling and fellow digital agency LBi, a deal that made Luke Taylor, head of LBi, the global CEO of the merged company.

The merger has so far seen its share of bumps in the road, and due to conflict issues, the North American operations of Digitas were not merged with LBi’s North American operations. Still, Mr. Weisman will report to Mr. Taylor.

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Multiple reliable sources have been telling us over the last few hours that Mark Hunter, who assumed the chief creative officer post at Deutsch LA at the end of 2010, has been let go from the agency. We’ve inquired a couple of times for official word, have yet to hear back, but sources say this move happened as of this morning, is “100% legit” and was made at Deutsch’s request.

Hunter, who essentially replaced Eric Hirshberg after the latter quit Deutsch L.A. to join Activision, headed to the former after spending time as ECD at TBWA/London. During his career, the senior creative also worked at the likes W+K Amsterdam on Nike as well as Euro RSCG. While at Deutsch, as one would imagine, Hunter has overseen all notable creative for past and present clients including VW and PlayStation (we believe you know quite a few, lest we run it down). We’ll update, of course, if and when we hear more.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Advertising Agency: Leo Burnett, Lisbon, Portugal
Executive Creative Director: Luciana Cani
Copywriter: Steve Colmar, Pedro Pinho
Art Director: Thiago Cruz, Leonardo Pinheiro
Account Director: Tiago Reis
Social Media: Vasco Mendonça e Joana Duarte
Production Director: Cristina Almeida
Production Company: Stopline
Executive Producer: Francisco Saalfeld
Financial Controller: Nuno Fonte
Line Producer: Inês Marques
Director: Pedro Varela
Creative Assistant Director: Nuno Noivo
Post-production Supervisor: Ricardo Montez
Post-production Company: Illusion
Audio Post-production: Dizplay
Sound designer: João Rola
Voice Over: Marcantónio del Carlo
Original Soundtrack: Xavier Capellas
Additional Footage: VMI/Corbis