Hasta La Creative!

Oh it had to come to this, didn’t it? Santa Monica-based RPA has created The Listening Cloud, an actual cloud of sorts that lives in its lobby, monitors social media around the agency’s clients and reflects it through changing colors and weather patterns.

It’s like an old-school lava lamp except it’s powered by the internet instead of, well, instead of the LSD-addled minds of its 1960’s-era developers.

Custom software pulls in real-time data from the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram public APIs, then sends commands through a wireless bridge to LEDs inside the cloud, visualizing the data through different light colors and behaviors. It uses the Phillips Hue lighting system and its RESTful API, which allowed software to be coded using Node.js to communicate with the lighting controller. A Web-interface on a nearby monitor lets viewers choose what they’d like the cloud to “listen to” and also displays a raw, real-time feed of the data it’s processing.

Of the endeavor, RPA Creative Director Perrin Anderson said,”We hope that others will share their ideas on the marriage of creativity and data by using the hashtag #ListeningCloud on their social accounts.”

Angelina Jolie will receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award; the actors Angela Lansbury and Steve Martin and the costume designer Piero Tosi will receive Governors Awards this fall.

Haven’t we all seen enough movies, TV shows and other forms of entertainment that take steps, often extreme and comical ones (think stuffed animals standing in for real ones), to insure we never, ever, under any circumstances whatsoever, have to bear witness to animal cruelty — even the most innocuous — in any of the content we consume?

Whether or not one feels this is a bit of overkill is really irrelevant, the cause groups and their public have spoken. No harm — even of the fake variety — shall come to animals.

So it’s really no surprise running shoe brand Pearl Izumi is catching heat for an ad if created which shows a dog that has just suffered a heart attack while on a run with its owner being given CPR.

After the ad appeared in Canadian Running magazine, Pearl Izumi was blasted on social media by outraged dog lovers.

Reacting to the ad, Omaha bed and breakfast owner Julie Mierau said, “When I saw the ad, I believed they were trying to say the dog was dead. That was horrifying to me. It’s offensive to me as a dog lover…that the message is these shoes will make you run so hard you’ll kill your dog.”

Pearl Izumi has since pulled the ad and posted an apology on its Facebook page.

Nike London vient d’achever une refonte de ses bureaux. Avec des travaux dirigés par l’agence créative Rosie Lee, la marque à la virgule dispose maintenant de superbes espaces avec des zones spéciales pour les univers ‘Air Jordan’, ‘Mercurial’ ou encore ‘Air Max 180′. A découvrir dans l’article avec images et vidéo.

(TrendHunter.com) The Swarm Table by Florence design graduate Natalie Goldfinger is an interchangeable and exchangeable table that can be transformed, multiplied and substituted. This table’s got it all; it&#…

"Boots on the ground" or not, let's not forget about sandals, pumps and loafers. #Footwear

— Kenneth Cole (@KennethCole) September 5, 2013

Kenneth Cole's February 2011 tweet about Egypt—"Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online"—became part of every case study on terrible corporate tweeting. But it seems Cole didn't learn much from the episode, as he just tweeted a reference to the Syria crisis—as a way to pitch his footwear. (The @KennethCole feed is written by the man himself and "not representative of the corporate @kennethcoleprd feed.") Repeating the mistake is so odd, it must be … intentional?

Since August 2012, Ad Age has had an editorial partnership with TVGuide.com focused on its Watchlist, a customizable entertainment guide that lets users make a list of their favorite shows, actors, etc. We’re fans of Watchlist because of its predictive powers: For several of the past TV seasons, 8 of the top 10 most Watchlisted new shows were picked up for full seasons.

Shortly after we published two charticles in May — one about the most Watchlisted new dramas announced at the Upfronts, the other about the most Watchlisted comedies — CBS Corp. bought out the half of TV Guide Digital (TVGuide.com and its mobile apps) it didn’t already own, from Lionsgate. The good news, for those concerned about the integrity of the Watchlist rankings, is that TVGuide.com has kept full editorial independence — and Watchlist rankings remain entirely user-driven. Tellingly, one of TVGuide.com’s biggest advertisers recently was CBS competitor NBC, which bought a summer-long sponsorship.

So Watchlist remains for us a sort of massive focus group of informed TV viewers. The number of Watchlists created by TVGuide.com visitors and users of the TVGuide.com mobile apps now tops 1.5 million (up from just half a million when we started this partnership).

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Hyundai Motor America on Thursday joined General Motors’ Chevrolet, Dannon and Intuit as advertisers that have announced plans to advertise on Fox Sports’ coverage of Super Bowl XLVIII from MetLife Stadium on Feb. 2.

Hyundai will advertise in the Super Bowl for the seventh straight year, according to Steve Shannon, VP-marketing. The auto-maker has purchased two in-game spots. “The Super Bowl is the ultimate stage for showcasing the Hyundai brand and our vehicles,” said Mr. Shannon in a statement.

Fox Sports is said to be charging around $4 million for 30-second spots. This year’s Super Bowl is historic in some ways. It will be the first Super Bowl held in the New York area, the media and marketing capital of the U.S. It will also be the first played outdoors in an open-air stadium during cold winter months.

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