Hasta La Creative!

To get a sense of the scale of online ad-sharing growth since 2006, look no further than Dove. The Unilever brand had a major viral advertising hit that year, and again this year—"Evolution" and "Real Beauty Sketches"—providing useful bookends to see how sharing has expanded exponentially in eight years.

The "Evolution" spot was shared 60,954 times in its first year, compared to 4.24 million shares for "Real Beauty Sketches," according to Unruly Media, which has released a new version of its "Viral Spiral" infographic (see below) looking at branded-video shares through the years.

"Evolution," released just a year after YouTube launched, was the No. 3 viral spot of 2006, while "Real Beauty Sketches" was this year's No. 1. The gap in their shares, of course, reflects the maturing of the online video marketplace—and is reflected in the broader numbers. Unruly says sharing of branded video has increased 50 times in last eight years.

The Viral Spiral—a fun way to look at some of the biggest viral spots since 2006—has been spiced up since its last appearance in 2011. You can filter by year, shares and sector; see synopses of the major themes in each year; and learn all sorts of sharing-related info-nuggets. As a nod to the year of prankvertising, Unruly also threw in an "infoprank," so don't worry if the NSA appears to be tracking you while you browse.

Some other tidbits:

• Sharing of the top three branded videos has grown sevenfold from 2010 (the year of the game-changing Old Spice ad) to 2013—from 1.6 million to 11.6 million.
• Eight of the top 20 most viral ads of all time were released in 2013.
• The top 10 ads in 2013 generated 28.8 million shares, up from 19 million in 2012.

Play around with the full Viral Spiral below.

Here's one of the odder celebrity-centric campaigns out there. FishLove, a British organization that advocates for sustainable fishing practices, has just launched its third annual photo campaign in which diverse stars pose nude with dead sea creatures. Draped in a conger eel, Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame is the headliner this year, though most of the stars will be relatively unknown to American audiences. The campaign was shot by photographer Denis Rouvre. It's hard to tell if the results are meant to be unappetizing, since the idea is to celebrate the love of seafood while supporting nondestructive harvesting, but the shots probably won't do much to further your craving for sushi or sex.

Gillian Anderson:

Serge Hazanavicius:

Thomas Dutronc:

Mélanie Bernier:

Nickolas Grace:

Olivia Williams:

Jeany Spark:

Joanna Bergin:

Kenzo Takada:

Goldie:

Jean-Marc Barr:

Barbara Cabrita:

Caroline Ducey:

Emmanuel de Brantes:

Aure Atika:

If you needed proof that there's really nothing new under the sun, look no further than the explosively popular site ViralNova, which credits its addictive, highly clickable content to a famous long-form print ad from 1926.

The original ad, widely collected, praised and parodied through the years, begins, "They laughed when I sat down at the piano — But when I started to play!" It was penned by John Caples for the U.S. School of Music and is often noted as one of the most effective ad headlines of all time.

Scott DeLong, who launched ViralNova in May, has a framed copy of the ad over his desk to help inspire him to create the most engaging headlines possible each day. "It's the most perfect headline ever written," he recently told Business Insider, "and those same psychological reasons for that working is why ViralNova is, so far, working today."

He's successfully adapted its urgently emotional style, topping aggregated news items from around the Web with madcap mini-masterpieces like, "They Were Married for 65 Years. Their Final Moment Left Me In A Puddle Of Tears," "I Can't Decide If This Is Adorable Or Very, Very Wrong. And I'm Not Talking About The Baby's Safety" and "Please, Ban These People From Ever Posting Online Again. You Have To See This … OMG." (And those are just from one day.)

ViralNova is in the vanguard of sites that rely on creating such headlines to attract clicks and social sharing. Other notables include Upworthy, which says editors must write 25 headlines for each story before they get it right.

This trend raises the bar for sites looking to get their content noticed and adds a new layer of creativity, though journalistic purists and old-school newshounds might scoff along the lines of an especially memorable ViralNova topper: "And This Is Why Our Entire Society Is Doomed. Sigh."

The D.C. Metro's newest ad campaign, dubbed "Metro Forward," took a giant step backward recently with a sexist print ad that suggests women would rather talk about shoes than public transport reliability. The not-so-subtle subtext, according to critics, is that women (specifically the Metro's riders) are too vapid to care about matters of import.

"The point of the ad is to get people talking about Metro's massive rebuilding effort by juxtaposing technical facts with a variety of light responses in conversation between friends," a Metro spokesperson tells DCist.com.

In a version of the campaign featuring two men, when asked whether he'd noticed some new hardware installed on the train, the guy's punch line is, "No, Billy, not so much." What, no mention of beer, power tools or watching some sports last night?

The sexism of the women-oriented ad is particularly egregious and laughable because it's so lazy. "Ladies and their shoes" is a punch line you'd hear on late-night TV 25 years ago, and it wasn't funny then, either. Luckily for us, this is one of those advertising blunders where the parodies will be much better executed because more thought will have been put into them than in the original.

Why can't Bobby just talk about shoes?! Not as funny because he's a dude? #sexistdcmetro @wmata @unsuckdcmetro pic.twitter.com/WtWWH1UrnY— YH (@parkyhee) December 3, 2013

Canadians, you better be in a video-sharing frenzy today, because it's your last chance to be crowned a new Skittles Millionaire. The end of the day will mark the end of BBDO Toronto's crazy Get Skittles Rich promotion, in which one lucky Canadian consumer will have a million Skittles delivered directly to his or her house. That's 94 bulk cases, or a whopping 5,500 bags of rainbow wonder pills.

The campaign was designed as a pyramid-marketing scheme with a fictional spokesman named Danny Falcon. Participants had to sign in to the microsite and share Falcon's video, earning virtual Skittles for every pass around.

Falcon explains how Skittles flow up the sharing pyramid to make you Skittles rich. Then, he lounges in his own Skittles-filled pool as his associates liberally toss Skittles at each other in a dorky bacchanalia of sugar-fueled pleasure. It's enough to make you want your own pneumatic tube transport device filled with colorful deliciousness. According to the giveaway rules, the winner will be drawn on Dec. 10.

Star Wars has made its official debut on Instagram with one of the most stellar selfies of all time. In one of the brand's first shots on the photo-sharing site, Darth Vader is seen snapping a quick pic in what appears to be the corpse-littered spacecraft hallway where he made his dramatic first appearance in 1977. The only other shots posted so far are an early concept model for the Imperial Star Destroyer and a behind-the-scenes shot of Vader and Luke Skywalker dueling with non-lit sabers. But I'm sure we can expect quite a bit more awesomeness to come from a galaxy far, far away to a smartphone near you.

Most Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals make sure that everyone's aunt gets her memory-foam slippers and reindeer sweater at 50 percent off. But Cards Against Humanity decided to do a completely different promotion this year.

In a Facebook post, it made a strange offer: For a limited time, everything was $5 more!

The promo was well received by its mainly millennial audience. "Please release a promo code so I can get this deal all year round," wrote one fan.

This latest campaign for the party game—following its "12 Days of Holiday Bullshit" promotion—is consistent with the brand's snarky, self-deprecating voice. (If you're on the Cards Against Humanity site and you click a button to tweet about it, the auto-tweet is "This game sucks." The FAQ section has the heading "Your dumb questions.")

On Monday, they announced that the "sale" was over.

Fan responses ranged from "Ugh. Everyday prices. How inconvenient" to "If I wanna pay more, I should be able to pay more! This is the fuckin' U.S. of fuckin' A, dammit!"

It was a fun break in the midst of watching all those Black Friday videos of people throwing down over discounted waffle irons.

The canvas of Craigslist continues to inspire many a budding copywriter to create odes to objects most of us would dismiss as curb trash. Witness this latest advertisement—for an old loveseat offered free of charge in Cumming, Ga. The headline? "This isn't a love seat, it's upholstered Americana." And it just gets better from there. They posed the much-loved seat next to an American flag, its gentle folds caressing the back cushions like a familiar suitor, the red, white and blue plaid couch reclining in its ageless wisdom, calling like a siren to its new owner. They even recount their myriad experiences with the loveseat in the local vernacular. Enjoy the full text below.

The finest quality in American Furniture building has combined with the tightly knit magical American Family unit and formed something beyond all human comprehension. For over 25 years, a quarter of a century, this two seater has rested weary travelers, introduced budding relationships, assisted multi-generational understanding. It has played host to conversations about marriage, birth, dinner reservations, politics, religion, college graduation requirements, weather, real estate, budget negotiations, funeral arrangements (not necessarily related to the aforementioned budget), car repair, Christmas, SEC football, landscaping, camping, plumbing, gambling, and other subjects too intimate to mention. Now, I know you've seen enough sci-fi to understand that after being exposed to that kind of timeless, bone marrow building, honest-to-God-humanity, inanimate objects pick up an aura of ageless wisdom that can rub off on the next proud owner. Due to a change in our circumstances (possibly even due to the couch itself summoning a new owner), we are forced to part with this . . ., well, . . . member of the family. But how? How do you just let something out of your life that has so many memories, so many feelings, so many odd seating positions? It's not easy. After many sleepless nights, and long conversations, we have decided to part ways with our beloved love seat in the same way we had to say good-bye to Paw-paw. We are going to leave it on the curb until someone comes and picks it up. That's right. You could be the next proud owner! (Of the love seat, not Paw-paw-he's already found one). You too, can experience the joy of sipping coffee beside your significant other while not having to worry about spilling. You may be the one the couch is seeking. It may be ready to guide to your next relationship, business venture, or fishing trip. Do you feel led toward it in some unexplainable way? Yes, we understand. The same thing happened to us, and look where we are now; so rich we can afford to part ways with this gluteus maximus wonder hugging conversation catalyst. Come and get it, and get your life back on track – Now!

It sounds like an April Fools' joke, but this is totally real. Amazon just revealed a shock-inducing plan to get delivery times down to a mere 30 minutes by using an army of aerial drones. The service is still in R&D, but was teased Sunday night on 60 Minutes by CEO Jeff Bezos in what amounted to a lengthy Amazon infomercial. You can view the entire episode online; he starts talking about it at 11:30. Or just check out the amazing little video below about the service, which they're calling Amazon Prime Air.

The unmanned drones are equipped with GPS and can carry objects weighing up to five pounds, which is 86 percent of the objects Amazon delivers. Their range is up to 10 miles from any fulfillment center, but as Amazon keeps building more and more of those, I imagine that will incorporate most metro areas by 2015. Why 2015? Bezos says that's the soonest Amazon Prime Air will be airborne because of shifting FAA regulations.

Domino's has tested its own delivery drone, but Amazon is getting all the press (along with more than 2 million YouTube views in 12 hours) thanks to Sunday's high-profile announcement. Given that Amazon also apparently provides the private cloud for the CIA, I somehow doubt they'll have much trouble swaying the FAA. Which means that in just a few short years, a massive swarming army of Amazon bots will be descending over your neighborhood bringing holiday cheer.

Let's hope they dress them in tiny appropriate holiday hats.

After years of cornering the market on all things magenta and turquoise, Crayola makes a big, public shift into the toy category with its new "This Holiday, Get Creative" campaign.

The oh-so-WASP-y spots, from mcgarrybowen, are cute and appealing to kids—particularly the ad for Create to Destroy—while also highlighting perks for parents. (Look, my kid is using markers on my carpet and I'm not Hulk-ing out because they're washable!)

While the new products are toys, they're still completely Crayola—the Melt n Mold toy transforms broken down crayons into toy shaped crayons—which makes for some nice brand continuity.

All of the new Crayola products are out in time for you to drop them in your shopping cart and throw some elbows during Black Friday shopping today.