Hasta La Creative!

Today, everyone does everything. You have actor-writer-rappers (Donald Glover, Jamie Foxx), dancers turned actors (Jennifer Lopez, Channing Tatum), pro athletes attempting to rap (Shaq, Allen Iverson), and so on. So, when Rafael A. Perez, a San Diego realtor, decided to produce a rap video to "express the state of real estate" there, who was going to stop him? Yes, the housing market in the U.S. collapsed a few years ago, but R.A.P. (Rafael A. Perez's emcee moniker) is here to tell you that it's BACK! Along with the American dream! At least in San Diego! The YouTube video, titled "Welcome to the 619," is a hopeful and amusing bid to get people excited about the area again. It's filled with bad lip-syncing, a barely conscious Perez, zooms of Google images, MLK Jr. quotes, and of course American flags. I don't know about you, but I think it's about to get real crowded in the 619.

To hype its inaugural Comedy Week, which begins Sunday night at 8 p.m. ET, YouTube turned to an ad agency known for generating its share of laughs: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. The San Francisco-based shop's New York office whipped up a load of ads (many of them :15s) that have been airing in recent weeks starring the Comedy Week's actors and comedians. Check out a whole bunch of those spots below. (At the bottom is a longer promo with Arnold Schwartzenegger, which YouTube produced in-house, but we have to include because it's awkwardly hilarious.)

Goodby also designed a special YouTube masthead that will run all day Sunday to promote that night's kickoff. It shows a bathroom wall inside a comedy club. You can scroll around, click different doodles and find Easter eggs like Venn diagrams for classic jokes; a mounted moose head who doubts Comedy Week will be funny (he says things like "I have serious doubts about the funniness of this week" and "the humor is very subtle … and by subtle I mean unfunny"); and a phone number—(888) 303-3771—you can call for a good time (if you're not having one already).

The first two-hour live stream starts Sunday at 8 p.m. ET. New shows will air each night this week at midnight ET through Saturday. Guests will include Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Seth Rogen, Comedy Central's Tim and Eric, Conan O'Brien, Rainn Wilson, Ricky Gervais and Sarah Silverman, and YouTube stars The Gregory Brothers, Rhett & Link and Ryan Higa.

Schwartzenegger spot produced in-house by YouTube:

What a week it's been. As Friday draws to a close, I see your defecating man in the exercise video and your threesome-inducing Sexual Chocolate wine, and I raise you one talking butt crack in this British advert for something called Polycell. It's some sort of spray product that promises "No more unsightly cracks" in your walls. Unfortunately, there's one major unsightly crack in the commercial. And it talks. David Ogilvy would be proud. Agency: 18 Feet & Rising. Full list of perpetrators below.

CREDITS
Client: Polycell
Agency: 18 Feet & Rising
Creative Director: Stephen de Wolf
Creatives: Alex Delaney & Oli O'Neill
Agency Producer: Emily Hodgson Julia Methold
Account Director: Adrienne Little
Strategic Business Lead Rob Ward
Director: Simon Willows
Production Company: Blink
Production Company Producer: Tiernan Hanby
Executive Production Company Producer: James Bretton
Editor: Mark Aarons
Post Production Company: The Electric Theatre Company
Post Production Company Producer: Helen Sutermeister
VFX Supervisor: Andrew Stewart
Colourist: Steffan Perry @ Framestore
Sound Engineer: Tony @ Wave Studios

David Beckham is retiring from professional soccer, but he'll never stop making ads. One of the world's most prolific pitchmen, the former England captain has sold everything from underwear and soda to hamburgers and, yes, athletic gear—building, with posh wife Victoria, the Beckham brand into a global juggernaut. (David alone is believed to make more than $40 million a year in endorsement money.) At the link below, check out the 10 most-viral commercials Becks has ever done, as compiled by Unruly Media. And like Michael Jordan before him, expect to see plenty more Beckham ads for years to come.

Video Gallery: David Beckham's 10 Most-Viral Commercials

Microsoft takes a break from perfecting its blue screen of death to ape Google's ad style—abundant white space, bouncing Chrome ball, Beethoven's Fifth on the soundtrack—in this anti-Google video that was reportedly intended for internal use but was conveniently leaked to the universe just in time for Google's big I/O developers conference. Tagged with the same "Don't get Scroogled" line that Microsoft uses whenever it needles the only digital company more reviled than itself, the spot warns, "With Google Chrome, everything everywhere is tracked. To target you with ads. To monetize your personal info. … Google watches everything you do and uses it to make a profit off of you. Chrome has you commercialized." Cool. Google can trash my privacy and pick my pocket as long as there's some value added. ("Commercialized" is a good thing, right? I can always Google it and find out. See—value added!) What's Microsoft done for anyone lately? Since they took away the Windows start button, I just stare at a blank PC screen and write all my stories on a Mac. Though Google did give the world Glassholes, so I guess they're just as bad.

The original Google Chrome spot:

Just a few weeks after making the most awkward transmission-repair ad ever, Rhett & Link are back with another goofy local commercial—this one for the Ryan Lee Chiropractic Center in Los Angeles. It stars the eponymous practitioner, who twists, turns and otherwise contorts the bodies of his patients until their skeletons emit rather sickening crunching sounds. It only gets worse as the ad goes on. The tagline is "Gentle. Comfortable. Professional"—although if that's true, it's not totally clear what's going on at 0:41.

Michael Ian Black is not the most interesting man in the world, but he might be the most interesting beer endorser. Last Friday, the comedian, who has 2 million Twitter followers, posted a tweet to a Dos Equis app—which seemed somewhat out of character for him. And indeed, when called on it, he freely admitted that he's been paid for the tweet. Black took a fair amount of heat for being a shill, but responded to the haters frankly, and often humorously. He also got support from some fans, including model Chrissy Tiegen. The best part? He got his revenge on the haters in the best way possible—for Dos Equis, at least. "Because the blowback on it has been so unexpectedly harsh, I'm going to tweet it again for free," he wrote, and then did just that. See below for some highlights from the saga. Via Business Insider.

I just turned myself into a Most Interesting Person with the new @dosequis Legend of You app. Check it out on.fb.me/166xmC6

— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) May 10, 2013

@planetoffinks No, they wrote it and paid me thousands of dollars to run it.

— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) May 11, 2013

@planetoffinks I dunno. I just like money.

— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) May 11, 2013

@planetoffinks Hopefully the salaries they didn't get went towards paying me.

— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) May 11, 2013

Enjoy your Dos Equis, my friend. RT @interpolantics1: @michaelianblack @dosequis wish you had died on 9/11, fucking douche.

— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) May 11, 2013

@brianlynch @dosequis It's a terrific beer drink from Canada!

— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) May 12, 2013

@brianlynch @dosequis I literally have NO idea.

— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) May 12, 2013

@chrissyteigen No shit. I'm certainly happy to do it. BTW, is there anything you need promoted?

— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) May 11, 2013

Yes @dosequis payed me to tweet. But because the blowback on it has been so unexpectedly harsh, I'm going to tweet it again for free.

— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) May 12, 2013

I just turned myself into a Most Interesting Person with the new @dosequis Legend of You app. Check it out on.fb.me/166xmC6

— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) May 12, 2013

My only regret, and it is a HUGE regret, in tweeting for Dos Equis, is that I somehow misspelled the word "paid." bit.ly/16lcsA7

— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) May 16, 2013

What could be better than an Auto-Tune leprechaun singing about his magically delicious cereal? Nothing! This 15-second Lucky Charms ad, which mixes current commercial footage, vintage images and goofy-great vocal manipulation, will air during high-profile TV shows this week like the Billboard Music Awards and the season finales of American Idol and The Voice. Its inspiration came from major doses of hallucinogenic drugs and/or a St. Patrick's Day promotion for the General Mills brand that included a mashup music video that went viral with nearly 1 million views. There were many hot-shot creative hands on deck here (see the credits below), but all you really need to know is that the result is super groovy. Watch the full video for a trippy walk down memory lane.

CREDITS
—Ad
Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi
Production: Pat-Man Studios
Composer: Jeff Elmassian
—Video
YouTube's Machinima channel and Melodysheep, mashup maker

It's fairly well established that Abercrombie & Fitch doesn't want the wrong sort of people wearing its clothes. A couple of years back, it even offered (as part of a goofy PR stunt) to pay Jersey Shore star Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino to stop buying its apparel, saying his implicit endorsement "could cause significant damage to our image." Now, the clothier is getting heat for its supposedly exclusionary marketing policies once again—this time based on a 7-year-old quote from CEO Mike Jeffries. In the quote—dredged up in the wake of similar criticisms levied at A&F in a new book—Jeffries says, "In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids." That incensed a guy named Greg Karber, who decided to try to piss Jeffries off by giving A&F clothes to the most uncool kids he could find—homeless people. Despite Karber's best intentions, his video of the stunt comes off as forced and, in a way, exploitative itself, as he's simply using the homeless as a tool to trash the brand. (The charity aspect is clearly incidental.) But the video, posted Monday, is quickly closing in on a million views, proving yet again that hating on Abercrombie is a pastime most people can get behind.

Hyundai is getting a lot of coverage for putting Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds" in an ad for its Assurance Connected Care in-car customer-service program, largely because the late reggae icon's music is so infrequently licensed for ads. The automaker is also sponsoring a remixed version (done by Bob's son Stephen Marley and DJ/producer Jason Bentley) of Marley's Legend album, which features the song, and a three-minute documentary about the remix project. Despite all the fuss, what strikes me most about the spot, from ad agency Innocean, is how bland it is. It's not bad per se, but the music takes a back seat, as it were, to an informative but uninspired voiceover ("What if your car could help schedule its own service? Call for help with your exact location if you ever ran into trouble out there?") and sight gags involving signs that read "No worries" and "It's all good." The only special element is the song, and it's basically background music, like a tune playing on the car's radio. Any upbeat track would have been equally effective. This is Bob Friggin' Marley! Lively up yourself! Why not seed something more, you know, high concept?