Hasta La Creative!

Two mysterious billboards have appeared in New York. One, located on West Broadway near Canal Street, reads, “Your data should belong to the NSA” and the other, located at 27th and Broadway, reads, “The Internet should be regulated.”

A Clear Channel spokesperson, David Grabert, confirmed to Animal New York the work is part of a teaser campaign saying,”For now, I am respecting the creative campaign and reserving comment on who the advertiser is.”

One of the boards is also in San Francisco located on 101 North. The LA Times believes it could be blogger-turned-venture capitalist Michael Arrington who is behind the campaign citing his desire to shame companies aiding NSA efforts.

It seems details as to who’s behind the campaign will be revealed next week.

(Photo: Aymann Ismail/ANIMALNewYork)

(Photo: Jeff Owens)

UPDATE: BitTorrent has claimed responsibility for the campaign.

For those of you who like beer and live reasonably close to Toronto, Open and Bier Markt have teamed up for a promotional campaign meant to make you all bubbly inside for the goodness of suds. Tall glasses brimming with foam, hangovers, and bad decisions. Oktoberfest is here.

To kick off the celebration, Bier Markt’s Facebook page has a Biervent (like advent, get it?) calendar, and for each day, there is a new billboard with a headline that might say, “Rock out with Your Sauerkraut” or “Get Schnitzel’d.” In addition to the social media, there will be events for all 32 days of Oktoberfest at Bier Markt, such as a Snout Sunday Roast and the aptly titled Bier and Lederhosen So In Right Now Event. Probably could’ve gotten more creative with that. It almost sounds like a bunch of people were sitting around a table, getting drunk, and they were like, “What should we call the event with beer and lederhosen?” Which is probably true. Credits after the jump.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

People are already using NeverWet (aka the silicon-based, water-repellent spray that's been getting all the buzz lately) to waterproof just about anything that can't squirm away. But here's an interesting take from two members of Home Depot's "How-To Community." Nathan Sharratt and Dana0814 made some stencils for NeverWet sidewalk graffiti, which can be seen only in rainy weather. It's just a matter of time (and probably not much time) before advertisers will be all over this idea—and in fact, similar things have been tried in the past. But it might not go over well in every city. 

Pearl Media’s interactive billboard at Columbus Circle attempts to spook passing subway riders with a large screen ad that responds to their movements.

The gesture-activated, multimedia billboard has been promoting Witches of East End since September 13th. As Pearl Media CEO Josh Cohen puts it, “The video walls are designed to get busy Upper West Side commuters to put down their small screens and spend time with cool content on a really big screen so that they’ll tune in to their medium-sized TV screens when the series premieres on October 6.” Phew. I think Louis C.K. would probably have something to say about that one.

At any rate, the billboard features two nine square-foot walls, comprised of nine screens each. An extreme close up of a woman’s green iris appears to follow commuters as they walk by, masses of crows fly out of her pupil as the scene changes to trees slowly being consumed by fire. The more movement from those passing by, the more the scene changes. Music and sound are also integrated into the interactive billboard.

The billboard didn’t seem to actually scare anybody (nor, I think, will Witches of East End), but it did stop some people in their tracks and get them to interact with the billboard. Some of them seemed to be having fun. Whether that will get anyone to actually tune into Lifetime is another story.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

By now, you’re probably well aware of Burger King’s new lo-cal “Satisfries” and perhaps have even seen Mother’s spot that promotes the fast-food chain’s launch of its newest product. Well, what we happened to miss this past weekend during our hibernation was the teaser social/experiential portion of the event dubbed #WTFF, which not only involved Mother but also Big Fuel (where have ya been?), who dropped giant, 8-foot (steal-able) fries in NYC, LA and Chicago.

Subsequently, the fries were photographed by pedestrians as well as hand-picked “Instagram influencers,” who posted their images here as well as on a Tumblr site. It wasn’t until the official launch of Satisfries that Burger King officially acknowledged the project dubbed #WTFF.  The parties involved even managed to photobomb the Today show (above) earlier this week, so what the hell, we decided to regale for a minute in a neat project touting something we’ll probably never consume anyways. We just wish we had one of those large-size fake fries to take home, though.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

For $4, you can buy Brooklyn. Well, you can buy a tiny piece of it, at least, which costs almost as much as Jay-Z’s old ownership share of the Nets. That’s the shtick of the latest project from Floyd Hayes, the creator of “The World’s Fastest Agency” among many other ideas. Hayes also used to be ECD at Cunning, and his “Piece of Brooklyn Project” is not just a quirky gambit of guerilla enterprise. $1 of every purchase will be donated to the Brooklyn Arts Council. We can always get behind a good cause.

In case you are worried about ending up with a fraudulent chunk of BK, every item comes with a rubber stamp of authenticity, for whatever that’s worth. Check out the items here.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Call it a combination of new media and old, old media – Instagram and pay phones. The New York City pay phone collection might be dwindling – when is the last time you or someone you were with had to use a phone booth?- but as part of a contest from new-shop South Rocket Droogs, snapping an Instagram picture of certain pay phones around the city can actually win you prizes. You’d have to use the #SouthRocketDroogs to win one of 10 prizes, all of which you can see on the agency’s Tumblr.

The official title of the contest is “The Payphone Hashtag Project,” simple enough. South Rocket Droogs, led by Roberto Max Salas (no stranger to viral hashtaggery), is looking to make a grungy splash. And, although I’m a fan of artistic allusions and Malcolm McDowell, pay phones might be too specific to get the job done. A recent Pew survey found that 91% of adults in America own a cell phone, which leaves a select few people who might wander toward a pay phone and an even more exclusive group of people who know about this project and wander toward pay phones. But, you can win an ad campaign for your business, so maybe there will be a pay phone rejuvenation. It can happen.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We’ve written about the European Wax Center before. And you’ve probably seen their ads on busses in and around New York City. They’re easily recognizable since it’s hard to miss gigantic ass cheeks protruding out from under the shortest short shorts you have likely ever seen.

The Strawberry Frog-created campaign continues with a new bus sides and outdoor posters that touts the importance of a a good bikini wax. One version of the ad, which features a woman in a blue bikini bottom wearing pumps which are pressed against her inner thigh, carries the headline, “More Ooh La La’s on the Sidewalks and Catwalks.

While we’re pretty sure we’re not going to see — although we’d love to — a woman walking down the sidewalk in New York wearing a tiny blue bikini and heels, we get the message; the only hair anyone wants to see is the hair on your head.

Ever wanted to know what it’s like inside SpongeBob’s head? Thanks to a new mural by Austrian graffiti artist Nychos (The Weird), now you can. The much-beloved Nickelodeon Animation Studio was looking to dig into the guts of its brand power and ethos of discovering innovative talent, and so collaborated with creative agency Struck to create a one-of-a-kind original artwork to reflect the studio’s legacy of creator-driven animation. In turn, Struck collaborated with Nychos, who specializes in large murals depicting cartoonishly vivisected animals and pop culture icons. Nychos – who founded the Austrian graffiti/street art project Rabbit Eye Movement — painted the giant mural of SpongeBob and his exposed viscera over a period of five days, and the mural is being installed in the main conference room at Nick’s offices in Burbank.

Advertising Agency: Struck, USA
Graffiti Designer: Nychos

The Nike Free Flyknit combines the second-skin fit of Flyknit construction and ultimate flexibility of Nike Free. Over the course of a 10-day live installation on a prominent billboard in Shanghai, the sock-like Nike Free Flyknit was “knitted” thread by thread over a bare foot by four installation professionals.

Advertising Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Shanghai, China