Hasta La Creative!

Mr. T guest-stars as a living pun in this Crispin Porter + Boguksy ad for Old Navy Best Tees, which are more stylish and durable than their previous ones. That's not a huge accomplishment, but whatever, it's their ad. (T also appeared in a two-minute Old Navy infomercial last year with Anna Faris.) I enjoyed the quiet irony of putting Mr. T on a plane, when B.A. Baracus was scared to death of them, but it's a little hard for the audience to accept that he can just kick the bathroom door down in a post-9/11 world. No T-shirt in the world can get you out of that kind of trouble.

CREDITS
Client: Old Navy
Agency: Crispin Porter + Bogusky
Partner/Worldwide Chief Creative Officer: Rob Reilly
Executive Creative Director: Jason Gaboriau
Creative Director: Robin Fitzgerald
Creative Director: Cameron Harris
Associate Creative Directors: Alexandra Sann, Mike Kohlbecker
Sr. Copywriter: Dafna Garber
Copywriter: Chelsea O'Brien
Art Director: Mary Dauterman
Director of Video Production: Chad Hopenwasser
Executive Integrated Producer (Music): Bill Meadows
Executive Integrated Producer: Deb Drumm
Junior Integrated Producer: Jackie Maloney
Executive Business Affairs Manager: Amy Jacobsen
Business Affairs Manager: Michelle McKinney
Production Company & City: Smuggler, Hollywood, CA
Director: Randy Krallman
Assistant Directors: Jey Wada, Erin Stern
Executive Producers/Partners: Patrick Milling Smith, Brian Carmody
Executive Producer/COO: Lisa Rich
Executive Producers: Allison Kunzman, Laura Thoel
Head of Production: Andrew Colón
Producer: Paula Cohen
Director of Photography: Bryan Newman
Editorial Company & City: Cut + Run, Santa Monica, CA
Head of Production/Senior Producer: Christie Price
Executive Producer: Carr Schilling
Editor: Frank Effron
Assistant Editors: Heather Bartholomae, Brooke Rupe
Visual Effects Company & City: Method Studios, Santa Monica, CA
Executive Producer: Robert Owens
Producer: Colin Clarry
Set Supervisor: Rob Hodgson
VFX Supervisors: Jason Schugardt, Michael Sean Foley
Lead Composer: Kelly Bumbarger
Graphics & Animation Company & City: Buck, Los Angeles, CA
Executive Creative Director: Ryan Honey
Executive Producer: Maurie Enochson
Sr. Producer: Nick Terzich
Associate Producer: Ashley Hsieh
Art Director: Jenny Ko
Designer: Sean Dekkers
Animator: TJ Socho
Music Company & City: Search Party, Portland, OR
Executive Producer: Sara Matarazzo
Producer: Chris Funk
Composer: Terence Bernardo
Sound Design & City: Machine Head, Santa Monica, CA
Sound Designer: Stephen Dewey
Producer: Patty Chow Dewey
Telecine & City: Company 3, Santa Monica, CA
President/Colorist: Stefan Sonnenfeld
Executive Producer: Rhubie Jovanov
Partner/Managing Director: Steve Erich
EGroup Account Director: Danielle Whalen
Account Director: Kate Higgins
Content Management Supervisor: Laura Likos
Content Supervisors: Jessica Francis, Kendra Schaaf
Content Manager: Alex Kirk, Michelle Forbush
Group Director, Planning: Lindsey Allison
Cognitive Anthropologists: Jennifer Hruska, Tiffany Ahern

Amazon has taken some heat for offering T-shirts with extremely offensive, upsetting slogans—"Keep calm and rape a lot," "Keep calm and grope a lot," "Keep calm and knife her"—from a merchant called, appropriately enough, Solid Gold Bomb. The T-shirt maker apologized profusely and deleted the shirts, claiming the phrases were automatically generated by a computer script from thousands of dictionary words. It's tough to fathom how language referring to raping and groping could find its way via algorithm onto $20 T-shirts playing off England's "Keep calm and carry on" World War II mantra. Yet I doubt the company would try such a boneheaded stunt for publicity. (After this fracas, it might not survive.) Most media coverage has portrayed the episode as a complex, cautionary tale of technology gone awry, pointing out the need for greater human oversight in our age of cost- and labor-saving automation. Fair enough. It's not like the machines could comprehend such phrases. But if they could, it would mean only one of two things: it's their idea of a sick joke, or they're taunting us about the rapey, knifey tech-mageddon to come.

For girls

For boys

A Danish commercial, from Fleggaard, a store in G|ermany, by the border to Denmark.

There’s an interesting personal story embedded inside this New York Times article on Apple’s mastery of the retail space.

Two years ago, Isobella Jade was down on her luck, living on a friend’s couch and struggling to make it as a fashion model when she had the idea of writing a book about her experience as a short woman trying to break into the modeling business.

Unable to afford a computer, Ms. Jade, 25, began cadging time on a laptop at the Apple store in the SoHo section of Manhattan. Ms. Jade spent hours at a stretch standing in a discreet corner of the store, typing. Within a few months, she had written nearly 300 pages.

Not only did store employees not mind, but at closing time they often made certain to shut Ms. Jade’s computer down last, to give her a little extra time. A few months later, the store invited her to give an in-store reading from her manuscript.

Apple stores generate sales at the rate of about $4,000 per square foot a year, and now account for 20 percent of the company’s revenue.

Apple’s stock is up 135 percent for the year. By contrast, high-flying Google is up about 52 percent, while the tech-dominated Nasdaq index is up 12 percent.