Hasta La Creative!

Whit Hiler– who you may remember as the masterminds behind “Kentucky Kicks Ass” — and the folks over at Lexington, KY-based agency Cornett IMS spent 2013 revolutionizing the advertising world with a new form of native advertising: beardvertising.

It’s a pretty simple formula: beards+advertising = beardvertising. The idea is that “beardboards” (beard billboards) are clipped onto epic bears to advertise a given product. The concept was developed solely to garner free press for Cornett and their clients, and it certainly did that, as it was covered by news outlets all over the country. But a funny thing happened: some brands actually inquired about beardvertising, and more than 1,400 men signed up to be paid for using their facial hair as advertising space. So in July, Cornett launched the first ever beardvertising campaign for Dollar Shave Club. Cornett selected 25 of their favorite beards from those submitted and, in their words, “History was made and beards got paid.”

Check out the case study video above for more on beardvertising. And if you think your beard might make the cut, head on over to beardvertising.com and sign up.

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Josh Gordon and Danny Gonzalez, the two Miami Ad School students responsible for the Party Box Project, have a blog documenting their search for a “winter girlfriend” to cuddle with during the cold winter months. They specify in one of the earlier video blogs, in case you were wondering, that this doesn’t mean exclusively for the winter — they’re not planning on getting rid of their winter girlfriends with the spring thaw.

Winter Girlfriend is set up like a calendar, with each day listing a countdown to Valentine’s Day and a random quote. Click on a given date and you get a blog entry from Josh or Danny with updates on the search for a winter girlfriend, number of days since last cuddle, and how they’re coping with the winter. There’s also a weekly video blog, documenting their progress over the past seven days.

Needless to say, the whole thing is a little strange. Josh and Danny meticulously document their winter girlfriend attempts in exhaustive detail. Obviously, they don’t take the whole thing too seriously, though (because at a certain point that would become really creepy). Some of the best moments are pretty funny, although at times the project seems more like an in-joke amongst friends. Josh and Danny seem like nice enough guys, so we wish them luck finding cuddle partners for the winter, ones who won’t mind being featured on Winter Girlfriend.

Josh and Danny have taken a little break from blogging as of late, but you can check out the most recent video blog above. While we’re not sure the site will actually help them find winter girlfriends (and could actually hurt their case with certain ladies), it’s all in good fun, and should help raise their profile, much like their Party Box Project.

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One of the last items in our holiday coverage (we hope) may also be one of the strangest agency submissions of the season, which comes to us from New York-based Berlin Cameron United.

BCU’s version of the agency video holiday card is a weird one indeed, answering the question “What can Berlin Cameron bring you for the holidays?” with a barrage of gnomes, yeti costumes, dancing, beat boxing, and more yeti costumes, to name a few. Just don’t expect it all to make much sense as it’s more a menagerie of random, goofy ideas. We’ve definitely seen worse holiday cards this year, but I’m not sure we’ve seen a more bizarre one.

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Making bad advertising is easy. But, every now and then, somebody produces something so atrociously heinous that it almost makes you want to stand up and applaud.

Congrats, Samsung. “Are You Geared Up?” may be the absolute worst thing we’ve seen this year. You found rock bottom, and you dug even deeper. You combined bad acting with a nonsensical script, added in a dash of uncomfortable pacing and stretched the whole thing out to a cringeworthy two-and-a-half minutes.

Not only did you create The Room of online advertising, but your ad was so shitty that it went viral. Your spot was featured on the front page of Reddit under the headline “Hands down the worst ad I’ve ever seen. Take a bow, Samsung.” On top of that, the online legions have taken to your Samsung Mobile YouTube page, where you’ve received 13,000 thumbs down votes to 2,000 thumbs up votes. And, some genius left the comments on, which just adds to the chaos of terrible. Here are just a smattering of some of our favorite comments:

• “There’s no way this is a real ad from Samsung. That would mean someone from Samsung had to actually watch this train wreck of a commercial and approve it. So it has to be fake. Right?”
• “I feel like I just watched porn without the porn.”
• “I’m almost speechless because of how terrible this is.  I’m embarrassed that it’s for an Android product.”
• “Thanks Samsung, I forgot for a moment that women are prizes that can be won through the creative use of technology and being creepy as fuck.”
• “HAY GURL CHECK OOT THEESE COOL PICS I TOOK OF YOU SEECRETLY WHILE I FOLLOWED YOU. TEE HEE YOUR PICTURES OF ME ARE SO FLATTERING HERE IS MY CONTACT INFORMATION ANONYMOUS STRANGER I WILL BE ALONE IN MY HOTEL ROOM TONIGHT. HAHAHA I AM GOING TO HAEV SEX WITH YOU BECAUSE MY WATCH IS A PHONE!”

In other words, it’s been a pretty fun morning. However, one Reddit-er has an interesting theory for why this terrible, terrible thing exists:

This was shot in Korea (that’s why everyone has a Russian accent). It was probably never meant to be seen in English. The main audience will see this with a Korean dub (that’s also why the actors speak so slowly).

The English script was probably written and edited by non-native speakers, and the company probably doesn’t give a shit what the English version sounds like, because the Korean dub is the one that will be seen. All that matters is that the white people look cool and pretty. It’s like that other commercial with the Samsung hard drive or whatever.

It’s an interesting theory, but as one commenter replied, “I wonder if Samsung has heard of the Internet.” Judging by this, it seems unlikely. If anyone has any info on the agency behind this, or would like to nominate anything else for Worst Ad of the Year, please do so in the comments.

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Swedish digital studio Humblebee has made their own contribution to the selfie mass hysteria, howmanyselfiescanyouhandle.com.

The site is a real-time display of selfies on Instagram, which surely fulfills the fantasies of a lonely Internet creeper somewhere. There’s a counter near the bottom of the screen, ticking away with each selfie that breezes past, and buttons to share on Twitter or Facebook how many you were able to make it through. I don’t have such a high tolerance for selfies, let alone a barrage of stranger selfies, so I barely made it past 100. If it were cat pics I could have lasted all day. We’re not sure if this site is meant to celebrate the selfie, or point out its overuse, but it certainly succeeds at the latter. Let us know how many selfies you can handle in the comments section, and stick around for credits after the jump. continued…

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As an agency, the folks over at Baltimore’s Planit live by the mantra that “the best ideas should scare you.” So this year, for their annual outlandish holiday card, they decided to scare their employees and record their priceless reactions for the enjoyment of friends and clients.

We’ve seen a lot of holiday cards here this month, but none of them feature a demonic-looking elf popping out of a large present to scare employees. So Planit definitely gets points for originality, and watching people get the crap scared out of them is always entertaining, so there’s really nothing not to like about Planit’s holiday card. We applaud their unusual approach to spreading holiday cheer fear. This kind of thing can only work once, though, as these employees will likely be apprehensive about any large packages, caroling, cameras, etc. in the future.

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Consider this a warning: you will not be able to unsee this.

Those Boulder-based, crowdsourcing-loving folks at Victors&Spoils may have just delivered the most unforgettable holiday video of the year, transforming a hot model into a bikini-clad Santa Claus.

But the video isn’t just disturbing for the sake of being disturbing, there’s a sort of feminist message behind it. It opens with the text “Ad agencies go to disturbing lengths to create the perfect image,” before referencing Tim Piper’s “Body Evolution” video showing a (already thin) model airbrushed into an anorexic stick of a woman. Then, Victors&Spoils admits, “Guess we’re no different” before showing the process of transforming said model into Santa Claus. It’s a pleasant holiday cocktail of funny and disturbing, and a nice parody of Piper’s “Body Evolution” video (that doesn’t mute the message of the original video, but rather builds on it). I’m always for anything calling attention to the unhealthy body image issues caused by photoshopping models and celebrities to unhealthy proportions, so a holiday video that does so with humor is going to win major points in my book. And who will be able to forget the slow transformation from bikini-clad blonde to bikini-clad Santa? No one, that’s who. Credits after the jump.

continued…

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We’re not sure who is behind this one, but somebody has created a site that claims to sell “organic, grass-fed, free range, non-caged, small batch Christmas trees.” Check out the above video for an idea of what kind of ridiculousness to expect. It appears today is the day of Christmas parodies — unless, of course, this site is completely serious.

On the site, they calm any concerns you might have that your tree wasn’t given enough space. Each tree is given a 20 x 20 foot space so that they  can “roam free in their spaces to fulfill their spirit.” That’s nice, but how were the trees fertilized? Well, that’s completely up to you. You can choose to have your tree fertilized by “organic cat, organic dog or organic cow manure”; or, if you order your tree six months in advance, you can “bring your own organic animal to fertilize your treeling.” You’ll also be glad to know that the trees are kept on a “strict grass, water and sunlight only diet,” so you can be sure they’re pesticide free. Head on over to http://organicchristmas.co/ to choose your customized organic tree now, and let us know how that works out for you.

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Last month, we brought you news of Rather, the revamped version of the brilliant and much-needed unbaby.me, co-created by Chris Baker. Rather is a great tool that lets you replace things you don’t want to see in your social media feeds — be it babies, sports, religion or the Kardashians — with things you do want to see, like cats. Because everyone wants to see pictures of cats. Baker was also responsible for “Charity Bribes” and a welcome attempt to send M. Night Shyamalan back to film school. Now, Baker has a new project, dubbed Hate With Friends.

Created in partnership with Mike Lacher and Tiger Wang, Hate With Friends allows you to select which of your Facebook friends you hate. According to the parties involved, “Seemed surprising that the internet hadn’t shelled out the opposite version of bangwithfriends, so we did.” Anyway, if they also hate you, both parties will be notified. You can kind of think of it as the opposite of Bang With Friends (apparently now renamed Down), although I suppose there are some circumstances where it’s not the opposite.

We’re not sure how useful Hate With Friends will be for people, or what happens once both parties have confirmed that they hate each other. A simple unfriending? Words With Friends grudge match? A duel at sundown? A titty twister? I imagine it will mostly be used as a joke, amongst friends who do not hate each other, although I’m sure there’s plenty of mutual hate going around on Facebook, seeing as how Facebook has all but destroyed the meaning of the term “friend.” If you’d like to find out if you have any Facebook frenemies, head on over to Hate With Friends. Let us know how it goes in the comments section.

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Two things Google has historically absolutely excelled at are creating groundbreaking products and figuring out how to monetize them. One such product is Google Maps, which allows your business to pay Google-licensed photographers to come inside your office and photograph it for Maps’ Street View feature.

Now, if you’re in a super-hip business like an advertising agency (where art students-turned-art directors bring the skinny-jeans heat), your office is probably designed to look simultaneously forward-thinking and client-friendly. (This goes double if you’re in close proximity to Silicon Valley.) How better to impress stodgy CPG brands looking to get millennials addicted to their brand of high-calorie salted snacks? How better to convince tech startups backed by high-rolling investors that you’re as cool as they are? Well, SF-based agency Muh-Tay-Zik/Hof-Fer did the pay-for-Street View thing, and they decided to play with Google Maps’ strict “no faces” policy.

Should you visit Google Maps, visit these coordinates to take a tour of Muh-Tay-Zik/Hof-Fer, and visit their delightful ski-masked staff. There’s even a dog with a ski mask, but it doesn’t have any ideas cut out, so it’s kind of sad. He’s probably pretty scared, huh?

And now some tips for one-upping these guys should your agency go the same route and be bored:

1. Scary clown masks

2. Replace all human heads with dogs heads via putting dogs on your shoulders

3. Kanye-style sequined masks

4. All bears and sunglasses

5. Embrace the blurred out faces, but all pose as though you’ve been caught in the midst of a lewd act

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.