Hasta La Creative!

The new Charles Saatchi devil sculpture, currently on display at London’s Jealous Gallery in Crouch End, could choke some people the wrong way. The sculpture alludes to a domestic assault incident between Saatchi and his soon-to-be ex-wife, British cooking personality Nigella Lawson, when Saatchi was photographed with his hands around Lawson’s neck. Saatchi later described the act as a “playful tiff,” and an anonymous British artist (now is the time to be skeptical, considering artists never want to be anonymous) created the sculpture/interactive art for anyone interested in being playfully choked by the likeness of an ad man with horns and red skin.

The original choking incident took place about a month ago, which means the wheels were turning pretty quickly on this sculpture/publicity stunt. But now I’m writing about it, as will others, which also means that someone – possibly Saatchi himself, will successfully capitalize on the divorce. Some might say that’s frugal, tasteless, dumb, or a combination of the three.

Check out larger image after the jump.

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And now for something completely different:

A tipster points us to a quaint little discussion in Reddit’s Advertising sub-reddit that asks: “Do agencies drug test? Or is it something that’s on an agency by agency basis? I’m more of a creative and about to start entering the field, just wondering what to look out for.” We figure it’s our duty to distract you from this whole Publicis/Omnicom thing with a few of our favorite responses.

User auto-didact imagined an employee having to break the drug test results with the boss:

“Well, the designers all showed up positive for marijuana. So we fired them. Most of the creative directors too. All the account honchos came up positive for opiates. Most likely coke. They’re gone. All our PLD’s and software engineers tripped up for speed. Not surprising. We’ll have to offshore that work now. Oh, and almost all the senior leadership was clean, but bloodwork showed liver failure in progress. We caught our IT guy huffing cans of spray paint.”

User panthur offers a different experience:

They did at my agency. It was a local agency but now we are owned by a giganto agency conglomerate. A lot of them are owned by big companies and testing unfortunately tends to come with that.

Finally, user pugofwar responded simply with:

Never. (I’m at W+K.)

You can read the whole thread here, and we invite you to share your own experience in the comments.

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Ahh yes, what better time to dust off the ol’ blind item category than with this little ditty that showed up in the tips box last night. A management supervisor at a certain fairly well-known San Francisco agency appears to be on the hunt for a husband, and by golly, she’ll crowdsource if she has to in order to land one. Is she “wookin pa nub” in all the wrong places? Well, only time will tell we suppose. As you’ll see below, there’s $10,000 up for grabs if it all works in the end. We’ve redacted the name, though, as we don’t to add insult to injury if this idea backfires (we’ve been told though that this is “dead serious” and that she’s “already gotten 100 potential dates”), so read on and take your guesses.

“Hi to my most favorite friends,

Remember that time I offered you $10,000 to find me a husband? Me neither. But we both will in about one minute and forty five seconds.

I just finished the book “Lean In.” And whether you’re a fan of this feminist social movement is neither here nor there. What is here is an idea that came to me after reading this book. I thought, “I get it, I need to sit at the table. I need to be deeply committed to becoming a leader.” Got it. I’m on it. And then I thought, “It’s 11PM on a Sunday night, I’m single, I just had to squirt dish soap on leftover pizza so I wouldn’t eat 2 more slices and this is the second self-help book I’ve read this month.”

And then it was as if Sheryl Sandberg and Patti Stanger bitch slapped me across the face with a soaking wet “stop being single” towel. If I wanted a new job, would I sit in the lobby of the employer’s building just hoping that someone would offer me my dream job? No. If I want a husband, will he just show up out of thin air and ask me to hang out with him for the rest of his life? No. Okay—maybe if I looked like Kate Upton. But I don’t. (However, in 2005 the freshman class of my sorority did say that Charlize Theron was my doppelganger. Yes, we might have been hazing them. Yes, they might have been blind folded. But they said it.) So yeah, I’m not Kate Upton. You get the point.

And so I’m writing you today because I’ve decided to make an aggressive action plan on finding that one fella that I get to hang out with forever. And I’ve recognized two things that are important to this plan: (1) a great percentage of marriages are the result of introductions by friends and (2) most people do not give a lot of thought about introducing one of their single friends to another one of their single friends. I get it. Introducing me to my husband is just not high on your to-do list. But I think I have an idea that might change that…

I will personally give ten thousand dollars to the friend who introduces me to my husband.

Here is how the referral program works:
Step 1: You set me up on a date with a man
Step 2: I marry that man
Step 3: I give you $10,000 on my wedding day

I know you’re thinking that this is nuts. Just plain crazy. “[Redacted], you can find a husband without dishing out $10,000.” Well for starters, thank you – I’m flattered. And secondly, I totally agree. But the reality is finding a husband always costs money. I just collected 1,000 insider points from Sephora and this isn’t because I buy beauty products to impress my 4-year old nephew.

To substantiate this offer, I have the complete support and admiration from my parents—who are both included on this email.

So, remember that time I offered you $10,000 to find me a husband? Me too.

Always and forever,
[redacted]”

 

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Seeing as it’s lunchtime and all over here on the East Coast, figured you may have a few minutes to view a new web series concocted by a handful of folks including current and former ad creatives/execs who decided to delve into a completely non-agency project. Ladies and gents, we bring you Transfurter, essentially an adults-only animated series filled with innuendo, breasts, phalluses and more. And that’s just one episode (“A Hotdogbit’s Tale, Pt 1/1000,” which you can see above).

You might cringe, chuckle or just shut if off, but whatever the case, you can blame it all on mastermind Joe Croson, a former VP group executive producer at BBDO and writer for [Adult Swim]. Obviously, Croson’s latter gig informs this current effort aplenty, but the Transfurter creator tells us that the seed was planted four years ago. He tells us, “It was a seed idea in 2009 that I drew on a post-it note and did some stupid VO for.  With the help of my friends Miguel, Mike, Rachel, Nick and Justin and some of my awesome interns, I pitched it to a few different cable networks, who either told us that it was too sick for broadcast, or wanted to see it in action online first.”

Along with Croson, Transfurter features the handiwork of Dan Cordella, currently a senior copywriter at Digitas, Monica Lo, whose day job is senior art director at kbs+, and Jake Grupp from Sound Lounge. If you have more time to kill, you can view more episodes from the ongoing series as well as learn more about the project here. Reminder: It’s kinda NSFW.

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With all the hullabaloo surrounding the Campbell Ewald news and everything else under the sun yesterday, forgot Whit Hiler‘s note to us that, yes, brands have latched on, literally, to his “Beardvertising” effort. Hiler, of course, is one of the parties involved in the “Kentucky Kicks Ass” tourism campaign launched towards the end of last year. Two months ago, the creative and his agency Lexington, KY-based agency Cornett Integrated Marketing Solutions decided to launch an effort called “Beardvertising,” in which still-patent-pending “beardboards”–or miniature billboards–would be placed on willing participants’ beards.

Well, suffice it to say, we were skeptical, but now Hiler tells us that “Beardvertising” is building momentum, in a sense, in that the project has nabbed brands including A&W Restaurants and most recently (and aptly enough), Dollar Shave Club. In a statement, the latter company’s founder Michael Dubin says, “We’re excited to be building our business of beardlessness with these badass, bushy Beardboards.” Yesterday, the Beardvertising effort officially took off with 25 participants from around the U.S. who will sport beardboards, and Hiler says there are 1,400 more “eager guys” willing to participate. Perhaps one of the most prominent beardvertisers for DSC thus far is Gerald Okamura (below), who you may recognize from films including Big Trouble in Little China and Showdown in Little Tokyo.

You can check out more Beardvertising hijinks on Instagram here.

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Listen up, people. T3′s Brian Thompson and his shirt are here to give you four simple steps to nailing your next client presentation!

For those of you who prefer your tips in text format as opposed to video, here are the key points:

1. Posture: Stand up straight. This requires putting your shoulders back and chest out, allowing your clients a better opportunity to check out your God-given physical attributes. If you’re packing in the rear, knock a pen off the table and take an extra-long time to pick it up. It’s this negotiation tactic that made up the basis of Legally Blonde, after all!
2. Gesture: Pinkies out! Pinkies always, always out! It shows class. Also, remember: When you’re presenting your “big idea,” try to stretch your arms out as wide as you possibly can. This will help the client better understand the enormity of your concept. When saying your goodbyes, give the client a firm handshake, while simultaneously using your middle finger to subtly tickle their palms.
3. Pause: The best tactic for keeping your client on their toes is to suddenly stop mid-sentence when you’re in the middle of your presentation. Believe me, they’ll never see it coming. Only resume your presentation after the client asks you AT MINIMUM three times if everything’s okay.
4. Eye Connection: Never, EVER, break eye contact. Have everything memorized so you can talk about your concept without ever looking at it. Avoid blinking if possible; the only time an eye should close is when winking. If you wear contacts or have naturally dry eyes, try to wink at least once a minute. Remember, this is about eye connection, not contact. Pretend the client is Leonardo DiCaprio‘s character at the end of Titanic, and you’re Kate Winslet floating on the door. Never. Let. Go.

Practice these moves with your family over the holiday weekend, and come back to work on Monday presenting with confidence!

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Never before has the “What The…?” category tag been used more appropriately. No, Gary Busey is not the new spokesman for Men’s Wearhouse, but the folks at Jimmy Kimmel Live! had some fun with the recent ousting of MW co-founder, George Zimmer. Zimmer’s velvety rasp has been replaced with Busey’s unvelvety crazy that complements his devious smile and plaid clown suit. When Zimmer said “You’re gonna like the way you look, I guarantee it,” it made you want to buy a suit. When Busey says the same line, you almost expect him to follow it with: “It puts the lotion on its skin.” Normally I’d be kidding, but not with Gary Busey. He’s one of few people who can make brand parody truly frightening.

h/t AR

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Millionaire software developer-turned-jungle-dwelling recluse-turned recent murder suspect John McAfee is here with a four-minute video about uninstalling his namesake software because life’s just weird like that sometimes.

In this video, McAfree says “fuck” and “shit” (which is why you’ve seen this video tagged NSFW by everyone today because no one trusts you to act like an adult and bring headphones to work, you child), does blow, takes his shirt off to flaunt his tribal tattoos, shoots a gun, and gets dry-humped by strippers who the credits tell us appear courtesy of Portland’s Club Exotica. So, I guess if any Guatemalan or Belizean assassins are currently looking for McAfee, he’s in Portland. With strippers and guns.

The video functions as an advertisement for whoismcafee.com, a visit to which tells us that McAfee is a guy with a blog about himself that he finances with the help of remnant ads. Also, George Jung, the cocaine kingpin that Johnny Depp portrayed in the 2001 biopic Blow, is apparently currently writing McAfee’s biography. So yeah, weird, right? Consider yourself totally weirded out by John McAfee. Credits after the jump.

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It’s been a while since we’re covered some ad school-related stunt like this, hasn’t it? I dunno, maybe not, but we’re senile. Anyways, it seems this video’s been up for quite some time and it comes from one Mustafa Ulker, a Miami Ad School copywriting grad who’s come up with a rather ominous way to bid farewell to his institution and land a proper agency gig in the process. Ah, gone are the days when two ad school gals could just say to an agency, hire us or we’ll get married. Now, we have this, in which Ulker bought up domains that are not actually sanctioned by Miami Ad School, at least we think, but have the names and cities in which MAS is housed involved nonetheless.

Hey, according to Ulker, it seemed to have worked the first time when he bought the domain miamiadschoolistanbul.com and eventually landed a slot in the school. Can the budding copywriter, who’s now based in NYC, recapture the magic again? Well, he’s fresh out of MAS, agency world, so your move. You can read his full manifesto here.

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The best part of the following video occurs in the first few seconds, when a woman’s jaw drops as she’s told she can buy Google Glass for 40 times the price of her Slurpie ($40.00). It’s the opportunity of a lifetime, for a product that normally sells for 1500 times the price of a Slurpie. Too bad the product on offer is obviously-knockoff “GooOgle Glass,” sold earnestly by comic Ian Fridance in a project by GS+P alum/man of many projects JD Beebe and Translation copywriter, Deanna Director.

I barely cracked a smile during this anti-ad. Maybe it’s just my sense of humor, but I think this idea is tired, and it’s hard to believe that anyone in NY has heard of Google Glass and believes they are the eyewear equivalent of an interstellar propeller hat.  If you want to poke fun of the new technology, check out whitemenwearingoogleglass.tumblr.com or watch SNL. Those comedic attempts are a bit more nuanced, and at least rooted in reality.

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