Hasta La Creative!

If you thought you could tell time, try using one of these unique watches from Tokyoflash Japan. How the heck do you tell the time on it? The watch goes for 14,900 yen or roughly $145 US bucks. This particular brand watch is the Shinshoku design, which consists of a stainless steel band and looks like it was attacked by a hole puncher. Twenty-nine brightly colored LEDs light up to somehow tell you the time. According to the makers, 12 red LEDs tell you the hour, 3 green LEDs indicate increments of 15 minutes, and 14 yellow LEDs indicate single minutes. Confused yet? Don’t worry; it comes with directions.

LONDON – Construction equipment company Caterpillar has sold its market research and customer analytics arm to Indian IT services company Satyam Computer Services for $60m (£30.2m).

LONDON – Arsenal Football Club has appointed digital agency Rippleffect to re-launch its official website as part of a four-year partnership.

It’s called Knish and if you want one, you have to place your order 48 hours in advance. You also have to pay $12,000 – IN CASH! So what is a Knish? It is “Osetra, Sevruga and Beluga caviars, white alba truffles, 24k edible gold leaf, lobster, Kobe tartar, a Kobe burger, a Kobe hot dog, an ostrich e…

The most informative session I attended at ad:tech was the Tactical SEO Workshop — which isn’t really saying much.

LONDON – Market research firm Synovate has consolidated its London-based teams into one office at London Bridge.

Spring is a time of renewal, certainly in the case of agency Web sites. In the last few weeks, the industry has hatched a series of new and interesting takes on what an agency site should do. Now, one of the top digital creative shops, the Barbarian Group, has come out with its own entry. If you want to trace the evolution of interactive design, this is a good place to start. The Barbarians are best known as the shop that built Subservient Chicken, and one that made its name off Flash microsites. But lately, top Barbarian Benjamin Palmer (shown here) has been sounding the alarm that the days of empty animation are over. He and Anomaly’s Johnny Vulcan are credited with co-developing the term “branded utility” to describe ad stuff that’s actually, you know, useful to people. The Barbarian Group site goes in this direction by putting employee-written blogs right on the homepage. It also features a Barbaripedia that is a compilation of the shop’s various philosophies and beliefs. And the employees get pages with links to their personal projects and bios. This seems smart. An agency is its people. I’m told many agencies don’t like to feature their employees for fear they’ll be poached. But if that’s what’s keeping your best and brightest staying put, frankly, you’re screwed. Which of the new agency Web sites do you think is best—Barbarian Group, Grey, Modernista!, Publicis & Hal Riney, or R/GA? Vote after the jump.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

(TrendHunter.com) According to the co founders of Cereality, David Roth and Rick Bacher, Cereality is a “Home for Cereal away from home.”

Cereality is the first outlet that sells nothing but cereal. Cereality Cereal Bar & Cafe, which opened its first sit-down cafe Wednesday on the University of Pennsylvania campus…

Alec tipped us to this rather vague MSNBC story that seems to announce the thirty minute commercial – programs created around sponsors products.

Digital Studio’s first productions, which will premiere this summer, are a science-fiction series starring Rosario Dawson called “Gemini Division” and a quirky comedy about a college-aged zombie called “Woke Up Dead,” said NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co.

If we take a minute to think about this, we know that the commercial-as-program on broadcast TV rather than the web is already here. Take Americas Next Top Model which exports around the world for example, all those fancy prizes the models get are edited out when you watch the show here in Sweden simply because covergirl can’t be bought around here (nevermind that in-program advertising is a legal nightmare around here).

Then there’s the “hit MySpace personality” Dan Fielding a.k.a ‘Domestic God’, the character who built up an online following with thousands of fans tuning into his video clips on domestic life. The project, which began in February 2007, has been revealed as an experiment to assess the potential for a new TV show. Electrolux, who are behind Dan’s persona he’s actually played by actor James Rawlings, are now in talks with several broadcasters to develop a series. Electrolux weren’t hiding behind Dan though, they sprinkled many clues around – for example:

read more

LONDON – Chris Albert, co-founder of WWAV and the former group Executive Creative Director at the agency, died earlier this month from cancer.