Hasta La Creative!

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — In the latest sign that fast feeders are following McDonald's lead, Wendy's is adding a double cheeseburger, christened the Stack Attack, to its value menu.

Lidy Jacobs‘s fluffy “sex rabbits” are often presented in groups and are interactive. They are attached to the ceiling with straps of fabric and are left to hang loose in space.

Virginis Sanctae

Via bezembinder’s illustrated links and Ileana Tounta art centre.

Anyone on the hiring end knows that digital agencies are suffering from a worsening talent drought. You can probably bank on the fact that some of your sharpest talent has one foot out the door. For that reason, you've got to be sure you're tuned in to what your employees are thinking, what they want and what might be driving their dissatisfaction.

When it comes to being naughty or nice during the office holiday-party season, Havas’s Arnold for the second straight year goes for nasty. In 2006, staffers stripped in creative director Pete Favat’s Boston office. This year, Arnold’s New York outpost greased the poll, with Agency Spy reporting on burlesque antics involving thongs and pasties and speculating about female employees feeling “alienated” (no doubt) and their male counterparts feeling “guilty” (yeah, save that story for your wives). If Arnold’s advertising campaigns were as hot as its parties, it’d be smelting gold at Cannes, to use a really ridiculous metaphor. You know what AdFreak’s holiday party was like? Stale Doritos in the editor’s “ski chalet” (it’s really just his garage) with last year’s withered decorations hanging like so many stockings filled with coal. And the guests! That super-skinny model and the dude with half a jaw barely touched the jalapeño dip, and when the Little Lad dropped his pantaloons to show us his “berries and cream,” I knew it was time to go home.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Time magazine lists the top ten ads of the year, in youtube-vision.

New York Times: A Year for Quick Hits and Fast Flops as Campaigns Broke New Ground

Adweek: Top ten adtrends 2007

Digital media wire: Analysis: The Top 10 Most Overused Metrics of 2007

And of course Campaign has a list of the top ten ad turkeys of 2007 – but if you’re not a subscriber Swedish tradepress Resumé has gone and made a youtubefied version of that list.

Adfreak needs your vote to figure out which was the freakiest ad moment of 2007. Go there and cast votes, adgrunts!

Oddest form of flattery (?) this year: Someone has started a site called the Ad Rag where “bad advertising comes to die”. That feels oddly familiar but I can’t put my finger on it. I guess they couldn’t take adrag.com or even ad-rag.com because yaknow, I own those. (Sadly, we had to switch to the commercial-archive.com domain back in April 2006 because Norton Internet and other adblocking software were blocking our ad-rag domain errounously.)

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I didn’t even know that Starbucks had drive-throughs, I mean if they do then why the hell does Britney Trainwreck Spears keep stopping for her double-grande-3000-calorie grande-venti-fix with whip cream while hordes of paparazzi cover her every step? Oh. Nevermind.

I did know that Starbucks had a Cheer Pass promotion:

The cards were handed out at Starbucks locations last month, and this month at various surprise events along with free beverages or other treats.
The cards carry messaging that encourages people to do something nice for someone and then to pass the card along to someone else who in turn offers an act of kindness and on it goes.

Now news stations are reporting on random acts of holiday cheer – Chain Of Kindness Runs Through Starbucks Drive-Through somewhere in Florida – where presumably a Tai-Chi master started the chain to teach the impatient guy behind him a little zen. Yeah, that doesn’t sound in the least bit scripted. But that’s not the only report of such a chain, Pittsburg live reports that it happened in Starbucks in the Greengate Centre in Hempfield, and the intarwebs is a-buzzing with this story check the comments here at Metafilter for some “It happened to my sister”, though yes they are being sarcastic. Even Starbucks cups carry a story about someone passing the cheer on except then it happened in Riverside, California. Either this is happening everywhere or someone is just making this crap up – what do you think?

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Talk computers with a group of wired types, and one fact will become evident. Fans of the Mac swear by the product with fervor normally found at a tent revival in a small town where religion is a passion rather than a pastime. The journalists and graphic artists I know are especially fond of Mac, and these professionals sing the praises of that product so consistently I’m thinking of going that route when my current PC goes wherever a PC goes once its purpose becomes irrelevant.

The Christmas ad touting the Mac over the standard PC is a model of subliminal and direct messaging. For one thing, the Mac fan looks the part, down to the baggy jeans and sparse hair tufts on his chin. The PC fan fits the bill—a run of the mill management type in a tie and khakis, who buys into his product without question—brainwashing comes to mind.

The ad carries a message in low-key style typical of a company that makes a quiet no-frills statement and who has carved a niche for itself by offering less not more only in the messaging style. The humor can be appreciated—even Santa (not thinned down here for political correctness, but shown in jolly fat elf mode) casts a doubtful eye at the PC fan as he breaks the rhythm of the popular Christmas song. Making a strong suggestion without alienating or viciously bashing the competition—that’s a Mac trademark, and it works well in this Apple commercial, especially with Santa the central figure who, by directing a simple glance full of meaning, apparently agrees with the geek. In other words, what’s good for Santa should be good for us.

McKinney sent me an e-mail about that employee who recently spent 78-plus nonconsecutive hours inside an inflatable snowglobe at the agency’s office in Durham, N.C. Is work from actual clients that scarce? McKinney’s claims that “Snowglobe Boy” became “a Web phenomenon” and set some kind of “world record” are pretty dubious. His first appearance on AdFreak didn’t garner a single reader comment! (This blog is my digital bible of cool—make it yours.) Plus, he didn’t even write any songs in the globe, unlike Cartel, which managed to toss off a few three-chord clunkers during its overhyped spring incarceration. I’ve got an old beanbag chair in my cube, and I’m not leaving it for … OK, stopwatch out … there! Sixteen consecutive seconds. I’m an Internet sensation! Oh, and like the McKinney guy, I’m “eco-friendly”—I nibbled on an Au Bon Pain salad while I was writing this post. Where’s my Green Effie? I’m probably disqualified, as the beanbag chair is leather.

—Posted by David Gianatasio