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I think Marc Jacobs is trying to tell us something. That the nineties have been over for ten years and 2009 will birth new looks to dog us for years just like the fashion party of 1999 did.

Remember the bright and bold haircolors? The "Matrix" inspired thin sun glasses with no rim? The thick soles on every shoe available? The pleather, latex and fake snakeskin? The exposed navel? The low-cut jeans? The hipster shorts? I'm telling you we need to stop doing all of this now it's been going on for years. The big T-shirt and leggings look that took over after that did not help matters one bit.

That has got to be the reason he named Russian duo t.A.T.u. as the faces of his autumn/winter line. They're well past their fame as faux lesbian pop tarts, by about ten years - but they did know how to do the school girl uniform look right.

Marc Jacobs stuffed Posh Spice into a shopping bag, what will he do with this duo? He's had strange picks before - among them controversial child star Dakota Fanning, director Sofia Coppola, The White Stripes' Meg White, and singer M.I.A. I can't wait to see what he does with the Tatu girls - and I hope neither one of them is pregnant during the shoot.

The Mad Men Tweeters are back.
don_draper and the original peggyolson accounts have been reinstated.
and the other folks, like Don's wife betty_draper, the überboss in socks bertram_cooper, the heavy drinking don juan Roger_Sterling and everyones favorite redhead Joan Holloway and many more are twittering away.
Silicon Alley insider reports that Deep Focus were the ones that "gently nudged their client into rescinding the DMCA takedown notice they'd sent to Twitter." There's a company doing good on their paycheck.


Yesterdays news then: Mad Men Tweets not issued by AMC - takedown notices sent

Adland's fave toon-artist David Jones brings us a look at what might happen if he did the Mad Men thing.

Here's a little update to the Vällingby City "Donate your old clothes before buying new ones" campaign created by Ruth advertising in Stockholm. Check out the film of the clothes donation-boxes in action inside.

The Daily Mail reports that Nick Park of Aardman Films was approached by Harvey Nichols because they wanted a worldwide icon from the Bristol area to promote the opening of the new Harvey Nichols Bristol store. Posters and magazine ads feature Wallace, Gromit and Lady Campanula Tottington sporting designer-wear from the likes of Alexander McQueen, Dolce & Gabbana, Giorgio Armani, Ray-Ban Wayfarer, Duchamp, Christian Louboutin and Zagliani.

There's also a making-of video that can be found here.

Oh Noes! The Mad Men tweets, where most of the Sterling Cooper possy where going about their day in public tweets was not created by AMC, in fact the AMC sent Twitter a DMCA complaint about the accounts, and several are already pulled including @don_draper & @peggyolson. Philmang has the scoop which he found via venturebeat. Phil rightly reckons that this is an "epic FAIL on the part of AMC", meanwhile I wonder what I'll do all day now that I can't hit on Salvator Romano and befriend fellow redhead Joan Holloway. I was having lots of fun with the characters over at twitter, and their tweets showed me the Playboy spread which I would have never found otherwise, since we all know I don't read that for the articles. I guess I'll just get back to work now. *sigh*

Playboy does a Mad Men Fashion spread declaring that "vintage cool is staging a comeback". As usual Bryan Batt/ Salvatore Romano is looking good enough to eat - and even ever-slimy Vincent Kartheiser / Pete Campbell comes out looking suave as hell. Pardon me, I must now sit here and swoon for the rest of the afternoon.

Another trade-press bit on the recent Chinagate - now it's Axel Håkansson & Mediavarlden.se in Sweden who had a long chat with me about the technical details and free speech implications of it all. No google translation of this yet.

102.2 Smooth Radio has done it, FNAC vinyl & Rocketboom have done it, and now Eskils Junker Film joins the trend with their Knight Music video.

 
Dibs on calling this trend twice jumped the shark!

If you're still not bored with the album-cover-collage photo fun, dive into the Flickr LP Portraits Pool for more.

It is Malspam - fake news headlines tempting you to click something you shouldn't and forcefeeding your PC an .exe file that can do bad bad things. The Malspam campaigns began somewhere in June, but haven't dropped off much since from what I can tell.

However, their headlines provide endless laughs! On adlist we've amused ourselves by showing off the funniest headlines we've gotten - can you top any of these? There's a few key players often mentioned, Paris Hilton & Britney Spears reign supreme in the gossip-girl corner, while Bush and Cheney only show up rarely, sometimes even with either Paris or Britney.

Lets see what she's been up to lately, shall we?
"Paris Hilton Had Sex With Aliens" - you know, if we ever get confirmation that there is extraterrestrial life out there, I bet we'll get it in this way.

"Bisexual Paris Hilton likes Bush & Dick" we know that already, oh, did they mean George Bush and Cheney?

A few days later it appears she was feeling sinful, thus: "Paris Hilton Becomes Nun"

The by far scariest one yet, however, has to go to "Paris Hilton to Operate New Atom Smasher". We can't trust her to operate a car people.

Former Pop-diva Britney is repackaging old tricks it seems:

Britney: My Vagina Made Me Shave My Head - I'm trying very hard not to picture that. I don't want to know how that worked. What holds the razor?

"Britney Spears pregnant with antichrist" - I thought she already did that?

The "MSN Breaking News"-spam or CNN.net-spam usually revealed itself in their headlines choice of words. For example:
"MSN Breaking News: Iran Kicks America in the Nuts" - the nuts folks. Well, America does have it's fair share of nuts, I guess.

Of course, we can't escape Paris even here:
"msnbc.com: BREAKING NEWS: Paris Hilton Considered For Mother Teresa Role" - if there is a god he would smite us all for that.

This one is really good: "msnbc.com: BREAKING NEWS: Mike Tyson To Fight Michael Jackson" - what kind of fight? Who can sound most like a little girl? Will Tyson eat Jackson?

Politics and patriotism is always a big click-puller - therefore we get: "New National Anthem Proposed by Bush"

But then the "bizarre" headlines might get you to - how about: "Man killed by flying cocktail glass" - I swear it wasn't me.

Some people are crazier than others.
"S.D. man pleads guillty to harassing deeer" - I wonder what he did to that deer. "Hey doe-eye, you're looking fine today!"

Also - rock out to my home country "Swedish princess slaps town florist". Yeah, even our royals are crazy, that could totally happen.

" Facebook under attack by clones" - if only!

Now, my personal favorite because it is wrong on so many levels.

" Scientiists iisolate animal fart gene"

Yikes, mediaspy has some hot gossip - as the story goes, a CD created a gmail account in the name of ECD Mark Taylor, and used it to ask employees opinions about the work, salary and other issues. Well, he forgot that pretending you are someone that you are not is actually called fraud and it is further rumored that Roy Spence, GSD&M's president and founder, "called in a political favor and got a warrant through the local U.S. Attorney's office" to find out who sent that email. How very Sopranos, except you know, legal.
The email-faking CD was tracked via their IP# and now there's a photo of them at the front desk stating "No admittance". Youch!

Well let that be a lesson to you all - gmail does not mean "anonymous and totally untraceable and it never did.

The little birdies are saying this to the Agencspy:

"It was a dumbass [sic] idea, to say the least, and nobody knows why the guy/gal did it — what he/she was trying to find out. Maybe he/she thought he was underpaid. More likely, he/she felt like his/her job was one the lone. He/she'd been on the chopping block before but was rescued by one of the founders."

It's not clear which CD it was, or what exactly was said in that email to piss everyone off that much - I'm sure we'll hear more on this story.

Dagens Media reports that Puma made a marketing mishap last Thursday when they projected a commercial onto the Stockholm city library. (An utterly gorgeous building designed by Gunnar Asplund, by the way.) Seems that the agency AdCity Media forgot to sort everything out before using the famous building as Johanna Hansson, the Director of the library, says to Dagens Media: "We have not given permission for this, and do not want to be used as advertising space. We are a library, and as such should be impartial and free."
Even the client wasn't informed, as Puma's marketing director, Rickard Kull said: "I'm not totally up to speed on the media plan. It is Adcity Media who has done the advertising."

Unlike the previous Puma mishap - oh yes you remember the sperm-splash Puma pitch-ads that did a tour around the world after showing up here at Adland 2003 - this mistake was given the green light by Puma. Somehow.


Other ads projected on walls in Adland:
WWF - Burning Panda Beamvertising - (2008) :60 (Denmark)
Bos creates interacting billboards for Fido / 2007
Light Graffiti in Atlanta / 2005

You can check out the two minute film about this here.
The final two stages of the adidas Impossible is Nothing Sport in Art project are taking place at the Beijing Olympic Games in a major art exhibition right now and at an auction at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in October.

The original paintings, the creations of some of the world’s greatest athletes and sports stars including: David Beckham, Tyson Gay, Ian Thorpe and 2008 Olympic Gold medalists Jeremy Wariner, Allyson Felix and Yelena Isinbayeva, are part of the Sport in Art exhibition that has already toured China to great critical acclaim his year.

Gold medal favorite Liu Xiang's withdrawal from the 110-meter hurdles in Beijing due to Achilles tendon injury crushed a lot of his fans and left corporate sponsors in an unfortunate position. How did they react? According to the Wall Street Journal, with "sympathy and support:"

On Tuesday, Nike took out full-page ads in China Daily and some other publications meant to address Mr. Liu's misfortune. The ad features a tight closeup of Mr. Liu with text that includes among other sentiments: "Love sport even when it breaks your heart." At the bottom was Nike's customary "Just Do It" tagline. "We see it as a real 'Just Do It' moment," a Nike spokesman said.

The WSJ's China Journal reproduces the ad with its translation:

Love Competition
Love risking your pride
Love winning it back
Love giving it everything you’ve got
Love the glory
Love the pain
Love sport even when it breaks your heart

Sports company advertising places an emphasis on victories with good reason, because winning sells. But to turn it around and acknowledge that defeats (or setbacks) are also part of sport, something to work through, makes an awful lot of sense to me — as it's something we can all relate to. Well, all of you. Not me.

Via PSFK. Image from the WSJ by Andrew Lih.

Remember the Typo Eradication Advancement League (TEAL), who are on a mission to correct America?

They're gone one typo too far: AZ central - Typo vigilantes answer to letter of the law

Two self-anointed "grammar vigilantes" who toured the nation removing typos from public signs have been banned from national parks after vandalizing a historic marker at the Grand Canyon.

Jeff Michael Deck, 28, of Somerville, Mass., and Benjamin Douglas Herson, 28, of Virginia Beach, Va., pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Flagstaff after damaging a rare, hand-painted sign in Grand Canyon National Park. They were sentenced to a year's probation, during which they cannot enter any national park, and were ordered to pay restitution.

***
Deck's diary account of the Grand Canyon incident was submitted as evidence in court. It says the two men climbed Desert View Watchtower while on holiday from their typo-enforcement duties "and discovered a hand-rendered sign inside that, I regret to report, had a few errors. I know today was supposed to be my day off from typo-hunting, but if I may be permitted to quote that most revered of android law enforcers, Inspector Gadget, 'Always on duty!' I can't shut it off. . . . Will we never be free from the shackles of apostrophic misunderstanding, even in a place surrounded by natural beauty?"

After correcting a misplaced apostrophe and comma, Deck reported, he was aghast to discover what he described as a made-up word: "emense."

"I was reluctant to disfigure the sign any further, so we had to let the other typo stand. Still, I think I shall be haunted by that perversity."

TEAL's official site now only carries the statement: "Statement on the signage of our National Parks and public lands to come."

So, we all know that Microsoft are working hard at retooling that broken image that Vista has, and it's been reported that Microsoft Enlists Jerry Seinfeld In Its Ad Battle Against Apple. Ooohkaaay. Nevermind that using him in ads went out somewhere around the American Express Superman campaign a near decade ago - why use Apple's old spokesperson? Oh, they forgot, right? Well here's an Apple ad from early 90's featuring "The crazy ones" which includes Jerry Seinfeld taking a bow at the end. Yeah he's crazy, crazy enough to endorse anything for money. I guess he needs it to pay all his parking tickets ;)

Storåkers in Stockhom were so impressed by Improv Everywhere's fantastic Frozen Grand Central that they repeated the event, except as an ad for Telia's 'new' offering of the ability pause live TV which is like, so futuristic over here in the backwaters of Europe.

Lets have a look shall we? Improv everywhere:

Telia at Stureplan, Stockholm:

Leslie BAP just emailed me this, and now if you'll exscuse me - I need to pop downstairs and casually set fire to my current living room so that I may replace it all starting with this A B C D table. I am in a seriously bad case of lust for a coffee table folks. If it asked, I would marry it in a heartbeat. And we'd have little doll house sized Eames lounge chair babies and live happily ever after!

Last night when I was reading the news about Jessica Simpson becoming the new spokesperson for "smarter beer" -
Stampede Beer - I had a feeling it would be quite the opposite. I can't even find what minerals and vitamins make up the + in this 'smart' beer on that site.
Dallas News:

She's the face of the brand now," said Lawrence Schwartz, Stampede's president and chief executive, who says sales have more than doubled in the past year.
Stampede's marketing is focused on its vitamin content, which it describes as "functional additives."
"As an entrepreneur, I am always looking for ways to diversify my portfolio with good ideas and good people," Ms. Simpson said in a statement. "Yes, I work out and take care of myself, but I also like a cold beer once in a while.".

On the left, exhibit A. See the smart in the ad?
See it? Look carefully.
Isn't she just the picture of smart? The droopy eyes, the mouth breathing, the horrendously photoshopped cleavage-line, the props such as Italian restaurant table-cloth skirt and bales of hay like she never left the farm. You have to click on the image here to see the larger version, trust me. So yes, there's the smart - all of teh intarwebs will now either be gawking at or mocking this ad. Well played Stampede beer, well played.

Looking at this - I can imagine how stuffy the brief must have read: "A £6 million government advertising campaign launched by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). The campaign aims to encourage young people to study foreign languages to open up future opportunities in their people’s professional and personal lives." Oh snore!

However when Farm Advertising got their hands on it and rang up th1ng for a little directing help, magic was made.

"Reach 11-14 years olds? Be hip? Sure, we can do that." Just feature real street dancers, footballers, indie stars and add a dash of creativity from young talent to the mix! Of course there's also a website: http://www.trylifeinanotherlanguage.com/

Three of the commercials were by new directors at th1ng, including ‘Dancer’ by Dan Lumb, Disiz by Angry Natives and Neon City by Anne Xiao. Daniel Cohen directed ‘Football’ and ‘Shadows.’

Dominic Buttimore, th1ng’s executive producer said: “The commercials were directed by th1ng’s new breed of directors who have shown promising talent and very impressive capability. The whole series has been very well received and the feedback is very encouraging”.

I started advertising in Lexington Ky for Pet Butler. I created these bumper ads. I catch people every day taking pictures as they drive behind or when it is parked in a lot.

Sorry to say, I'm knackered and can't do much more than point to this breaking news from Creativity-online and giggle a little: Whopper Leave-out? Bogusky to Write Dieting Tome

In January 2009, Alex Bogusky--the man whose agency made Burger King a pop culture icon and is carving out a similar path for pizza giant Dominos--will be debuting a new book, The 9-Inch Diet. The volume claims to be "not just another diet book" and a look at "the twisted conspiracy that's making our country fat." The book's marketing says it will focus on what many call "proportion distortion," how our plates and average serving sizes have increased over the past few decades to secretly forge a nation of fatties. This idea, and the motivation to stop the dinnerware-expanding insanity, seems to stand in sharp contrast to the agenda pushed by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, on behalf of some of its clients.

Dita Von Teese - that sassy lass with burlesque class - has debuted her new Wonderbra lingerie line, and it looks mighty tempting. The ad images are a million miles sexier than all those shots in the Britain's best boobs mosaic billboard recently unveiled in London. But then, Dita has been making sexy her dayjob (or rather nightjob) for years so she should know what she's doing by now.

Current.com are mocking those Olympic tie-in ads - so well deserved. They point fingers at the Visa - Go World - Derek Redmond ad and Home Depot - Team USA as well as the by now classic odd couple - McDonald's and olympic athletes who would never eat that crud.