Kiefer Sutherland Screams Japander-Style For Calorie Mate

Our friends over at Japander bring us so much glee, delivering us our favorite American movie stars and celebrities in ads they'd never be caught dead doing in America. In this ad 24 star Kiefer Sutherland runs through a train full of plaid-skirted Japanese school girls 24-style shouting "yes, yes, no, let me through" until he finally gets his Calorie Mate.

Contextual Goof Yields Card Sharks, Real Sharks, Dead Woman

Contextual advertising is so much fun, especially when it works so well such as in this placement of a credit card company's banner within a Sydney Morning Herald article about a woman dying from a shark attack. Credit card sharks need not apply. Somebody needs to tweak a few algorithms.

Bud, Two Hotties, Parties Combine For SI Swimsuit Promo

In a perfect alignment, Budweiser has signed on as exclusive promotional sponsor of Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit issue and will also team with SI supermodel Molly Sims who will appear in the brewer's point of sale material. Budweiser will host pre-issue promotional parties in 50 cities on February 13. Budweiser will also place a six-page fold out in the issue featuring FOX Sports Best Damn Sports Show Period hottie Leann Tweeden.

Cheesy Law Firm Promotes Pizza

If bad law firm advertising is your thing, you'll love this. Martin Willimas has created a really bad law firm website for law firm Warwick Seltz complete with the cheesy tagline, "If you've had bad pizza, we'd like to meetz ya." Yes, the law firm's speciality is pizza. Huh, you say? Hey, there's lawyers out there for every other conceivable thing. Why not pizza? OK, OK. The site's fake. It's a guised promotion for Donato's pizza. The site's got all the goodies including four really bad TV commercials with really, really bad jingles and the now required element in all online endeavours, a Subservient Chicken rip off that's actually funny.

Jelly Belly Promoted With $250,000 Mystery Flavor Game

Candy maker Jelly Belly has launched an advergame called Taste the Mystery visitors can play after entering an access code found on select packages of Jelly Belly containing a mystery jelly bean. ON the site, the visitor then guesses the flavor of the new bean, play games, snag wallpaper and send e-cards. Winners of the contest are eligible to win $100,000, a Mini Cooper and/or an iPod shuffle. That might make the game worth playing.

Placing the code on packaging does a nice job of driving sales even though, as with any sweeps, no purchase is necessary. But, similar to frustrating rebate procedures, entrants who wish to play but not purchase have to do a little extra work by sending in the proverbial self-addressed postage stamped envelope with a handwritten note requesting a code. Much easier to just by a bag. Anyway, we like the promo. Los Angeles-based Zugara created the original artwork, concepting and animation for the site.

Empty Box Advertising Awards Competition Launched

Fed up with all the advertising industry's award shows, mindless ego-fests and that thing called Clio, the Empty Box Awards has launched and dubs itself "The Intramural Awards of Advertising." On January 23, Empty Box will post a topic and then entrants can submit their work based on that topic. Entries are due March3, 2006 and the winner will be "unboxed" March 17, 2006. Have fun.

Johnnie Walker Bangkok Building Wrap Sends Mixed Messages

Adrants reader Sarah spotted a Johnnie Walker building wrap on the Baiyoke Sky Tower in Bangkok, Thailand that began with the tease, "Drink, Don't Drive." Weeks later, the Johnnie Walker walking man appeared capped with a white banner that, very oddly, for a liquor brand, read "Don't drink alcohol, it's against the 5 rules." The banner refers to the five rules of Buddhism one of which bans intoxicating substances. Perhaps it's just covering all bases but it's an odd combination of mixed messages for sure. See the teaser image here.

Emerald Nuts Super Bowl Commercials Online

We doubt spending $2.6 million will do anything to overcome the cheap packaging and less than mouth pleasing taste of Emerald Nuts but you can watch their commercials, created by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, over at Yahoo beginning January 23. We'll take Planter's over Emerald any time.

Photo Site Shares Ad Revenue With Users

Online photo sharing site Image Gravy has launched and will share advertising revenue with its members. It appears Overture is used to the ads and users will be paid based on how many times their images are viewed. The service is free to users.

Firefox Gets Help From Million Dollar Homepage Knock Off

In what might be the first use of a million dollar homepage for something other than personal gain, Sweden's Sam Nurmi has created HelpFirefox.com, a site that sells pixels for one dollar a pop and donates all the money to the Mozilla Foundation, makers of the open source Firefox browser. Given that the Mozilla Foundation has been very successful is raising money both for development and for advertising, it would appear this particular million dollar homepage idea might see some action.

Apple Intel Spot Disses PCs

Having good fun crapping on PCs, Apple has released its TBWA/Chiat/Day-created spot announcing its use of Intel chips in Macs. We know you've all probably seen it already so just consider this an archive placement.

UPDATE: There's a lengthy digg forum discussion whether or not Apple borrowed some ideas for this spot from a U.S Postal Service The Postal Service (the band) video - a situation similar to the Eminen/Lugz copycat episode.

UPDATE: Check out side by side comparison of the two videos.

Paris Hilton's Daddy Rolls Out New Ad Campaign

Hilton Hotels Corp. will launch its first television advertising campaign in more than 10 years when it rolls out new spots on Jan. 15, the marketer said. Y&R, which won the $40 million account last July, has developed four spots for the hotel chain which will air on CSI, Boston Legal, Desperate Housewives among others and on cable as well. The campaign will boast a new, un-sexy but very informative and practical headline, "Travel should take you places.