Beer Bottles Bring Christmas Spirit to Union Station

Who needs chimes or bells to create Christmas carols when you have beer bottles instead? Yes, Amstel has come up with an inventive promotion that fits perfectly with the holiday season. In New York's Union Square today, a group of carolers delivered holiday tunes by blowing on beer bottles filled to various levels to make the right sounds. Giving something back while selling. Nice.

Pinar Lets Silverware Speak for Themselves

Givenchy once said something about how elegance can always be found in the simplicity of a straight line. We totally slaughtered that. In any case, we think the philosophy is well-demonstrated in this ad for Pinar by agency Tempus.

The headline reads "Investment for flavour"; the body says, "Pınar, Turkey's 31 yeared flavour brand, is continuing to grow with your investments and add flavour in your meals."

We're not sure what they sell considering the first image we saw on their site was this one, which intensely perplexed us, but we'd probably buy forks from them. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Mia Hamm Expecting Kicking Duo in Spring '07

Hurty Elbow nudges us over to an odd ad for a Mia Hamm interview about the twins in her tummy. The image gave us a somewhat disturbing mental picture of twin knee-sock-wearing socker players kicking like crazy in the leathery interior of their soccer ball mum. "These babies can kick!" says the cheery-as-hell 34-year-old legend.

Weird. But we're fond of Mia because she did those cute "anything you can do I can do better" ads with MJ before he got lame. So congrats on the pair! - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Yahoo Makes Gives Shleps Everywhere a Shot at Photojournalism

Because actual Amazon-braving, dysentery-getting, foxhole-hovering journalists don't have enough to bitch about already what with crappy pay and self-entitled bloggers, Yahoo! fuels the fire with You Witness News, a beta service that magically converts any kid on the street with a camera phone into a paid member of the photojournalist elite.

The idea has potential considering a guy with a camera phone fully recorded the unfuckingbelievable horrors of that UCLA student tasing incident awhile back. We'll see where it goes. In any event, it'll be fun to watch the sparks fly among the watchdogs of the profession. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Apparenly Seasons Can Have Blogs Too

If you thought the blogosphere was limited to hipsters, cool-hunting businesses and 12-year-olds, you were horribly wrong. Winter (yes! That most frigid of seasons) just started its very own blog, Winter is Cool. Guess we couldn't have named it better ourselves...

And to push its right to the 2.0 pie, it's got an agency too - AgencyNext out of Massachusetts. Read an interview with the strangely defensive season here. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

EU Trashes German Pipe Dreams

On Tuesday the European Court of Justice smashed Germany's attempt to challenge a law banning tobacco ads in the EU. Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou adds sting to the blow: "We now expect Germany to finalize the adoption in its national law as soon as possible, just as other member states have done."

This comes shortly after the decision to ban smoking in some public parts of Germany, following France and Spain.

Once among the most puff-puff friendly of continents, Europe's caught the anti-smoking bug. Someone noted "trying to walk down the street with a cigarette now lends an experience akin to racist reactions in the '50's."

A small salute to Matt at Caffeine Marketing for bringing the news to our attention. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Wal-Mart Fumbles Post-Julie, Loses GSD&M

Looks like the belle of the big-box ball is losing suitors. GSD&M President Roy Spence states, "I want to thank Wal-Mart for inviting us to re-pitch the business. I have decided to decline. We helped build Wal-Mart from $11 billion in sales to $312 billion. We declare victory [...] and we are moving on."

January marks the end of the 20-year relationship and GSD&M is apparently stoked "about the prospect of chasing retail accounts that Wal-Mart's business long kept the agency out of."

GSD&M remain mum on all that Julie bullshit but there's little doubt the issue is an unsavoury contributor to the slicing of the cord.

Finalists from the previous review still running for the red-hot $580 million account include Ogilvy & Mather and Interpublic's Martin Agency. Roy's image at left courtesy of AdAge. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

P&G Tickles 2.0 with 'Men in Cramps'

Catch Up Lady fills us in on the mysterious force behind Men in Cramps: Procter & Gamble, differentiating themselves from other brands who try (hard) to get down with the viral crowd and ultimately fail.

"We simply didn't have enough women who knew about our menstrual product [ThermaCare], and had to find a new way to connect with them," says Tom O'Brien, associate marketing director for personal health care at P&G, Cincinnati. R&D reveals women lamenting "there was one group of consumers they would like to see understand more deeply what it meant to have menstrual pain -- men."

Well, they nailed it with "cyclical nonuterine dysmenorrhea." Big Pharma's been successful at inventing chronic ailments for so long it's only natural they'd hit a home run doing it as a spoof. Catch one of the ThermaCare ads with poster boy Dr. Fardel here. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Adrants Offers Marketers 'Fake Blog' Apology Service

Since so many clueless marketers such as Coke, McDonald's, Walmart and others seem to have tremendous difficulty accepting the fact people absolutely hate being tricked and duped online and can't seem to manage the backlash properly, Adrants, today, has launched the Fake Blog Apology service. For any marketer who finds themselves at the mercy of forum freaks, blog purists and righteous cause group watchdogs, we promise to create a public apology devoid of marketing and PR babble that is contrite and actually reflects the honest acknowledgment of your idiotic mistake. To take advantage of this important, face-saving service, send an email to idiot@adrants.com. You'll be in good hands.

Spoof Says Brown Zune Better Than iPod

Apples commercials have been spoofed for decades but most of the spoofs have always favored Apple. This spoof, though, which compares Microsoft's Zune to Apple's iPod, clearly favors Microsoft and makes a big deal out of Zune's one button song sharing feature.

Second Life Lets Would-Be Creepies Live Out Fantasies

You can do what on Second Life?! That was, and remains, our reaction when we discovered you can role play rape in the back alleys of the commerce-friendly virtual wonderland.

Apparently even Second Lifers can't do the rounds alone after dark. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Carat Fusion Knows True Meaning of Christmas

Carat Fusion is injecting a bit of common sense into the out-of-control agency Christmas card trend and rather than trying to create something that's funny or cool or witty that just comes off as dumb, the agency has created something that refelcts what Christmas is all about: giving. The agency's Carat Fusion Holiday Cookie Maker lets visitors decorate gingerbread cookies. For each cookie decorated, the agency will donate $1 (up to a limit of $5,000) to Save the Children. Now that's a Christmas card.

Marketer's 'OMG, Check This Out!' Emails Lame, Advice Offered

Alphamonkey, editor of Transbuddha, has some strong words for marketers who think they need to throw a veil over their lame "check out this cool site" emails that flood the email boxes of those of us on the editorial side of things. We couldn't agree more. Alphmonkey writes, in part, "Don't treat site editors and bloggers like they're dumb, and we won't immediately consign your e-mails to our ever increasingly vigilant spam filters. If you (and your client) think your site is mierda caliente, then have enough faith in it to provide us the details we want. Who built the site? Who is running the campaign? What other campaigns go with it? That information won't tank a campaign, I promise." Marketers, please heed that advice. Work with us. Don't treat us like idiots.

Petition Says Marketers Start Christmas Promotions Too Early

Whether she's trying to drive readers to her blog or develop business for herself doesn't really matter. What does matter is Lotus Child's (yes. apparently, that is her real name) effort to stop marketers from beginning their Christmas promotions too early. Claiming promotions beginning in November and October are just too over the top, Child has created a petition called Take Back the Holidays. So if you think we're getting overzealous with our Christmas advertising plans, head over to the petition and check it out.

Wal-Mart And Twelve Days of Christmas Save Etiquette Blunders

While everyone's embroiled in the Wal-mart/Julie Roehm debacle, the retailer is still out there pushing its wares. With a holiday theme including the singing of The Twelve Days of Christmas, the Jason Reitman-directed spot illustrates perfectly what it's like to show up at a party empty-handed and how Wal-mart can convert you from loser to sophisticated party-goer in the length of time it takes to sing a Christmas carol.

Actor Peter Boyle Dead, Chick-Fil-A Dreams, Ageny Overdoes Holiday Effort

- Cynopsis reports, "Peter Boyle, who portrayed the often cranky father in the CBS comedy Everybody Loves Raymond, died Tuesday in New York after suffering from multiple myeloma and heart disease. He was 71 years old."

- Does this agency do any client work or do they sit around all year creating Christmas card videos?

- Chick-Fil-A has released a Ames Scullin O'Haire-created commercial promoting the SEC vs. ACC rivalry.

- We're reading George Parker's Madscam. We like it. We're not done yet but one YouTube user has and has published a video review of the book.