Have a Heart; Save a Manatee for Mom

...because she'll want you to -- way more than she wants that gold necklace, or dinner with you at her favourite restaurant, or a DVD copy of Flashdance.

There's something about this Mother's Day campaign for the Save the Manatee Club that appeals to us. And we're trying really, really hard not to believe it has anything to do with Conan's manatee fetish effort.

Yes, But Will There Be a Technicolor Dreamcoat?

If you can't afford LSD, mark your calendars (February 15th) for the debut of The Sound of Color.

"Does red sound like gurgling, molten lava?" the website asks. "Does green sound like the familiar tune of wind whistling through the trees? Do black and white even make a sound? What is the sound of color?"

We played with the idea of going, "Oh my, what is this? What is this?" but the truth is we already know because we wrote it up for MarketingVOX. This is a Gap campaign for which artists will write songs and make videos about color in all its tie-dye glory.

The site will hock colorful swag and free music downloads. After a month, artists will regain the rights to their songs, and some of the meaner ones might decide they don't want you downloading their pigment-inspired masterpieces for free. As with manna, hoard as much as you can.

Cilantro Encourages Intimacy with Multi-Flavoured Hispanic Market

When it comes to targeting the elusive Hispanic consumer, Cilantro Animation has this to say: "Be prepared to offer more than just Hola!"

(Though we'd like to point out that strategy worked wonders for Dora the Explorer.)

But Cilantro -- which creates Hispanic cartoons like the one at left -- makes an interesting point. When we hit ad:tech Miami we were overwhelmed with a sense that the Hispanic market remains unimpressed with the way big media has (or hasn't) tried to reach out.

And indeed, a salsa-colored Hola! just doesn't cut it when you consider the range of ethnicities blanketed under what we breezily dub Hispanic: Mexican, Cuban, Peruvian, Venezuelan, Colombian, Ecuadorian, and others -- all with their own cultural customs, jokes and sensitivities.

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Christine Aguilera Debuts Ginormous Breasts (and CD) At Best Buy

Last night at a West Hollywood Best Buy, Christina Aguilera turned (and perhaps lifted) heads when she made her first post-pregnancy appearance. In support of her Live and Down Under CD, she made one woman cry and, in an interview, told Ryan Seacrest on his KIIS morning show, "I'm very excited [about] this whole incredible thing that's taken place in my life, between the pregnancy and the birth. I've been brainstorming for the last nine months of my pregnancy. This next album will have a whole new me. A different me." Very different, indeed.

Google's Social Graph API Explained

Social media junkie Alisa Leonard has a video of Google's Brad Fitzpatrick, guru behind LiveJournal, Memecast and OpenID, describing the company's Social Graph API which makes it easy to determine social connections on the web. It's quite fascinating. If you like to know where your friends are and what they're doing online, this API can help accomplish that.

AdFemme's Lindsay Mure-O'Neill to Spice Up Datran

So Steve says, "But Lindsay, we never do hires/fires/career changes." Then Lindsay teases, "You want first dibs on letting the world know?" OK. We cave. Adrants to have a world exclusive on the where abouts of the [adjective redacted due to its possibly being misconstrued to focus upon beauty versus professional accomplishment] Queen AdFemme? We're all in.

Lindsay Mure-O'Neill founded AdFemme, a "community of women in advertising who network with each other online and at events to gain new contacts, clients, resources, employees and other femtastic connections." She's built the organization from little more than a single newsletter into an empire of content, resources and events for women working in many different industries and s now known as The Femme Network.

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Gear Factor: 'Come Fly Away in a Car-Shaped Balloon!'

Check it out -- a car that both flies and wheezes.

Video of the levitating wonder was sent to us by Gear Factor to promote its "flying" brands campaigns. If conditions are right, the balloons can play outside, too. GF calls its work "ambient media." Ooooh.

Pocket Change Speed Dating Gives Major Boost to Natural Selection

For men seeking rich older women, and older women hungry for pretty meat popsicles, check out Pocket Change.

This week Pocket Change is running a NYC-based event called Sugar Mama Speed Date, which puts a lowest-common-denominator twist on that speed dating thing. The application for men is totally appearance-based, and all entrants must be younger than 35.

Some of the hot hunks of man-toy are in advertising -- and guess what else! We get to show you their pictures and names. Get a leer at the sugar-mama-hunting ad-flesh up for grabs: Joseph Pergola, Jay Kelty, David Zarkin, Jonathan Hillman, and Brad Melshenker (don't be fooled by the context).

We actually didn't think these people were serious until we got photos of the harem. If someone would like to bring Adrants home some bacon a la Bennett, don't let your modesty stop you.

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Creative Brief Written For Next Year's Super Bowl Commercials

For all those out their anticipating (dreading?) creating an ad for next year's Super Bowl, Advertising for Peanuts already has the creative brief written so you can get an early start on what will assuredly be an industry masterpiece. The brief involves all the important things such as audience psychographics (they'll be drunk), the objective (it has to be funny) and target audience (everyone).

Get the entire brief here and be prepared for next year's game.

CareerBuilder Teaches the Timid to Reach Out and Touch Themselves

We're officially crazy about CareerBuilder's "Start Building" campaign, which debuted on Super Bowl Sunday.

Wieden+Kennedy, with help from a52 and (Rock Paper Scissors), gives us "Help You, Help You" and "Self-Help Yourself."

We didn't really get what was going on in "Help You, Help You" until the end, which had the odd effect of keeping us glued to our seats until we could make sense of it. We'll preface it thus: watching a guy stroke his own face, before lovingly carrying himself out of his pathetic job, gave us that "foreign-finger-in-our-bellybutton!!!" feeling.

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'Racism' of Salesgenie Ads Examined

At the risk of igniting a shit storm, were those Salesgenie ads really that racist? Let's examine. The ad where the Indian guy is berated by his boss is an illustration of an employee being berated because his sales are down.

We have to imagine that happens quite a lot no matter where in the world people live. We also have to imagine there are quite a few instances in real life where the boss is white and the employee is Indian.

If the tables were turned and an Indian boss was shown berating a white employee for his lack of sales, would the ad still be racist? Or is it racist because the Indian employee has an Indian accent? Maybe it's racist because the boss is a bloated fat asshole.

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Forget POTUS for a Sec. What's Your Favourite CAR?

Here's a piece that uses Super Tuesday to promote Motor Trend magazine's 2008 Car of the Year campaign.

The heading reads, "America Cast Its Vote. Now It's Time for the Dutch." It alludes to yesterday's bids for the presidential incumbents, but actually refers to how North Americans made the Cadillac CTS its Car of the Year.

Witty and wily, in a vapid sort of way.

The ad, produced by Leo Burnett's Frankfurt-based Ignition Groupoe, debuts in Europe today. Check out the CTS at www.voteamerican.eu.

MySpace Skins Feebly Bring Super Bowl Ads to 'Net

Recent findings from Reprise Media critique this year's Super Bowl advertisers for failing to buy online search terms related to their ads. They also neglected to leverage online social networks, where most worked so hard to build a presence.

Oddly enough, some advertisers did incorporate social networking into their Super Bowl ad campaigns. That is, if slapping a skin onto MySpace the week after the game counts.

Check out the try-hard efforts of Sunsilk at left (for this commercial) and Vitamin Water with Shaq.

Don't get us wrong; ravaging a social networking homepage is probably the 'net equivalent to billboard advertising. Users definitely get an eyeful. But it's not terribly interactive, the contact lasts two seconds, and there are more creative ways to exploit SB ad buzz online.

Update: the cats at Deep Focus just told us there's an interactive MySpace page for Shaq and Vitamin Water. So if you want some nifty matching widgets, or just want to watch Shaq horserace, take a look.

Taking Cue from Apple, Nissan Murano Ads Highlight Usability

While the Murano strikes us as exceptionally dull at first sight, here's a low-key ad that does a nice job of highlighting its merits. (Very Apple.)

The spot broke during the Super Bowl. Understandably, nobody paid it much mind; it's a bit mellow for such a high-tension time of year. But in normal daytime TV context -- between a Pampers ad and maybe a soothing Advil spot -- it would probably work quite nicely.

Hey, guess who made it? The ever-addled folks at TBWA\CHIAT\DAY.

TBWA\CHIAT\DAY Guys (Maybe) Go AWOL; Launch AWOL Agency

Our enigmatic West Coast resource, who's really good at drumming up touchy rumours about the goings-on at TBWA\CHIAT\DAY, just sent us this Oakley spot by AWOL.

The spot depicts Shaun White's offseason life a lot less sexily than HP did. It's almost funny -- if you're thirsty for schadenfreude.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, the source quickly points out, agency AWOL is composed of Doug Mukai, Scott Wilson and Chris Dutton.

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How 'bout Them Apples...Uh...Peaches

Pop quiz: When is it acceptable for a woman, say, Jolene Anderson from the Australian drama All Saints, to lay naked Sydney's First Fleet Park? Answer: When it really isn't Jolene Anderson but a 12 meter long replica of her made out of peaches to represent Ella Bache skincare. Get it? Skin so good you could eat it? We'll leave the entendre-laden edible jokes to you.

Here's the "making of" video.