MySpace Launches Safety PSA

You can debut all the privacy controls you want, but there's nothing like a generic safety PSA to show the feds you mean business.

See "Don't Stop the Dialogue," produced by Big Fuel for MySpace. It will run on iKeepSafe.org and MySpace Safety along with featured safety tips and a soothing message from CSO Hemanshu Nigam.

Chill effect much?

Clio Launches Future Gold Young Creatives Program

The Clio Awards team just launched the 2008 Clio Future Gold Young Creatives Program. It's open to copywriters and art directors worldwide, 30 years of age or younger.

12 people -- two from each of six global regions -- will be picked to attend the Clio Festival in South Beach from May 14-17. They'll engage in a 24-hour creative challenge that will be judged by Clio jury members and a client.

Winners will be honored at the Awards Gala on May 16.

Looking to join? The deadline is April 1. Here's your chance. (It'll only cost an arm and a leg -- but who needs those where fame's involved?)

Oh, and beware portfolio thieves. Even among friends! It's a jungle out thar.

No, Not Even Angels Can Save Your Portfolio Now

The winged creature at left is one of the poster children for Liquidnet's Become Supernatural campaign.

We went on the website to find stuff to make fun of but it turns out we liked clicking on the characters, listening to the "whoosh" and watching the brokers' eyes glint. Oh well.

By the way, not to steal Liquidnet's thunder or anything, but if you actually want to buy and sell stocks online, Zecco doesn't charge brokerage fees for up to 10 trades per month. Huzzah.

Because Trolls Are Human, Too. Well, Maybe Not

BoingBoing TV put together a mockumentary outlining the history of internet trolls, or people who lurk on your site and leave snarky commentary while swathed in the soothing blanket of anonymity.

Like typical troll narratives, it makes no sense and will probably not make you more sympathetic to its plight. But we all need to explore our demons.

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The Ruin of a Fine Casino? YOU Decide.

Ogilvy once said that advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.

And having just watched this Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners-directed spot for the Mohegan Sun casino, where the wannabe cast of Grease 3 molests the tune to Superfreak, we don't just believe it -- we live and breathe it. The lead CD was Izzy DeBellis, the chap responsible for the new Wendy's ads.

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Chinese Wool Ad Feels Something Like Water Torture

This ad for Heng Yuan Xiang, a wool company, pisses China off. We thought it was just the mob overreacting again, but -- having watched about half of it -- we're suddenly jam-packed with repressed rage. A great way to destroy someone's soul would be to pin their eyelids open and force them to sit through this for a little over six minutes.

The spot starts about :09 into the video, so don't be fooled by all that happy baby stuff at the beginning. Here's a positive: after one sitting, you'll feel uncomfortably familiar with all the animals in the Chinese zodiac. AND you'll have three new syllables burned forever into your brain.

Pissed-Off Panda Invades Copenhagen for Climate Conference

To get the Danes all peppy about the 2009 international climate conference in Copenhagen, We Love People stenciled images of a burning panda on the streets. Also, watch while a giant projection of a panda in flames races across the Copenhagen cityscape.

We have seen such magic before.

The agency told us the "burning panda" imagery -- put together for WWF -- represents a panda that is angry about global warming. Aww. We love furry, fat and scowly things.

Just because we feel like it, here are some random panda facts from a website that looks like it was made in the early content days of dot-com.

Ask.com to Explore its Feminine Side

Probably because it fears death by Google almost as much as it fears sexual ambiguity, Ask.com has decided to stop competing for all-purpose search engine renown.

Instead it hopes to become the go-to source for married women seeking health, grade school homework tips, entertainment, recipe and hobby information.

It is also laying off about 40 people.

Maybe if it wasted less time trying to engage us in expensive guessing games it would've had a better fighting chance. Oh well, such is life in the tubes.

Pizza Hut UK, Wieden + Kennedy Finish Eating Pizza Together

After three years and in advance of a relaunch at the end of this year, Pizza Hut UK and Wieden + Kennedy have left the dinner table mutually. The review for a new agency will be handled by the pizza chain itself and both side have nothing but praise to heap on one another concerning their three year meal together. Of course, that's expected because, ya know, not everyone has balls like Peter Krikovich.

Cannes Goes to Dubai For Regional Festival

Don't worry, the annual advertising ego-fest isn't leaving sunny France, it's just launching regional festivals and its chosen Dubai as its first stop outside Europe. Included in the festival, which will be held March 31 - April 2, will be the Dubai's Lynx Awards which launched just last year and were actually organized by Cannes.

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Animated Courtney Cox Dishes on Celebrities in 'Dirt' Promos

To help kick of Courtney's Cox' second season of Dirt on FX, recently launched design and production company Arsenal created six animated "vignettes of Hollywood stars and celebutaunts caught in the act of wild, unbecoming behavior." Each vignette is finished off with witty commentary from Courtney Cox.

There's the all too common crotch shot, the mug shot, the booty shot, the herpes/STD/overdose and more. All six do a nice job capturing Hollywood's...um...dirt, as it were.

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