Be Creative. Cut Hair.

Social media firm Votigo partnered with L'Oreal to promote its Shue Uemura Art of Hair Product Line.

The result: what else? -- UGC! A style challenge, to be exact. Go do somebody's hair and take a picture. Be sure to claim you used an Art of Hair product.

Entrants will be graded, in part by their peers, based on artistic approach, technical difficulty and stylist's pick. The winner gets a trip to Tokyo.

Shoot My Blog's Game Plan Could Use a Little Something Extra

Renaud, the author of Shoot My Blog, asked a bunch of other bloggers (including us; we declined) to shoot a digital photo of something with his blog in the background. Here are the results.

It's cool that he got a bunch of people to go out of their way and do this for him, but what's it all for? Like Paris Hilton circa 2006, the blog apparently only exists to be photographed. You wanna put an ad on that bad-boy or what?

Lotus Won't Just Fit You with Features; You'll Get a Little Character, Too

Check out Faceless People, for which a bunch of, well, faceless people appear in high-profile places all over England.

By wading through a sea of faceless folk on FacelessPeople.com, you can read up on the specs for the new Lotus Evora. Tagline: "True character in a faceless world."

Diggin' the creepy guerrilla effort (imagine getting on the bus and sitting next to somebody WITHOUT A FACE!), but I also think it's pretty bitchy to claim to have a premium on character. (Why spend $80K for character when a jagged scar does it for free?) Thanks to Adrants reader Tom Quinn for sending this over.

You Mean the World's Not Flat in Vista-ville?

Looks like CP+B's finally doing something with the $300 million in ad money Microsoft gave it. Oops, this isn't a CP+B campaign.

The divine task: reposition Vista.

"Vista is now actually better than its reputation. That's a marketing issue," observed Tim Anderson of the ailing OS -- which, to be fair, was getting panned even before it went live. (Warts and all.)

One of the new ads, at left, reads, "At one point, everyone thought the Earth was flat. Get the facts about Windows Vista." Clicking on that brings you to this page, which in part reads:

When Windows Vista debuted in January 2007, we declared it the best operating system we had ever made. "Windows Vista is beautiful," The New York Times raved. It's humbling that millions of you agree.

But we know a few of you were disappointed by your early encounter. Printers didn't work. Games felt sluggish. You told us--loudly at times--that the latest Windows wasn't always living up to your high expectations for a Microsoft product.

Well, we've been taking notes and addressing issues.

That's charming. Touching, even. But do they mean it? And what happens now?

To Push Pickens Plan, T. Boone Pickens Takes Aim for Our Wallets

Lately I can't turn the TV on without running into an ad for the Pickens Plan, T. Boone Pickens' $58 million attempt to liberate the US from its sordid addiction to foreign oil.

Interesting things about Pickens and this campaign:

o Pickens is an oil magnate. (Can you hear the crows going "OMG! OMG!"?) Soon, he'll be a wind magnate too.
o The ads are totally finance-focused. Pickens hardly says the e-word ("environmental") at all.

more »

McDonald's Product Placement Deflects Attention From Fashion Nightmare

What? You thought it would never happen? Oh please. Of course you did. Meredith-owned Las Vegas Fox affiliate KVVU (and others) has accepted money from McDonald's for iced coffee product placement during its news and lifestyle newscast. Whatev. We're more concerned about that body sack Monica Jackson is wearing.

Even More Time Wasted Critiquing Dumb Commercials

So we do a lot of ad critique around here at Adrants. Sometimes it's worthy, other times it's the digital equivalent of a newspaper used for dog defecation. In what has to be the most ridiculous critique of a ridiculous ad EVAR, MSNBC Ads of the Weird takes on a Dr. Scholl's ad featuring America's Next Top Model Runner Up Yaya DaCosta who dances on a desk and then jumps into a pair of shoes which, naturally, have Dr. Scholl's inserts.

more »

Oreo Turns Elevator Into Milk Dunking Machine

OK, this is kind of cool. Using a glass elevator with a giant faux Oreo cookie attached to it that dunks into a faux glass of milk when the elevator hits the first floor, Oreo has done a nice job creating interest with the use of alternative media. Hmm. Anyone feel like Oreo cookies and milk now?

Wonderbra Could Make Basoomas a Transit Hazard

Flipping on old jokes about front-heavy women, Wonderbra added a yellow safety line behind the one that appears in metro stations.

That's right, Miss Full-Frontal-Since-This-Morning. Get used to stepping a little further back, 'cause you know those boobies are gonna get in the way of the Five line. Reason #4304983098 why it's better to just embrace your surfboard self.

Via the PhotoShelter blog. Agency: Euro RSCG/Singapore.

Seminar to Teach Word of Mouth Marketing Skills

Andy Sernovitz, a big advocate of word of mouth marketing and host of the Gas Pedal dinner series is hosting a "Learn Word of Mouth Marketing" crash course in Chicago July 30 and September 4. The course will cover the five steps of word of mouth marketing, how to insure ROI and how to create an actionable word of mouth marketing program for your company.

There's more details here and if you use the code "weloveadrants", you'll get a nice $250 discount. I've been to his events and they are very informative. If you have any interest in WOM, it would be worth checking out these seminars.

Jamba Juice Disses (Promotes) McDonald's McMuffin

In an apparent effort to illustrate how McDonald's breakfast sandwiches are bad and how Jamba Juice is good, Swirl created a billboard, which it placed directly next to a McDonald's near Penn Station, that shows a McDonald's breakfast sandwich "tied down like a ball & chain...which will obviously make you feel this way after eating" and a Jamba Juice drink with a spring under it. The tagline is "Put the Good in Your Morning."

While there is a "vs." between the two, this billboard seems to say " have a McMuffin and a Jamba Juice in the morning. It's the perfect combination" rather than "have a Jamba Juice instead of a McMuffin."

OMG! Cause Groups Complain, Ad Age 'Unleashes' Witty Headline

It's a forgone conclusion that Verizon ads suck and deserve to be pummeled by bitchy ad critics such as those employed at trade rags like Adrants. Oh wait, that's us. Oops. That would be...leading industry publication Adrants. Now that we have that settled...

It's official. America has no sense of humor and has become so literal, no one can say anything at all without offending various cause group members who, due to an onslaught of grade school self-esteem-focused curricula which have rendered them incapable of chilling out and enjoying life without looking at it through a microscope.

So what's all the fuss about this time?

more »

Parrot Makes Noise, Shark Spotted, White World Wrinkled

- We got to check out the Facebook redesign yesterday. There's tabs and room for more ads (I'm seeing TWO now instead of just ONE!). Also, personal information is intuitively distributed so you don't have to read everything from one long column. A lot of people are annoyed because it's heavy with the social media vibe, but we'll be used to it in, like, two weeks.

- For Parrot, Feed Company started a video campaign featuring a nightmarish kid on a driving lesson. "We're done, we're done! FUCK IT!" Heh.

- Shark sighting. Or not. By Mullen for the sharks and rays exhibit at NE Aquarium.

- New spot by BBH/NY and Partizan/LA for LG Steam Washer. It's called "World of Steam" and takes place in a wrinkly fabric world. It's weird, but not as weird as this was, and I guess sort of passively pleasant.

- Another Parrot thing: Parrot Not Quail. (I'm not really down to make a parrot the state bird, but we did make the Terminator governor.)