Economy Be Damned! Affiliate Summit to Rock Las Vegas

If you'll be in Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit which begins Sunday and runs through Tuesday, here's a list of known events occurring prior to and during the conference.

If you know of other events occurring during Affiliate summit or in association with CES which overlaps with Affiliate Summit, let us know and we'll add them to the calendar. Click "more" to see the calendar.

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Versus Wants to See Your Hooha

Sporting site Versus has launched a recent promotion entitled Show Me Your V. Yes, this is where that is going. Of the promotion Yahoo Sports blog Puck Daddy wrote, "Maybe our minds are so far in the gutter that we've got rats scurrying across them, but even Roger Moore's James Bond would believe this double entendre is a tad too telegraphed."

A thunderstorm of commentary followed.

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Trust Me. It's A Modern Day Mad Men. Seriously.

Written by actual creatives, Hunt Baldwin and John Coveny, TNT's Trust Me (premiering January 26 at 10PM) will, one hopes, bring life to the tired scenario of family man working with single slacker. While cigarettes and Old Fashions aren't likely to be seen on the show, the premise pairs workaholic family man Mason (Eric McCormack) with "impulsive copywriter with the attention span of a teenager" Conner (Tom Cavanagh), a successful creative team at fictional Chicago agency Rothman Greene & Mohr, and examines their relationship as one becomes the other's boss.

The men, of course, are paired with beautiful women. Erin (Sarah Clarke) is Mason's wife and Sarah Krajicek-Hunter (Monica Potter) plays the role of an award-winning copywriter "whose personality has a tendency to rub people the wrong way."

It will be very interesting watching Mad Men and Trust Me. It's a fair bet the ad business hasn't changed much in 45 years. On TV or in real life.

3D Super Bowl Ads to Benefit Eye Doctors

One could trash the latest Super Bowl ad gimmick - 3D ads for DreamWorks Animation and SoBe - but that might be a bit, um, short sighted. Oh sure, having to wear 3D glasses just to watch a television commercial is kind of stupid. However, the simple fact there will be a 3D commercial to watch during the Super Bowl, the distributing of 125 million 3D glasses needed to view the commercial through 25,000 retail outlets and the relentless promotion that will precede the airing might just land the two commercials highly coveted spots on the all important USA Today Super Bowl Ad Poll, the penultimate metric for Super Bowl commercial success. In fact, the poll is so important, agencies have been fired for their Super Bowl spots not landing in the top ten.

That or millions of people will be calling their eye doctor Monday morning following the game wondering why their vision was suddenly blurred for a brief moment. It could be the single most successful eye doctor ad campaign ever created. Without a single doctor spending a single penny.

Angry Whopper Bites Back.

Fast on the heels of its unscrupulous Whopper Virgin campaign (and the melodramatic responses it inspired), Crispin Porter + Bogusky introduce us to Burger King's Angry Whopper.

Infused with jalapenos and onions grown by disgruntled (read: sadistic and utterly unhinged) farmers, this hot-headed burger promises to "bite you back."

Red-faced yet? Go compose an angry-gram, courtesy of the King's darker side.

We like how the disclaimer reads, "Angry-Grams are intended to be humorous and should not be used with an intent to harass." Guess I should start rethinking my wry subject-line combinations of "mother" and "whore."

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Breakfast Cereal Club, Sam L. J. Pushes Broadband, Cuts at Ogilvy

- Jack Morton Worldwide, Almighty, Weber Shandwick and Google join Citizen Schools to help kids succeed.

- Which Dog are You?

- "They only met once, but they stayed crunchy forever."

- Sam L. Jackson fronts for Virgin Media Broadband.

- "Fast casual" wha...? McD's training film.

- UK's Benylin is in the dog house for using ads to teach people how to call in sick.

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The Whopper Virgins Got Their Aid ... But Who Will Serve the Perrier Virgins?

A Humanitarian Lion supporter produced a video riffing off Burger King's Whopper Virgins campaign, where documentarians engage Third World inhabitants in hamburger taste tests -- and incidentally pop their hamburger-free cherries.

Unlike Burger King's ad footage, which makes backwater village life look exotic and friendly, the pro-Humanitarian Lion video uses images of abject poverty to illustrate "Whopper Virgins," followed by Nike Virgins, Playstation Virgins, Perrier Virgins and Human Rights Virgins.

The push point: "Millions of people cannot enjoy the world. Why not use our creativity and power to help them once a year?" A link to the Humanitarian Lion website wraps it up.

Poignant if lengthy. If nothing else, it illustrates the crassness of imposing Whoppers and Big Macs on people with bigger voids to fill.

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Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson Assault Website

Page takeovers work well if done properly, like this recent one for Ford. If, on the other hand, all they do is obnoxiously plaster a website with an endless array of banners - even if they are gorgeous images of Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson - the only thing they accomplish is to make one wonder if a million pop ups just opened in their browser.

Puma Celebrates 60th With Past Masher

Upload your photo! Change its size and position! Alter the skin tone! Mess with Saturation! Toy with brightness! Meddle with contrast! Choose a body style! Pick a hair style! Slip on some glasses! Accessorize! Save it! Share it! Add to gallery!

Seriously?

Yawn.

Thank you Puma.

Dunkin': You Don't Have to Be Bright to Be a Go-Getter!

You kin' do it!" Dunkin Donuts exclaims in the 2009 debut of its new ad campaign, where people like you! power through everyday life with the will and guilelessness of Special Olympics athletes.

Both efforts remind us "America runs on Dunkin'" -- much the way cars run on petrol and and tin men run on oil. It's a shorter way of saying you don't need to be super or have a super job; you just need the fuel necessary to push your colorless millstone up that steep, steep hill. Every. Single. Day. Forever.

By the way, "get an egg-white flatbread for only $1.99 when you buy a medium hot coffee."

Campy, approachable and Common-Man-relevant -- a nice step up from last year's work, which also showcased coffee-fueled Avg. Joes doing painfully ordinary things.

Work by Hill Holliday/Boston.

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Grapes Battle Jelly Beans in Epic Showdown

Jelly beans. Grapes soy beans. Highlighters. Yellow stickies. Paper clips. Elastic bands. Strawberries. Push pins. What would you create if you had all these items and kick ass animation skills? A soy Joy commercial, of course.

In the commercial, grapes soy beans (hey, who knew they were green before they are cooked?) and strawberries do battle with jelly beans. Sadly, the sugar rush-fueled jelly beans lose the battle because all natural Soy Joy outlasts the sugar rush.

Created by RPA, the spot was animated by Brand New School.

Charmin Half-Asses Casting Call Campaign

In the last full week of December, Charmin launched what appears to be the beginning of a casting call campaign for a new bear mascot. (It isn't clear what went wrong with the old ones. Maybe too much tissue fondling.)

The guy who passed this to us called it "definitely a worthy laugh from the guys at Publicis," but he was clearly lying through his typing fingers. Besides a casting video for this sloppy specimen of the Ursidae family, uploaded two weeks ago, there's nothin' else going on.

Notably, at least one commenter expressed interest in the campaign -- but he joined YouTube six days ago. Also, one of the two videos he uploaded is pro-Charmin, so we're guessing he didn't find the effort via StumbleUpon.

Hey, Publicis ... you awake? For inspiration, look to Milk, which shat this gimmick months ago and at least tried running with it.

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Virgin Atlantic: Still Red-Hot After All These Years

To celebrate Virgin Atlantic's 25th anni, "Still Red Hot" brings us back to June 22nd, 1984, when London's Gatwick Airport changed forever.

On a day that would otherwise be forever defined by a miner's strike, Virgin Atlantic's premier crew of red-clad flight attendants broke the mundanity with their bitch-watch-me walks and winning smiles. A revolving ticker overhead ties fiction to fact: Virgin's first-ever flight route, VS001 to Newark, is ON TIME.

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