The Beatles Come to Rockband

To get us all worked up over the Beatles library making its way to Rockband, Passion Pictures put together this sweet video with nods to famous moments from the Beatle's contribution to the world of music. It's very well done. Even people who have heard o the Beatles (do any exist?) will love it. Check it out on Creativity.

Yo T-Dog. Me And The Homies Went Rollin' Down to Chi Lake

OK, so Chicago Lake liquors is an "urban" liquor store with low prices. Why? Because "urban" people can't afford higher prices? Because suburban white people are cheap and have no problem traveling to "urban" space to get their freak on? Because you can never get enough Crystal or Hennessy?

Aside from all those potential cause group-style alarm bells, this campaign for Chicago Lake Liquors from Brew is not afraid to go all Vanilla Ice on us with every over-done white-guy-goes-black tactic in the book.

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'This is just so ... hippy dippy happy!' Steve said.

Wawa's pushing its yearly Hoagiefest new media-style: with the requisite Facebook, and online video, etc. etc. But like last year, the campaign's big deal-breaker is a song commissioned by Parry Gripp.

Witness the magic at hoagiefest.com.
The animation, unabashedly high-pitched music and the prospect of a fresh hoagie lights up our innards like psychedelic pot. For Steve it conjures up Woodstock "with maybe a little Up With People thrown into the mix" -- for me it's totally Beatles circa Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

This year, fans can join in the fun by making their own songs or videos, then voting for each other's. Winning entrants could win a year's worth or hoagies -- or hell, their own Hoagiefest. (What would you do with such a thing?)

Soften Their World -- Before They're Too Big to Fight Back.

We've heard it said that we'll always be about five or six years old in the eyes of our parents -- no matter how much we accomplish, how old we really get, or where on our bodies our hair starts to grow.

Which is why this campaign for UK-based Fairy hits home in a manner both awkward and charming. Each spot depicts a generic Gen-Xer getting infantilized by his mom, who despite old age (and complete senility?) hasn't lost any of the maternal instincts she possessed in the prime of motherhood.

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Mini Markets to Vampires for True Blood's Season 2

@AskACopywriter managed to catch the phone booth ad at left, fruit of a liaison between BMW's Mini Cooper and -- oddly enough -- HBO's True Blood.

You may have noted that, in July of last year, True Blood orchestrated this pretty cool YouTube effort where vampires worldwide apparently produced their own amateur videos and tried demanding suffrage from the narrow-minded living.

This Mini partnership is another way to work that "vampires among us" angle: Mini is among a handful of brands that will be targeting their campaigns to vampires through June 14th, the start of Season 2.

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It's Like 'Conjunction Junction,' But So Much Hipper.

EUTube -- the YouTube channel of the European Union -- is seeding a video called "Electrical Derby," whose job is to educate viewers about electricity, while propagating the Eurotrash pop culture aesthetic that gives spoofs like this a perpetually appreciative audience.

After a few watches we're fairly confident we'll be experts in how batteries work; but every time we start the video up again, we get caught up in fantasizing how RAD it would be to spend a few hours at a neon roller derby.

We like the idea, but imagine trying to explain supermagnets at a rave. (Actually, it's possible we've done that -- and it all went horribly wrong.) In any event, "Electrical Derby" is a follow up to "Chemical Party," last year's attempt to teach chemistry with synthesized music and mating rituals.

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Paul Smith Rabbit Lights Up for Scraps

@dabitch and @leighhouse graced our morningtime desks with this rabbit rubbish bin. The bins are designer Paul Smith's contribution to Super Contemporary, an exhibit that launched at London's Design Museum this week.

The "New London Rubbish Bins" will solicit garbage over the next four months at Covent Garden and Holland Park. Ears light up when you toss a little something-something into their sacks.

More photos at High Snobiety.

Good way to bring design character to a city and reward constructive community behaviour. Here's hoping no malevolent clothes irons appear over the horizon.

Chiquita Smoothie Bejeweled Effectively Tanks Our Thursday

Few things entice us as readily as a Bejeweled knockoff. We've lost whole days to this game; now, on account of Chiquita, we've lost our whole afternoon.

This promotion for Chiquita Smoothies is a good way to not work -- plus, if you can fill the blender with aligned fruit well before time's up, you get entered (and re-entered!) into a sweepstakes to win a trip to Jamaica. (Where you can play iPhone Bejeweled, beachside, to tropical music.)

Work by matrixx, which knows the secret to a good advergame: keep it simple, incentivize gamers; tap into something they're already obsessed with and know how to play.

UPDATE: What the hell kind of advergame doesn't have a pause button. Are you trying to get us fired?

Tissue Tree Bears Silky Relief to Spontaneous Sneezers

In time for allergy season -- which not only stimulates sneezes but generates impromptu tear-duct leakage -- Kleenex erected a Tissue Tree, swathed in silk, no less, beside Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art.

The tree was inspired by the work of "wrapping" artist Christo and is wrapped in over a kilometer of silk. (See metric conversion here.) More importantly, it sports 700 generous tissue blossoms, which passersby can tug out at leisure.

Clever way to promote Kleenex Silk Touch, whose wares are supposed to be even softer than the average snot receptacle. Greenpeace is gonna have a helluva good time tearing the lovely idea a new one, though. We can already hear the siren song: Turning your gauche synthetic wares into fake spins on the noble arbors that fell for your cause? You sick bastards!

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Mercedes Refines Axe-Like Childishness

Fully clothed women riding horses in slow motion accompanied by classical music? For a moment, we thought the soundtrack would break into some hip-hop shit and a sudden gust of wind would blow the ladies' gowns off leaving them wearing nothing but their undergarmets. But no. This is a Mercedes commercial, Not an Axe commercial. We're talking respectability here. Elegance, Finery. Fully clothed women!

And true to Mercedes' refined reserve, the closest thing we get to an Axe-like witticism is an old man who, while enjoying the allure of the women on horseback, comments, "I like car commercials."

Daring!