Waging War Hurts the Wagers, Says Peace Coalition

The Global Coalition for Peace wraps its convictions around telephone poles and street lamps with "What Goes Around Comes Around."

Each piece features soldiers whose weapons stretch so far around the medium that the barrels ultimately aim back at the bearers.

"Stop the Iraq War," the prints proclaim. NICE.

Oh My God! You Are Huge!

Yea, You wish. We're talking about hands here, people. Helping hands. Volunteering hands. Enter the Charity Parody. Enter the V Inspired Awards, an organization which creates and celebrates "new and innovative volunteering opportunities for 16-25 year olds in England.

To promote the organization its awards program, The 7th Chamber is seeding a video that spoofs all those "We Are the World" - style music videos that are, at the same time, nauseating as well as emotionally uplifting.

And the Oh My God, You Are Huge thing? Check out the helping hands in the video.

Beer Site Creates Customized Contemporary Mash Ups

Before we've even looked at this work, we hate it. Why? Cuz we hate all websites that pop open full screen windows full of slow loading Flashturbation. Aside from that, this Zoogami Beer site from Saatchi & Saatchi isn't all that bad.

Zoogami's Contemporary Beer aims to position the brand as "a modern product that follows the evolutions of the world in which we live." Apart from the gag-inducing buzzwords, the site is pretty cool. if you have time to wait for it to load.

After it loads, you are asked to enter what you think is contemporary. The site then goes out and searches for images, audio and video matching the term and brings it all back to you in a mashed up format. It's workable enough.

OK, so I guess we don't totally hate it after all.

Cadbury Enlists Canadians to Build Bicycles for Africa

"The Bicycle Factory" is an uplifting piece about the many uses of bicycles in Africa. Under the weight of a single enterprising pedaler, one bike can deliver food and water, or play the roles of ambulance and school bus.

Put together by The Hive/Toronto for Cadbury Canada, which is raising funds to send 5000 bicycles to Africa. Whenever users enter a Cadbury UPC at thebicyclefactory.ca, they're adding a bicycle part to somebody's spiffy new ride. 100 UPCs build a complete bicycle.

Nice way to add a hands-on dynamic to a good cause. Here's hoping Cadbury gets the 500,000 UPC entries it needs to meet its goal, because boy, that's a helluva lot of Fruit & Nut bars.

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Lee Clow Battles Gary Vaynerchuk For Future of Advertising

Mullen Chief Creative Officer Edward Boches, with ten round, blow-by-blow coverage, pits two great marketing forces, Lee Clow against Gary Vaynerchuk, against one another in a battle of the past versus the future. Examining each contender's claim to fame, approach to marketing, book publishing efforts, awards, Google juice, Twitter followers and other qualities, the fight ends in a draw.

Regarding Twitter follwers, Boches writes, "Lee Clow: Zero. Lee Clow's Beard, 19. He's a legend; he doesn't need Twitter. Gary Vaynerchuk: 540,000. You can argue who cares, but round nine goes to Gary."

Regarding quotability, Boches writes, "Lee Clow: "We're not in the advertising business, we're in the media arts business. We're using all forms of media to tell a brand story-and the media is everything a brand does." Huh? Gary Vaynerchuk: "People are always talking about what you're doing now... To me, it's not what you're doing now, it's about where you're going." Round ten goes to Gary."

So which will it be? Good old-fashioned, time-tested advertising or this new-fangled social media shit?

Lost Tribe Craves Fry; Five-Second Rule Blocks Bounty

Two guys are in a car. The passenger, who's inconsiderately grubbing, mistakenly drops a McDonald's french fry between the seats, compelling the driver to turn to him with a short, harsh "Dude" -- shorthand for "You better pick that shit up and fast."

If you've ever wondered what happens to the stuff lost in motor vehicle ether, here's your chance. Spare change, ballpen caps and -- yes, mislaid fries -- become window trimmings in a universe composed of lost souls, toiling for the pleasure of a crazed, invisible god.

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Doritos Digs Dodgeball

Remember when dodgeball was just a stupid game you played in gym class when the teacher didn't feel like teaching you anything that actually had to do with physical education? Well those were the days. Thanks to a movie and a bunch of people not interested in playing "real" sports, it's now become a popular sport. Which, of course, means it's now part of an ad campaign.

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Las Vegas Ad Confuzzles. Still Shows Lots of Skin Though

As David Gianatasio writes on AdFreak, faux-newscasts do, indeed, trivialize the profession but, as always, they do provide lazy creatives an easy out when there's no energy left to come up with anything new. In this "What Happen Here, Stays Here" Las Vegas commercial, we are told by Candace Newman "the water's nice but no one's getting in" and "these cabanas are yet another troubling sign of the times."

Sadly, it's all very true. Las Vegas is hurting in a big way. But rather than sending an entire town to the city as part of a crazy marketing stunt (oh wait, they did that already), they are embracing economic reality and having fun with it.

While we might be led to believe Mirage's Bare is bare, as Newman finishes her report, strips off her jacket and the camera pans left to a pool full of party people, it seems Las Vegas is doing just fine.

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To Plug Transparency, Air New Zealand Strips Staff Down

Air New Zealand promotes its no-hidden-fees policy with an ad where pilots, flight attendants and baggage jockeys sport nothing but paint in lieu of uniforms.

Maybe for morale's sake, CEO Rob Fyfe of Air New Zealand stars as one of the baggage lackeys/air traffic controllers. (He recently attested to being "absolutely flattered" after winning Hottest Businessman in a New Zealand BusinessDay poll.)

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Luggage-Confined Woman Brings Sex Traffic to Top of Mind

Probably one of the scariest things about human trafficking is that it's kinda like objectification brought to the lowest common denominator: you're not just eyeballing someone like a slab of meat; you're actually treating the person like an item on which you can impose your will.

Bringing this idea to stark relief, the German arm of Amnesty International celebrated the 60th anniversary of human rights in 2008 with "Frau im Koffer" ("Woman in Suitcase"), a guerrilla effort where a live contortionist was squeezed into a transparent suitcase and tossed onto a conveyor belt in baggage claim.

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