Pontiac Canada Offers Artistic G5 Experience

Here's an interesting site created by Maclaren McCann Direct & Interactive for Pontiac Canada to promote the 2007 G5 on which visitors can fool around with their mouse and keyboard to create customized visual and audio representations of the vehicle. There's also a "build your own" section and a contest to win a new G5. One of the more engaging car sites out there.

New Ideas Exist In the Smallest Places

It seems there may actually be some new ideas left in the ad business though we're sure someone will tell us this has been done before. Anyway, Michael Shostack tells us graphic designer Jeni Mattson created some very cool business cards for, apparently, another designer. The concept was to illustrate the designer's probing nature so Jeni designed a metal business card made up of actual lock picking tools. Hey, it's diferent. That's half the battle.

Nike Gives Headbutt to Materazzi

We saw this Zidane headbutt nod Nike did on TV (or maybe it was YouTube. Who can tell the difference these days?) a couple nights ago and, well, pardon our idiocy, we didn't even recognize it was Marco Materazzi, the recipient of Zinedine Zidane's head butt, in the ad. So bad on us for missing it but good on AdFreak for mentioning it here today. The ad is actually quite funny and, yes, a great wink-nod to the original head butting event.

UK's The Independent Goes Red For Global Fund

As part of the Global Fund RED campaign to fight AIDS in Africa, The Independent has been redesigned today by Giorgio Armani and half the papers ad revenue will be donated to the Global Fund ro Fight AIDS. It's all part of the Maria Shriver/Bono-created campaign that aims to urge big business to contribute to the fund in an ongoing manner. The companies already involved are Gap, Converse, Emporio Armania, American Express and Motorola. All those companies have developed RED product lines and a portion of the revenue that comes from sales of those lines goes to the Fund.

Maria Shriver explains the effort telling The Independent, "How do you think Magic Johnson [who has HIV] is still around? He takes two pills a day, which he can get from any drugstore. But those drugstores don't exist in Africa, and millions can't get to the drugs Magic Johnson can get. That's where the RED money's going." So far, $10 million has been raised.

GoDaddy's Daddy Drools For Danica

This really qualifies as old news but since it was overshadowed earlier by Motorola and we were prompted by our monthly GoDaddy email, we'll share with you that GoDaddy has, in addition to Motorola and many others, hooked up with Danica Patrick to sponsor her Andretti Green Racing car. In a video that includes the unveiling of the new #7 Team Motorola IndyCar, GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons interviews his new "GoDaddy Girl" in a most excruciatingly awkward manner that can only be likened to Joe Simpson obsessing about his daughter Jessica's 34DD's. While Bob reads from cue cards, Danica sits next to him and through her bored demeanor, you can just hear her say, "What the fuck am I doing here with this cheese ball?"

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Logitech Turns Up the Volume

Effie's Ad Campaign Analyzes Competing Awards Shows

The Effie Awards is running comparative a ad campaign to promote its revamped awards show. Created by New York-based Anomaly, the campaign pokes fun at other award shows with charts humorously describing the focus of the other shows. Citing the Clios' obsession with the hot agency of the moment, D&AD's focus on any Guinness spot, the Andys' love of anything that has to do with agency anniversaries or agency Chritmas parties and Cannes' fixation on ads that make no sense, the Effie's hopes to remind people it's only concerned with awarding ads that actually work.

Oh, and the whole rebranding using charts and graphs created in Excel is intended to further instill the show's focus on results versus fluff. Check out the full ad here. It's a big jpeg so you'll be able to see all the details of each of the charts in the ad.

Gorilla Eats Jeep

You don't normally see gorillas in car ads. At first, we thought this was another one of those GE Dancing Elephant spots but no, it turned out to be a BBDO-created ad for the new, four door Jeep Wrangler...not exactly a tasty treat for an other worldly-huge gorilla to snack on. There's two more spots coming in the campaign.

World Peace PSA Tells Uptight Cause Groups to Get Sense of Humor

We're told this is supposed to be a PSA for World Peace but we think it's better suited as a campaign to silence all those cause groups that have lost their sense of humor and have nothing better to do than ruin life for the rest of us by dumbing down and softening the edges of everything so much it all becomes pitifully bland and unmoving.

Snapalope Hunting Association Offer Slim Jim Tips

With a website called Snapalope Hunting Association of America, Crispin Porter + Bogusky has done some funny work for that convenience store oddity, Slim Jim. Is it meat? Is it flavored cardboard? Whatever. We'll let the food magazines figure that out. On the site, comparison charts make it easy to spot a Snapalope, a hand signal guide makes it easier to team hunt the beast, tip on hiding, using decoys, trapping and some ads in which Zoic Studios created the visual effects of the Snapalope.