Street Art Meets Foot Fetish in NIKE PHOTOiD

Capitalizing on culture junkies accustomed to a world they can manipulate with ease, AKQA shot Street Canvas, a promotion for Nike PHOTOiD.

To a cool beat and without narration, the video describes the following process.

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K-Swiss Drops the Ball on Roland Garros, Paris

"Dude ... I think the tennis player in that ad just totaled your car with his oversized ball."

"Sucks, man. Wanna play tennis?"

"Sure. But before we go, let's buy proper footwear at K-Swiss."

"High-five!"

Orchestrated by TriBeCa for the Roland Garros French Open in Paris. More photos here and here.

Fun facts: Maybe because it's French, TriBeCa calls it "ambush marketing," not "guerrilla marketing," and the goal was to create a "Wahoo Effect."

I'm not really sure what "Wahoo" is ("Yahoo" without the awkward "Yang" association?), but maybe it has something to do with how people open their mouths and make no noise when they see something like, say, a car smashed by a giant tennis ball.

Via the hip cats at in:fluencia.

Wawa Gets Groovy With HoagieFest

After listening to this jingle and the rest of the tunes over at the Archer Group-created HoagieFest site for convenience store chain Wawa, you absolutely will not be able to get them out of your head. And, after all, isn't that the point? The agency hired jingle writer Parry Gripp to create the songs which are also available as ringtones and, in acknowledgment of the many already existing Wawa loyalist sites, embeddable MySpace and Facebook sound files.

It's all so very....groovy in a sort of squeaky clean way.

Newsflash! New, 100 Percent Approved Work for JCPenney!

Despite this week's drama over the Saatchi & Saatchi - "created" faux commercial for JCPenney, Grow Interactive, working with Saatchi & Saatchi double assures this new work for the retailer is, yes, APPROVED BY THE CLIENT! Now that that's out of the way, take a look at Rock Your Look, a new website developed as a sort of karaoke contest which awards the winner a trip to the stage at this year's Teen Choice Awards.

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Image Fulgurator Could Slip Ad Messages or Mascots into Picturesque Statues, Portraits, Landscapes

I knew this webmaster who was out in the forest one night with her digicam, taking shots of the landscape, when suddenly she realized there was something in the picture that wasn't there in real life.

"It was a UFO," she insisted, "just floating in the sky, perfectly still. And I could only see it in the photos I took."

I called bullshit at the time. But since then, Julius von Bismarck -- a seriously Che Guevara-looking dude -- invented the Image Fulgurator. It senses when a flash goes off, then projects an image onto the pictures people took.

See it in action.

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HP's 'Maestro' Makes Like a Techie 'Fantasia'

Loving the "Maestro" spot for HP's TouchSmart PC. It's a striking but natural development from the more casual "Hands" campaign. And it would have been absolutely perfect if a few origami airplanes self-replicated and staged a mutiny.

Produced by Psyop for agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners/SF.

Sprachel Runs For President!

Here's a fun little webisode thingy. It's for I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and it features brand mascot Spraychel who has now thrown her hat into the ring and is running for President. Oh sure, it's all to sell a few more tubs of fake butter but, wait, you can win money! You can play games! You can take polls! You can get coupons! And, best of all, you can witness her crush her opponent, Maxwell Butterman.

Oh but wait, what would a campiagn be without a Facebook page? Oh but wait again. Where's her Second Life persona? Oops. Sorry. Forgot SL is so 2005.

Story Worldwide are the gurus behind this one.

David Beckham Puts Package Away, Lusts After Sharpie Pens

There's been a lot of talk about David Beckham's package and all those ginormous billboards on which it is displayed. Well now, as we mentioned back in May, Beckham has put all his clothes back on and is sparring with people over Sharpie pens he covets in a new commercial breaking July 7.

In the commercial, created by BrandBuzz New York, Beckham is asked to autograph several items and, after signing his name, covets the Sharpie he used to do so. Along with a cute street fight with a little girl, Becjham also steals a Sharpie from a woman at a gas station but he can't fool her. So, he gives the woman his shirt, autographs it and makes off with the Sharpie of his dreams.

While it's understandable the people asking for autographs would have some increased affinity for Beckham but for Beckham to have that sort of affinity for a...pen, well, oh wait...this is a commercial, not real life. Oops, sorry. Unrealistic things happen in commercial all the time. Totally normal. All good.

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera Meet (and Match) Again

For KahloRivera100, Ken Carbone of Carbone Smolan Agency created a playful print that riffs off the King and Queen of Hearts.

"I chose to emulate the structure of a playing card, as it best demonstrates the duality of this royal couple in the history of art," Carbone said.

Some backstory: Kahlo and Rivera, lovers, political agitators and artists, got married and made each other completely miserable until Kahlo's death (lots of cheating and general ego-clashing). They apparently loved each other too much to really separate.

Carbone's work piece is especially appropriate in light of a recent video sent to us by BC Dairy, which depicts the Queen of Hearts cheating with the Jack of Spades. (Frida is reputed to have cheated on Diego with Trotsky, who was murdered with an ice axe. Okay, maybe this connection is kind of a stretch.)

KahloRivera100, which celebrates the 100th anniversary of Kahlo's birth and the 50th anniversary of Rivera's death, is sponsored by Alliance Graphique Internationale. It will feature over 100 contributions, including this one, and will appear at the Club de Banqueros de Mexico AC in Mexico City this July.

Ditch Cannes for Coney! Here Are 8 Reasons Why

Ric Kallaher, the photographer who took all those awesome shots at One Show in May, ditched the Cannes International Ad Festival for the Coney Island freak show, otherwise known as the Second Annual Wrath of Cannes.

And he's not sorry.

"Who needs Cannes?! Beter yet: who WANTS Cannes?!" he concluded, having obviously returned a changed man.

"THIS is everything an advertising awards show should be: last minute, no hassle entries open to anyone & everyone, free beer, rockin' surfer-guitar music (blasted out by the ever-cool Tarantinos), raucous fun on the beach, and on-site, in full-view judging for clients that could never exist for ad campaigns that could never air.

"But, hey, with modern mobile platforms, why not?!"

Below: 8 Freakish Things We Learned About Wrath of Cannes. (Illustrated.)

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