Killer Vines Bring Varicose Nightmares to Waking Life

Yarg. To promote The Ruins -- a movie that, from what we can tell, is all about evil parasitic vines -- Ralph & Co. is encouraging internet users to disseminate this genuinely icky video. It literally hurts to watch and reminds us of this one time we had an ingrown hair that kept growing under our skin until finally... well, forget it.

Killer vines. Okay. Guess that's scarier than improbable monsters. But is it scarier than toothy vaginas and randy chlamydia?!! Well, maybe.

Pontiac G8 Gets Eighties Spy Hunter Treatment

Well here's a new (OK, new-ish) way to introduce a new car. So here's an ad for the new Pontiac G8 GT modeled after the early 80's driving game Spy Hunter. It's certainly different but it might cause viewers to wonder why there's suddenly a video game on their television screens.

Thankfully, it's better than yet another windy mountain road commercial. Well, sort of. Rather than windy mountain roads, this commercial gives us windy video game roads with wheel spikes and bombs and cars that wipe out for no apparent reason. The kids will love it. Even if they have no idea what Spy Hunter is/was.

CementWorks Yields Quadruplets! Ouch.

To celebrate the birth of four distinct company arms (with four unique specializations), The CementWorks launched a baby shower campaign for quadruplets. Watch the intro on their website -- very cute. (Possibly painful.)

Dividing itself into four realms followed the logic of "growing big by growing small." Read more about The CementBloc, The IronWorks, The StoneWorks and The CementBond.

An agency with industrial chic. Ayn Rand would be so proud.

ING Invests Retirement Figures with Friendly Feel

Here's a story about a nifty ING campaign promoting "your number," the dollar amount you want to save for retirement. In the associated spots, people walk, work or play while toting big orange numbers around. And they're playful. See how the older guy in the pic at left is checking out the younger guy's figure?

See "Nurture," which about how you work to take care of your number so it can take care of you. And this is "Intro," which explains what "your number" is about.

We're fans of ING, which tries making saving fun with feel-good promotions and bright colours. Also see Planet Orange, a financial learning center for kids, and check out ING's orange cafes.

As Long As We Know It's for Packages, Not Eyeballs

Wow. For its Wrap Rage Cure campaign, which prescribes the (frightening in context) Open It! tool for people who suffer from package-opening rage, the Zibra Company has been awarded a Gold Addy for Interactive Media.

The award was distributed by the Nashville Advertising Federation.

Zibra partnered with web design firm Cabedge for the Wrap Rage Cure campaign, which included mock case studies, radio and interactive spots. The campaign generated "dramatic increases" to the number of unique visitors to the microsite. We're just hoping Open It! was actually used for packages and not customer-on-customer organ tweezing.

Rageheads are notoriously myopic. Just sayin'.

Comfeze Brings Uncomfezable Twist to Typical Diaper Ad

Wow. This is warped. That's apt, because it's a spoof spot for Scream TV, which wants us all to (tagline, tagline!) "Get scared more often." And we're definitely feeling the fear.

The spot for fictional brand Comfeze was put together by Zig, Toronto.

Does Depend make ads? Maybe Zig should look into that. There's a whole market of fear and absorbency waiting to blossom before our eyes.

Why Post Flyers When There are So Many to Vandalize?

Okay, we love this. Instead of posting flyers for its East Village concert (which takes place either last night or right now), Black Lips (or its fans?) used ads around town to spread the word.

Black lips were drawn across the faces of models and actors, alongside the concert place and time: 3/10/08 and/or 3/11/08, Bowery Ballroom. See more at Guerilla Communication.

Black Lips' MySpace confirms the concert takes place on the 11th, not the 10th. Oh but wait, Copyranter insists it's Monday the 10th.

Well, this is guerrilla so shit happens. Either way, you missed it. (Bummer.)

CHOCOLATE THE RAINBOW! And Fight Pinata Abuse

This new spot for chocolate Skittles is KICK-ASS. The pinata co-worker idea? Genius. We only loved it more when we realized the guy was made of crepe-paper, not leprosy.

The agency responsible (see all credits): TBWA\ and production company MJZ, our new favourite friends. Because anybody who can come up with a slogan like "CHOCOLATE THE RAINBOW! Taste the rainbow" is a keeper ... and probably a regular contributor to 4chan.

Lifesavers Brings Sweet Back in Style

This spot's nearly a year old, but it isn't in the Almighty Database so we're covering it anyway.

Lifesavers guides us down the sometimes precarious road of good intentions with this ad for "It's Good to Be Sweet." The bright colors, friendly deeds and sweet cover of "What's So Funny (About Peace, Love and Understanding)" gave us an unexpected feel-good feeling.

We LOLed at least twice. And that North Korea scene? Priceless.

Have You Considered the HUMANITY of Your Fast Food Chain of Choice?

Maybe because the white space technique wasn't sufficiently saucy, DDB Stockholm's latest McDonald's campaign has gone all red. (If it worked for The Economist, the People's Republic and Forbes, why not McD's, right?)

The ad -- which will run full-page in major Swedish newspapers this week -- reads, "We don't hire Turks, Greeks, Poles, Indians, Ethiopians, Vietnamese, Chinese or Peruvians."

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