J. Crew Taps Michelle Obama to Sell Clothes

With a little bit of Gmail contextual wizardry, J. Crew is capitalizing on Obama and his wife Michelle with a text ad that leads to a landing page which reads, "All politics aside...this outfit gets our vote."

Simple. Smart. Obvious. With all the contextual fuckery that exists, it's nice to occasionally see one execution that's actually relevant and isn't selling turpentine to young teens who drink it to force abortions.

Practice Hand-Eye Coordination While Eating Fried Chicken!

KFC partnered with the highly-addictive Guitar Hero World Tour for a cross-promotional something-or-other. Redeem codes for branded Guitar Hero cups from KFC Rocks.

More importantly, try your hand at this "crowd surfing" game. Hit the arrows to the beat, and keep your emo rocker dude from falling to the bottom of the mosh pit.

The game was put together by Creative Alliance, a KFC agency, in collaboration with The Basement Design + Motion. It's funny, though: after playing a few times, I craved both chicken and Dance, Dance Revolution.

Because if Mom's Not Voting Like You Would, She's Doing it Wrong

I'm sure a handful of wily degenerates have fantasized about rigging this year's election results in their favour. Or voting 30 times instead of once.

Given that you can't do either of those things without great risk, consider making your mom vote for your candidate of choice. She gave birth to you; we're sure she'd do it just to keep you from hitting her up for money this month.

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'Abraham Lincoln: Wrong on Slavery, Wrong for Us.'

What if today's campaign tactics were applied to the election of 1860?

Crazed by this Presidential race, ad bloggers Make the Logo Bigger and Jetpacks ponder this question. Here's the fruit of their labours, "paid for by Friends of Douglas."

Contemporary context gave history both personality and a face. We laughed, we cried, we wondered -- ever so briefly -- what could have been.

Indentured servitude for me? Plantation micro-management for Steve? (Well, I guess one could argue that slavery was on its way out, even without that wee shove we dubbed the Reconstruction.) Propaganda aside, just how big of a deal is an election, anyway?

Hey Look, It's Digital Stalker Art!

For its ongoing "Visionaries" campaign, ABSOLUT launched a three-month digital exhibit of Helmut Lang's Alles Gleich Schwer, a set of print artworks.

Beginning today, users can download a rotating variety of prints from the site, put together by Great Works.

At left is the one I downloaded. The image isn't much of a stunner, but note that my IP, location and download number and download time have been printed at left.

How novel: print art repurposed as digital dog-tag. Also vibes like a tribute to anyone that ever spent a sleepless night IP-tracing blog trolls. Hrm. Wonder if I should frame it.

Paper Pigskin Advergame Reels Emails in for Sheraton

Sheraton's Ultimate Paper Football Challenge is a little mindless fun for a slow workday. Keep an eye on that pesky west wind.

In case you naively wondered what paper football has to do with Sheraton, here's the catch: the game requires registration. I anticipate much spam in exchange for these two minutes of pleasure.

By Gigantic.

DARE's Manifesto Returns to Haunt You -- in the Form of Wheatpasted Coffin Nails

Colorado's Department of Public Health and Environment uses the image of a coffin nail to declare, "The Cigarette is Dead!"

"Today, cigarette smoking has not only become passe due to all we've learned about its health effects, but, plainly speaking, it's become a difficult behavior to keep," gushes a press release with the undaunted conviction of a fourth-grade graduate of DARE.

"The days when smoking was socially acceptable are over!" (Zeal added by us.)

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Plastic Dream Shoes, Phone-Toting Thongs, Putting Out for Obama, the Skinny on Parker

- The US Army has released a list of new technologies that could be used to enable terrorism. Twitter, MySpace and Facebook make the cut.

- The recession's not real! And neither is your loneliness.

- Here's a fun little site. Click on a pair of shoes to see a luxe little ad -- er, "dream" about it. The image at left is for the Vinyl Mary Jane-looking shoes. The Ultra Girl Night Sky one is probably my favourite though: jelly shoes, underwater. How novel.

- You know you hate the new Pepsi logo almost as much as you hate the douche-tacular smile/grin logic behind it. Why not make a new one? Show Pepsi what it could've had for far less money than it probably spent.

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Click Here to Try Drugs

This work for the Oslo Department of Health which asks people to "click here to try drugs" is amazing. When you do click, you are taken through representative experiences of using marijuana, cocaine and heroine. It's all very trippy, complete with random confusing pop ups and a mouse that simply won't respond to your commands.

Very nice work which, to use fave buzz word of the day, engages quite nicely.

Twitter. Still Free. Still Seeking Business Model. Still Getting Slammed

As only Simon Dumenco can, Twitter gets yet another lashing from an unbeliever. While Dumenco may be a non-believer, not one to drink the cult's Kool-Aid, he a makes a few good points. Twitter was launched in 2006 and still has yet to institute a business model steering the company towards anything more than its current status as plaything for social media-obsessed digerati.

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