Discover Gives Cash Back, Advocates Buying More

...I guess that makes sense, although the five spots featured for Discover's new "Get Back" campaign do occasionally, if feebly, try suggesting you can also "get back" buddy time and family time and youth.

But this really all just comes down to buy more shit.

By the nonetheless well-meaning folks at The Martin Agency. The brand isn't strong in the first place; it's only natural that the message be blurry in equal measure.

'Sometimes I Think the Polar Bear ... is Just a Myth.'

The Toronto Zoo has completed a brand-new habitat to accommodate the return of its polar bears. No, not sure where they're returning from, but it must've been some awesome digs because their just-finished gilded cage is 10 acres across and outfitted like the Tundra.

To promote the exhibit, Lowe Roche is disseminating this spot in which a square but well-meaning dude mistakes the habitat for the real thing, then penetrates it and goes off in search of adventure and meaning.

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No Worries, Gamer. Time Warner Understands About the Laggage.

If you've ever played a massive multiplayer online game -- or at least watched that one episode of South Park -- then you're well-versed in the frustrations of laggage.

Lag is when you're in a crucial scenario in the game, but a crappy connection speed leaves your character in a vulnerable position just long enough to compromise you and your team.

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Montel's Daughter Promotes Vegetarian Cafeteria Options

If the children of celebrity chanteurs can draw a crowd to a promo, why not the children of celebrity talk show hosts?

In an ad slated to debut tonight during ABC Family's The Secret Life of the American Teenager, 14-year-old Wyntergrace Williams will urge Congress to amend the Child Nutrition Act to require the inclusion of vegetarian options in school lunch lines.

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Finally, an Incontinence Underpanty to Match My F-Me Pumps.

We dug the gimmick this time. And this time. And this time and this time. But this is one saunter-through-time too many.* And we're not standing for it!

Especially for a product like sexier incontinence underpants.

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:30 SECONDS Brings Ad Agency Vapidity to Australian TV

Inspired, I guess, by the unconditional love Mad Men receives from doting ad creatives, Australian network The Comedy Channel is launching a tongue-in-cheek ad drama called :30 SECONDS.

The show takes place in the present, not the past, which means that while lots of douchey Don Draper types still abound, you also suffer the loss of gratuitous smoking, for which much platinum blonde and gratuitous hipster rumpled-shirtiness is expected to compensate.

Palatable and time-wastey. See McBaney, Martin, Marion, Brooker, Barbara, and Sumo. Also see the print pieces, outfitted with irreverent quotage and shiny creatives.

The campaign, by Sydney's Three Drunk Monkeys, launches August 22; the show itself debuts September 7, 8:30 PM.

Westwood Polishes Collars Up Pretty for Corporate Cogdom

Here's a pair of ads for Westwood College, one of those vocational schools where you can get a degree in three years and start your career!

These are more engaging than potshots of nurses taking blood pressure while degree options scroll by. They're a little more casual, and the focus is on the various mundane personalities (and costumes) you take on as you move from dead-end job to CAREER!

And when we say CAREER!, we mean a desk somewhere, which, Westwood fails to mention, is often infinitely less stellar than singing happy birthday songs at TGI Friday's.

Work by Cactus/Denver.

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Here's a Message That's Fun for the Whole Family.

Throw open that beach towel, get a public service announcement: "You're probably not expecting to drown today." Not especially, no.

Other fun-tastic messages in ideal places include "You're probably not expecting to need a helmet today" and "Being run over while jaywalking only happens to other people."

And here are some highly depressing, but decidedly effective, TV spots. Sobering stuff for preventable.ca by Wasserman + Partners/Vancouver.

GoDaddy's Got Some New Snatch. And It's a Golfer!

Here's a new GoDaddy spot that will neither change your life nor get you off. In it, two preppyland hotties on a golf course find an enchanted genie lamp. One wishes for the world's longest drive, har har, and I'm sure you can imagine what happens next.

Bob Parsons stars as the somewhat seedy genie; the more vocal chick is model Anna Rawson, a new GoDaddy girl and LPGA player.

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Laboring Mom Bears Teen, Finds the Strength to Scold

"One Powerful Mother," the latest PSA by Partnership for a Drug-Free America, casts light on a powerful woman indeed. Moments after giving miserable vagina-decimating birth to a teenager, then having her heart shredded to pieces as he rolls his eyes and starts walking off, she still has the strength to raise her head -- ever so slightly -- and say, "Don't even think about going to Kevin's."

The message is swiftly and cleverly delivered: it takes one powerful mother to have a teen. And an even tougher one is called for to keep that teen drug-free.

Work by agency Martin Williams and production firm Gartner.

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