Could Diesel Be the Velvet Underground of Fashion?

We love Diesel. We've been shopping there since we were old enough to comfortably blow triple digits on sneakers.

So maybe it's our bias when we look at one of their myriad scatterbrained campaigns and suggest that maybe Diesel does know what it's doing. Maybe they're the rock stars of the fashion world: burn-outs on the outside, but soaked in talent and a profound quest for meaning from within.

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Toyota Pitpass Brings Fans *that* Much Closer to NASCAR

...assuming you want to get very close at all.

To promote the Pitpass subsite (created by Zugara, LA), which is Toyota's attempt to drum a fanbase out of the NASCAR niche, Saatchi & Saatchi gives us FanDangler and FanTandem.

The former actually seems like a lot of fun, and the latter looks like something you might think would be funny to try if you were bored as hell and high as a kite and had nothing better to do besides see what NASCAR was up to (and baby, it ain't never much).

Human Aspirations, Work Ethic Projected onto Intel Computing Chips

This is cute. In this trilogy of ads, Intel pairs assembly-line imagery with compelling background narrative that lends the sense these chips aren't just cogs in the wheel; they're personalities seeking unique opportunities out in the world.

Observe how chips look for love, ponder their possibilities on "graduation day" and whistle while hard at work.

The campaign, which was produced by Anonymous for agency McCann Erickson, makes a great companion series to HP's The Computer is Personal Again, which focused on how the personalities of computer owners imbued the computer itself.

Art Director at Nissan Cooks Up Shiny New Rogue Ad All By Himself

This is pretty neat. Here's the Nissan Rogue ad that goes with the marble virals floating around on YouTube. Perhaps you saw it when it appeared during the season premier of Heroes last week.

But instead of a marble wandering its way through a neatly-hedged maze, the Rogue itself is speeding through an obstacle-ridden city.

Funnier still is this commentary from REmixed, which attributes the work entirely to his art director buddy Ken. The commercial is even dubbed "Ken's Nissan Rogue ad."

Our west coast contact wryly notes, "Maybe he even cooked the food for the crew at craft services..."

David Lynch's 'Twin Peaks' Lives On In Gucci Commercial

So auteur David Lynch has gone from Eraserhead to Blue Velvet to Twin Peaks to...a Gucci commercial? One could argue it's a sad state of affairs when all a down on his luck (misunderstood?) filmmaker has left is filming commercials. Or one could argue it's a step up since it seems every Hollywood director is doing it these days.

While we not sure about the soundtrack in this Gucci commercial - Blondie's Heart of Glass - visually, it's all David Lynch. It's like a scene out of Twin Peaks with supermodels dancing instead of that freaky little guy. In fact, if you replaced the Blondie tune with the Twin Peaks theme, it would be Twin Peaks. Don't get us wrong. We love Lynch. Though, we wish he'd hurry up and give us another Mulholland Drive or a Lost Highway we could actually understand.

Condom Pushers Seek Niche of Unporky Pokers on MySpace, Facebook

We're a little confused about Trojan's position in the social networking space. While encouraging sexually active users to "Evolve" from pig to man via MySpace, the Facebook flyer for Trojan's Magnum series appears to be encouraging us to poke each other to a frenzy.

Maybe they thought dudes with bigger schlongs just don't read Orwell.

To be fair though, the innuendo behind Facebook's "pokes" is a little hard to resist. We can't even count how many users have made us feel uncomfortable with their incessant poking.

If we reciprocate, will they think we're whores?

UPDATE, 10-5-07: A contact at Edelman says the ad isn't Trojan's but (possibly) an online condom vendor's. Well, baby, free promotion never does hurt. Unless you happen to be running a campaign specifically aimed at discouraging porky poking practices.

Nielsen Triples, Monster Consolidates, NBC Cheats, Slingbox Chats

- In an effort to more accurately capture true television viewership, Nielsen has announced it will triple the size of its national people meter to 37,000 households and 100,000 people. 100,000 to 300 million? Well that's better than before.

- Monster.com has consolidated its $155 million North American media buying responsibilities with Mediaedge:cia.

- For Heroes, NBC is taking advantage of a Nielsen loophole which allows the network to add ratings from this Saturday's repeat of the premiere back into Monday's premiere. The loophole states re-airings with the exact same content and advertising can be counted together.

- The Slingbox Guy is back and this time he's doing what TiVo should have done when it first launched: tell people what the product does.

Advertising Week: Getting Deep Over WeeMeetinis, and Why Priceline is Tricky

Tell me how to nail cheap two-star accommodations in NY the day before Advertising Week, and I'll call you a liar and tell you how you - yes, you - can survive in a youth hostel during a business trip.

Because after (reeeeally) bad planning on my part, that's where I ended up.

At the end of yesterday's Saving Darfur session, which ran a half hour over time, I wandered the streets of New York in desperate pursuit of the 1 Subway line.

After accidentally interrupting the filming of a movie called "Fighting," I located this crucial urban vein, hopped on and trekked to my hotel.

Priceline.com has this cool option where you can "name your price!" on a hotel. The setback is, if they find you a place at "your price!", you're married to it - no refunds, no takebacks. [Ed. Someday we'll elevate ourselves from the slums and hire and executive travel planner who will hunt down and torture Paris Hilton until she orders Hilton Management to put us up at the Waldorf Astoria for $50 a night.]

So it was with surprise, some chagrin and a sudden craving for croissants that I discovered my hotel, attractively dubbed West End Studios, was not a hotel at all but a youth hostel.

The world spun. I'd gone from from Underdressed Amongst Ad Execs to Overdressed to Kill. Flippin' amazing.

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Rayban Sunglass Toss, Axe Girlfriend Ported to Nissan Rogue Vids

Before we even comment on these video supplements to the Nissan Rogue campaign which broke on Heroes last night, we truly hope its real. Not in the sense that it was passed off as something that came from the brand but didn't because it did. Nissan is all good with transparency here. Rather, we hope the stunts filmed in the videos are genuinely real and not altered with post production foolery.

Borrowing a bit from the Rayban Never Hide videos and the Axe Girlfriend comes this video campaign for Nissan's Rogue from TBWA\Tequila in LA. In the videos, the "Maze Master" shows us his skills with a marble maze game. In the first video, Maze Master and friend perform stunts with a marble just the Axe video did with quarters and the Never Hide videos did with sunglasses.

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If Microsoft Bites, Zuckerberg May Join Billionaire Boys' Club

Think Facebook is worth $10 billion? It will prove worth that and more if Microsoft decides to take a 5 percent stake in the company for $300 million to $500 million.

Word of Microsoft's intentions has also got Google sniffing back up the ass of everybody's favourite social network. Not bad pickin's considering Facebook is expected to suck in $150 in revenue this year, of which $30 million will be profit.

Talk about fiat value. Here's to Facebook, which isn't so much "connecting" people as it is printing its own scrilla-scratch-dough.