Obama Win Repositions 'Fearful America' as 'Young, Optimistic Country'

"And the people of Iowa heard him, and chose to roll the dice," wrote Arianna Huffington last night, in a tone slightly reminiscent of the Old Testament.

Having dived headfirst into the choppy seas of political advertising (with help from Silverstein) in November, Huffington triumphantly positions Barack Obama's Iowa win as reason one and all should celebrate.

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Chemistry.com Continues Attack on Homophobic eHarmony

Chemistry.com has launched a follow up to its Hanft Raboy and Partners-created Come as you Are campaign with two new print ads attacking eHarmony's apparent refusal to allow gays and those who choose to have premarital sex to match using its dating service. It's long been reported eHarmony Founder Dr. Neil Clark Warren is a fairly evangelical Christian who has made his beliefs known regarding gays, lesbian and other things not "perfectly Christian."

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Tourism Dept Positions Philly as Land of Pleasures Untold

To drive people into the arms of Philly, the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation gives us a print campaign called uwishunu ("You wish you knew" in ... hipster-language?) which, from what we can tell, is all about people trying to infiltrate Philadelphia entryways.

See variations one and two.

The tagline: "Let curiosity get the best of you."

Our curiosity is going, "What's the heroin quotient in Philly?"

Bootylicious Ass Offers Last Minute, Pre-Holiday Office Fantasy

Now wait just a friggin' minute. Since when does fine, upstanding AdFreak get to dwell in the Adrants gutter by posting images of impossibly hot ass? Well, apparently, a couple days before the holiday break when either no one in the industry is really working so no one will see it or all the agency bosses have left early making it open season for employees to stare at bootylicious ass rather than finalize that media plan or revise that layout for the fifteenth time.

Barbara Lippert called it "too, too cheeky." Brandweek called it "provocative." We'll just call it damn fine ass and be done with it. At this point, does it even matter what this ad is for? Do you really care? No, you don't. You just want to stare at it, fantasize about being with it and hope no one walking by your office catches you in the middle of pulse pounding mental moment..

Curves Campaign Highlights Workout, Not Weight Loss

Curves International, the place where women can fine tune their curves, has launched an ad campaign that doesn't make everyone feel fat or over sized in certain areas choosing to focus more on the actual workout rather than shedding pounds. The campaign, from Publicis Dallas will consist of TV, radio and online with the tagline, "Your Curves will amaze you." And yes, indeed, some curves do, in fact, amaze.

OK, OK. That was really lame but it's the end of the year and we're trying to purge.

Suffering Crises Untold? Pray a Hi! Photographer Finds You

For Sri Lankan society magazine Hi!, Leo Burnett Solutions Inc. put together three ads with a dark (but friendly!) feel.

The tagline: "Everyone smiles for Hi!" The angle: Even in miserable situations (a funeral, a riot, a stampede of Nazis or psychotic clowns) you're still gonna smile for a Hi! photographer.

The effort will appear on TV and in magazines, as well as at high society functions in the form of what the PR people call "quirky activations." Is that a euphemism for "overhead projectors"?

Converse Grateful For Mindless Sitcoms, Pointless Pageantry

Continuing its Anomaly-created Disruption campaign launched last month, Converse, in two new spots debuting tonight (Grateful, Pageant), attacks the idiocy of beauty pageants, American Idol, democracy, mindless sitcoms, reality shows and video games. While it seeks to set apart the viewer from the idiocy it highlights and, perhaps by disassociation, elevate the viewer in some way, one has to wonder whether or not calling everyone else an idiot is smart marketing.

For sure, the above-mentioned items are idiotically mindless but in a capitalistic society such as the one in which we live, nothing gets created unless people want it. Even if they are idiotic and mind numbing. As current culture indicates and as Converse points out, perhaps a lot of people are suffering from some form of idiotic mindlessness. Or at least the creators of this so-called mindless stuff are.

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Dude. Who Made Turkey the Official Holiday Ad Bird?

More turkeys! This campaign is for a product review site called Reevoo and its goal is to show you what can happen when you don't research a product before buying it.

Its means of intimidation is ye old dad-gets-embarrassed-in-front-of-his-kid approach. Slick and merciless, baby.

Put together by Gas Agency.

Can't Read Your Kids? Ask a Celebrity, Courtesy of Best Buy

To help parents understand what their teenagers want for the holidays, Best Buy launched an online campaign called Wow the Un-Wowable featuring Nickelodeon's Drake Bell, a teen star who's really good at looking bummed.

In a series of videos, Drake "interprets" what teens want. Ideas include a laptop, a Lexus and a horse named iPod. (Yeah.)

In our expert view, the videos straddle parody and condescension. We haven't decided which halves of our emotional selves to give in to yet.

Whatever happened to the unfailing cash-and-card model? $20 may not buy a Lexus, but the recipient may score some fragrant pot.

Nothing says "I love you" like money with no strings!

Putin on Call of Duty 4: 'Silent but Deadly, Like a Boris Yeltsin Fart'

For Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, DDB, LA ran a campaign where real-life warmongers become video game reviewers.

We've been putting off covering it because watching all the spots (:60 EACH!) seems so labor-intensive. After sitting through all five, we've concluded they are less funny versions of this Hitler Xbox spoof.

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