Pot Noodle Courts UGC for ... Pots ... of ... Noodles.

AKQA London has launched a weird little YouTube campaign for Pot Noodle in the UK.

We like the campaign mainly because, in exchange for user-generated fare, they've opted not to dole out the usual $10K. Instead, winners get a FREE CASE OF POT NOODLE!!!, which is probably exactly what they're worth.

Oh yeah, you can also win a PS3.

Boy Band Lovers Get Juicy Fix in Fruit Guys

We never get tired of a rip on boy bands, especially when the pith is as thinly-veiled as it is on Fruit Guy Fans, a site for a Fruit of the Loom-sponsored boy band whose costumes are just as fruity as its music.

The concept's actually pretty sound, resisting the urge to go over the top like so many other parodies (or not) tend to. Download MP3s for would-be one-hit wonders like "You Can't Overlove." Our favorite is "Dream."

Thanks Bill for the heads-up and the bad poetry.

Smokey Bear Turns 60, Introduces Sexy New Graphics and Touching Bearcub Story

We were screwing around on some foreign news site when we saw the banner at left and thought, "Hey, Smokey Bear! Can't believe that guy is still around."

Out of curiosity, we hit www.smokeybear.com and found a creepy video that involves a child singing some song about forest fires, coupled with imagery of a spark igniting stenciled animals and a forest.

Smokey's Vault is a feature that brings Smokey into 2007 with a bunch of hip little spigot-thingies. There we discovered that Smokey was an actual baby bear that in 1950 rolled charred (and orphaned) out of the forest after a (clearly unprevented) forest fire.

And that's way more about fire-shy Bear than we ever thought we'd know. Those spigots, or at least that Bambi-esque banner ad, are clearly very effective.

Commander Adama Parachutes From Plane For Farmer's Insurance

Usually, he's just slowly walking around his Battlestar mumbling prophetic statements about the importance of mankind in that gruff voice he perfected so well back on Miami Vice but now Edward James Olmos is appearing, again, in two new commercial for Farmer's Insurance. In the first, Olmos is thrown, hands tied, from a plane without a parachute but is "rescued" by a pair of parachutists who, oh, just happen to be free falling through the air to save him by untying his hands and affixing a parachute to him. Of course, on the ground it's revealed it's all just a scene from some movie.

A second spot, also part of a movie set, has Olmos in the future being chased by a flying motorcycle while being shot. Olmos and everything is undamaged. The message in the two spots is things in real life are not indestructible which is why one needs insurance, namely Farmer's

Lululemon's L'Odeur Leaves Something Lovely Wanting

For L'Odeur, an edible perfume, Lululemon put together this ad that can't seem to decide whether it's Calvin Klein or SNL.

We weren't the only ones who cringed. The PR people didn't seem keen on it either. And we can see why. It's a little ... well, gross.

To be fair, the ending was kind of funny.

Hispanic Creative Greats Highlight Great Hispanic Creative

There's not much to say about an ad:tech session that focuses on creative since its so subjective. However, during the Creative Showcase: The Best of Latin America moderated by AHAA Immediate Past Chairman and Parliamentarian Carl Kravetz, Media 8 Digital Marketing Executive Creative Director Gustavo Garcia presented work his agency did which maximized the notion Hispanic women love to talk about beauty and all the product that go along with beautifying oneself.

more »

Scion xD Has No Patience for Bleating Kind

Scion continues to woo us with weirdness, pushing its trademark customization aspect with this intro video to the new Little Deviants campaign for the xD. Like the occasionally cute Want 2 B Square effort, this too was put together by ATTIK.

We like the whole gratuitous decapitation thing, but what if you don't want to identify with the sheeple or the deviants? It's always hard to pick a side when there are no heroes. Plus, the head-hunting deviants are irredeemably ugly.

Has too much individualization made us all peer-snuffing monsters?

Designer's Dark Side Illuminated in AIGA Campaign

Gleefully celebrating the seemingly unintentional dark side of graphic designers what with terminology such as bleed, ghosting, muting and more, Colle+McVoy created a campaign for the American Institute of Graphic Arts, a part of which is a picture riddle game to find 25 dark pieces of terminology.

In addition to the micro site, posters of the ad have been developed and are being sent to design schools to enhance recruitment efforts. T-shirts are also available to those who purchase them by clicking on the bottom left corner of the screen in the "shop" section.

Make Fastrack to Fuck Buddies with Furry Four-Legged Friends

Match.com has this incredible knack for drawing our attention - mainly because they can't hold together a consistent ad campaign, as evidenced here and here and here and here and here. Here they even try being somebody else for awhile.

Anyway, we recently came across this banner ad that uses the pun "Heavy petting" to invite users to enter their pet preferences for a different take on the whole matching thing. We were later brought to this puppy love landing page.

Animal humor always weirds us out when it's too closely related to the topic of hooking up. But more importantly, didn't True already pull out the pet prattle?

Wegman's LPGA Obesity Prevention PSAs Urge Exercise

We're not quite sure this creative is very good...at all, but the message is an important one: get your lazy ass off the couch, off the Wii and out from behind your Webkinz and MySpace pages and exercise your lard-laden, muffin top-sporting, double chinned body for an hour a day. Of course, they said it a lot nicer than we just did so take a look.