Virgin Atlantic: Still Red-Hot After All These Years

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To celebrate Virgin Atlantic's 25th anni, "Still Red Hot" brings us back to June 22nd, 1984, when London's Gatwick Airport changed forever.

On a day that would otherwise be forever defined by a miner's strike, Virgin Atlantic's premier crew of red-clad flight attendants broke the mundanity with their bitch-watch-me walks and winning smiles. A revolving ticker overhead ties fiction to fact: Virgin's first-ever flight route, VS001 to Newark, is ON TIME.

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Fun With Stats And Why MySpace is the Fifth Largest Country

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While statistics are easy to play with and manipulate to suit a particular argument, this video from Did You Know 3.0 offers up some stunning stats.

To the tune of Fat Boy Slim's Right Here Right Now, we are told tidbits such as the top ten in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004; by age 28, people will have had 10-14 different jobs; one out of eight couples who married last year met online; if MySpace were a country it'd be the 5th largest; Bermuda has the deepest broadband penetration; the number of text messages sent and received each day exceeds the total population of the planet; the mount of information generated this year will exceed all that was generated of the past 5,000 years; an NTT fiber optic cable is capable of pushing through 2,660 CDs in one second; by 2013 supercomputers will exceed the computational capabilities of the human brain; by 2049, a $1,000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the entire human species.

Hmm. So maybe by 2013 contextual advertising will finally become "intelligent" enough to stop placing ads for turpentine next to stories about girls who drank the stuff to induce an abortion?

by Steve Hall    Dec-30-08    
Topic: Research, Trends and Culture



This is Brew Creative's Message of Hope.

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This holiday, Brew Creative decided to forego that "we're donating to charity!" crap that other agencies are doing and cut right to the good stuff. Here's a mash-up of all the depressing political soundbytes we were all subjected to this year.

If nothing else, let this knowledge fill your heart: our government makes so many warped promises that our interests are bound to be met at least some of the time, so keep right on coasting along and eating bacon.

Probably the best thing about this effort is the ability to sift through a broad array of disconnected soundbytes and make your own "message of hope." Politico quotables are divided between "Phrases" and "Connecting words." Good times.

Mashup features provided with help from Sevnthsin.

by Angela Natividad    Dec-23-08    
Topic: Agencies, Online, Political, Trends and Culture, Video



Charity Holiday, Enemy Gameplay, More Than Words with Alex B.

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- Top 10 virals of '08, courtesy of the guys that brought you this.

- Digitas Health donates to charity for the holidays, as does RAZ PR (which told us via paper card). Meanwhile, comScore pledges trees.

- "Unprecedented economic waters" (nice euphemism!) means no FedEx retardation during '09's Super Bowl. One less thing to look forward to. Honestly, anything involving Burt Reynolds makes us happier people.

- Remember that crazy/beautiful, semi-schizophrenic media orgy titled Game, Game, Game and Again Game? The sequel is called I Made This. You Play This. We Are Enemies. Creator Jason Nelson promises "More strange hand drawn creatures, with screen shot anchored levels and all the poetic bits known." And then we kissed him.

- Crowdsourcing horror.

- Beancasting Steve and Bill. Among other things, they talk online video marketing, Pepsi suicide ads and diversity (lack of?) in the industry.

- Learn to shred with CP+B. "But yeah, the biggest thing people will go after is Alex giving lessons on how to play Extreme's More Than Words." Sounds like a winner to me.



Fallon Melts Industry Treasures, Produces Golden Idol

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Apparently Fallon is so bad-ass it would melt down One Show Pencils, Clios, Cannes Lions and even an Emmy -- all those paperweights you slave so hard for -- just to celebrate its staying power.

The You Are Fallon project represents 30 years of creative work and also commemorates the agency's move to a new space. Existing and former employees donated awards they won while at Fallon, then sat back while the gold, silver and bronze bits were melted into a 175-pound plaque that simply proclaims, "We are Fallon."

Kinda cool that people unloaded enough trinkets to produce 175 pounds' worth of Fallon love. Provided the plaque isn't one day lifted by a disgruntled (and extremely strong) ex-creative, it's like being immortalized into the fabric of your second home. See making-of.

by Angela Natividad    Dec-18-08    
Topic: Agencies, Events, Social, Trends and Culture



PG Tips Monkey Dons Queenly Drag, Gives Christmas Speech

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...while trashed! "Mmm, tasty pies." That naughty knitted-sock simian.

The work -- which precedes a full-length ad that debuts on Christmas day -- riffs off the speeches Queen Elizabeth occasionally gives via YouTube, but we swear the script flubs were inspired by these orgamsumumic outtakes for this Lavalife ad. ("Orgamsums? Orgasmums.") By AKQA and Cake.

When last we saw the PG Tips monkey, he invited us back to his place "for a cuppa."

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by Angela Natividad    Dec-18-08    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Good, Online, Trends and Culture, Video



Guy Sells Wardrobe to Advertisers For 365 Days

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The "human advertising trend," which involves the selling of parts of one's bodies or personal items to advertisers has been around for quite sometime. Mostly, initial examples were one-offs followed by many unsuccessful followers. Mostly, they were laughed at because, well, it wasn't "real" advertising. Now, with most forms of advertising in upheaval or on the brink of failure, marketers are much more receptive to trying new things.

This receptiveness has allowed web designer Jason Sadler's I Wear Your Shirt to be well on it's way to a complete success. With I Wear Your Shirt, an in the flesh-style PayPerPost, Sadler, 26, will wear a company's shirt for one day every day next year. Off to s good start, 145 days have been sold so far.

Sadler has attractively priced his offering with each day sold at "face value." In other words, January 1st costs $1 and so on. Most days through April have been sold to date. Sadler stands to make as much as $66,795 if he sells all 365 days.

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by Steve Hall    Dec-18-08    
Topic: Human, Opinion, Trends and Culture



Twitter Before Birth, FlightLipDub, Best/Worst of '08

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- Geek rigs maternity device to tweet when his unborn baby kicks. Probably the earliest instance of Twitter use EVAR. (Thanks, Atif!)

- Collateral Damage's top 10 marketing blunders of '08. There's way more than 10 ("It was a very good year for very bad things"), and the top two are tied. Go figure.

- Deep Focus does FlightLipDub.com -- the new online home for Flight of the Conchords.

- Free Will Power aims to safeguard "the future of pro-choice America." There's spoken word poetry! And a T-shirt contest!

- It's a site on the hunt for beautiful ads.

- Another advertising socnet.

- Best and worst of AdFreak. If you consider what Collateral Damage's worst marketing campaign was, you can probably guess AdFreak's best ad of '08. We'll give you a hint: celebrity mashup.

by Angela Natividad    Dec-15-08    
Topic: Cause, Online, Opinion, Strange, Trends and Culture



Microsoft Does Softwear. No, That's Not a Typo.

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Having failed (twice!) to woo young defectors with ads, Microsoft tries appealing to their unending quest for ironic shirts.

The so-called Softwear line of tees joins Crispin Porter + Bogusky's ongoing "I'm a PC" campaign. Common -- who already appears in ads for Microsoft's Zune -- infused the shirts with retro cred and his own '80s-inspired designs.

Variants include:

o The DOS Tangle: "The first logo you saw on a screen."
o The 101: "Learn to speak the language." Oooh, binary.
o The Misdemeanor: "Everyone deserves a second chance."

There's something the world needs now: mugshots of Bill Gates prowling the streets.

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Bratz Towed Out by the Lips, $99 iPhones, Devil's Advocate, Lego Fashion

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- Bratz could be yanked off shop shelves. A federal court ruled designer Carter Bryant guilty of developing the brand while working at Mattel. Well, there's one less plastic scapegoat in the world.

- Spitzer's back, bitches! -- as online columnist?!

- Rumor has it Wal-Mart'll be pushing $99 4-gig iPhones after Christmas. Huh.

- Todd Tilford -- who founded Pyro in Dallas -- joins Grey/NY as ECD.

- I feel epilepsy coming! This hallucinatory beverage experience brought to you by Omega 3 Smartfish and TBWA/Norway.

- "Cheese" + "Cupid" -- a hit on Google, if not for Wisconsin Cheese.

- Satan plays devil's advocate.

- Fashion a la Lego.