Elle Girl's Tweety Bird Wants Your Fasion-tastic Designs

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ELLEgirl.com and Warner Bros. Consumer Products recently bowed ELLEgirl goes Tweety Chic! campaign, a contest inviting wannbe fashionistas to create a tunic design for Tweety. Powered by user-generated content company Brickfish, the contest will award the winner with a tunic of her (or his, we assume, for for so inclined) design created by L.A. stylists Cristina Ehrlich and Estee Stanley of Miss Davenporte along with a weekend trip to Beverly Hills to stay at the Mondrian hotel, a gift bag filled with $500 in Tweety goodies and the...wait for it... chance to blog about the weekend on ELLEgirl.com.

Two years ago we'd just call this an online contest. Now we have to call it a social media-enabled, consumer/user-generated/created content/media campaign. Remember when an integrated campaign was dubbed "synergistic"? Yup. Everything's the same. We just have new blatherific labels for the same old shit.

Anyway. You still here? What are you waiting for? Beverly Hills? $500? And a chance to be a blogger? What's holding you back?



Kanye West Leaps onto the McFly 2015 Project with 'Graduation'

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Hot off his last eye-popper, Kanye's making yet another political statement with the art on his third album, Graduation.

Created by Murakami (best known for his cavity-sweet Louis Vuitton line), the cover features Kanye's mascot flying fast in a pair of legendary McFlys. For a pair of shoes that never actually existed in the mainstream, the McFlys are making a runaway comeback like nobody's business - activists and all.

A glance over the comments section of Rumors Daily betrays mixed feelings about the album art. Generally speaking, we love Kanye and the McFlys. But others, like Malik, call this a "horrible drawing" that makes the beloved shoes look like "some K Swiss shit."

Not to hate on Murakami or Kanye, but they kind of do.

by Angela Natividad    Aug-21-07    
Topic: Campaigns, Cause, Celebrity, Good, Trends and Culture



Some Violent Femmes Don't Like Little Red-headed Wendy

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As the last pair of Beatles and the Saatchi guys will tell you, music and advertising make a passionate, but occasionally fatal, mix.

Bassist Brian Ritchie of the Violent Femmes is suing vocalist Gordon Gano for lack of attribution on some songs and inaccurate earnings distribution.

The lawsuit also alleges Gano "[trashed] the band's reputation" by licensing the use of "Blister in the Sun" in a Wendy's ad.

Ooh, pulling out the big guns. The ad doesn't strike us as super-controversial, but fans feel differently. One blogged, "My ears perked up. Then my jaw dropped. Then my heart sank."

Awww. There, there. Maybe it's the ad's white-collar aspect. Hey, an '80s folk-punk band can't stay young forever, and at some point even fans must exchange the bong for the mousepad. We'd cry in sympathy but, oh, we don't know how.

Thanks Brian for the tip.



Boyfriend Tells Beauty Mags They Make His Girlfriend Feel Ugly

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Now this isn't a new thought or anything but a guy in New York's East Village went to the trouble of hanging this banner from his building just to share his less than loving feelings towards beauty and fashion magazines which, as we all know, paint a fantastically fake image of what a woman should look like. That, or his girl friend really is ugly and he wants to demonstrate his undying love for her.

by Steve Hall    Aug-14-07    
Topic: Magazine, Outdoor, Trends and Culture



Julie Roehm, Along with Other Time-Wasting Ad People, Get All Friendy on Facebook

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We might have a lead on where all those old Facebookers are suddenly coming from. Advertising Age reports that marketers, sensing the hype, are joining the Facebook bandwagon in droves.

These include Julie Roehm, who calls Facebook "a terrific networking site that has a social bent, which makes it more fun than businesslike."

Roehm is using the service to connect with "young family members" according to Facebook, while other marketing gurus are taking advantage of said "social bent" to demonstrate that they too have personalities - joining political parties, posting vids and sharing useless information in real-time via the status feature.

Ad Age's Steve Rubel, for example, is "enjoying a light frappucino."

We played with the thought of trashing all these people but unfortunately we're on it too, and practically log on compulsively to see if anyone has SuperPoked us in the last 8-10 minutes.

by Angela Natividad    Aug-13-07    
Topic: Online, Trends and Culture



The Long Tail Has Destroyed Mass Media

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Entering the same room in which I sat somewhere around 1998 or 1999 when then head of Leo Burnett promised "not on my watch" will Leo Burnett ever go public, I thought, "my how times have changed." The room, however, is exactly the same; dark and lit like a carnival ride.

As ad:tech Chair Drew Ianni took the stage to introduce Wired Magazine Editor in Chief Chris Anderson who was the keynote speaker at ad:tech Chicago, he introduced something else, ad:tech's new working tagline "The Event for Modern Marketing" and gave an overview of ad:tech's expansion into other overseas markets as well as the growth of the online marketing space in general to its current level $20B.

more »

by Steve Hall    Jul-31-07    
Topic: Industry Events, Social, Trends and Culture



Gorbachev Lets Loose (or Not) for Louis

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When politics and pop culture meet, it's always a little fun to watch the synergy. Adverlab points us to this spot for Louis Vuitton, which slid from the Lolita-esque Scarlett Johanssen series to a celebrity survey that includes Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union's first (and last) president.

The New York Times observes that Gorbachev "appears the last comfortable [...] holding on to a door handle, as if the bag contained polonium 210."

Upon examining Gorbachev's expression, and then the bag, we've concluded there's definitely not a bowling ball in it. (Although it may well be perestroika.)



JetPacks Turns 365 (Days), is Still Awaiting Promised Jetpack

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We wish we'd noticed this sooner. Jetpacks just celebrated his 365th post, commemorating a year since he began the blog we so enjoy reading.

To keep the seething throng happy, he's promised to add an "Open Mic Night" to his sidebar, through which he'll post homemade recordings open to "ridicule, scorn and derision." We just listened to the first one and felt chills.

Cheers, Jetpacks. And for all the awesome you brought us in the past year, we have decided to pay you in - yes! - groupies.

by Angela Natividad    Jul-27-07    
Topic: Good, Online, Publishing, Trends and Culture



Ice Cream Truck Songs Perch High on Nouvelle Culture CD Collections

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There is something deliciously clowny and fragile about the ice cream truck songs developed by Michael Hearst for his aptly titled solo release, Songs for Ice Cream Trucks (sample at Wired).

When we were kids, ice cream trucks had maybe two songs in circulation and an angry turbaned man at the helm. These tracks bring playful innocence to the otherwise-jaded profession of hawking ice cream on the streets of 'burbia. How the world is changing.

by Angela Natividad    Jul-25-07    
Topic: Good, Radio, Trends and Culture



Cardboard Robot Brings Tin Man to Life in Streets of LA

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Stardust Studios' Neil Tsai directed a new project for the Cardboard Robot art collective, a street art group led by Mason Brown.

Granted, the world doesn't need another jaded street art society, but we do think it's cool that the man-versus-machine discourse has come to factor into creative play on concrete avenues.

The result was filmed in downtown Los Angeles and onstage at The Source. It's an industrialist's Alice in Wonderland.

by Angela Natividad    Jul-25-07    
Topic: Commercials, Good, Trends and Culture, Video