DIY Cold Sores

The Dove real beauty campaign has done much to highlight the often unatainable perfection of many of the female images used in advertising.

People who think that more can be done should visit Printable Cold Sores.

This site by a well known street artist features downloadable sheets of cold sores. As well as instructions on how to print and attach them to glamorous cosmetic ads.

Nice way to raise awareness of the beauty issue, but I can't help thinking the cold sore stickers would make great a promo tool for Zovirax.

Information superhighway is here

Brilliant Canadian news story from 1993 on the fifteen million people across the globe connecting and communicating via a computer network called internet.

There’s a great quote in the early part of the broadcast, that's quite visionary in its prediction that computers would mature from adding machines and typewriters to tools of the human spirit.

Thanx to Greg

Picture perfect

This is one of those ideas that is so obvious you can't believe it's never been done before.

Inspired thinking from young London based creatives David & Phoebe.

You can see lot's more of their great ideas on their blog What If...

Say hello to my little friend

Obviously we all have something to quibble over with the Oscars.

My issue for this year, is why I had to sit through Jessica Simpson in her short shorts pushing pizza.

Not one or twice during the telecast, but in practically every single ad break.

If only we could have had this lovely spot for the iPhone like they did in the US.

Guess there's always next year.

Quote of the day

"Introducing 'Lite' - The new way to spell 'Light' but with 20% fewer letters."

Jerry Seinfeld

Airline logo fails to fly

I've had many concepts knocked back during the course of my career, for reasons to numerous to mention.

One reason that's never come up though is luck.

Bad luck to be precise.

The new Belgian airline Brussels Air received a flood of complaints about their logo.

Seems their B was made up of thirteen dots.

Given the power of superstition, Brussel's bigwigs have decided to add an extra dot to the logo.

Fingers crossed people will like it.

The mouse that roared

Nintendo’s Wii console has been generating masses of publicity since its launch.

In the early days there were stories of people breaking windows by accidentally letting go of their controllers.

More recently there’s been several articles on how the Wii is doing its bit for childhood obesity by helping kids get more active.

The most amazing story of all though is that Nintendo is winning the console war.

According to research group NPD, 436,000 Wii units were sold in the USA in January, compared to 294,000 for the Xbox360 and 244,000 PS3 consoles.

Obviously it’s still early days, but I can help thinking about the comment my son made about how Nintendo had actually created a whole new category with the Wii.

Kinda like the way the iPod completely changed the MP3 market I guess.

Beware of hitchhiking toddlers

Australia has got to be one of the most over-governed countries in the world.

You can't do this. You can't do that.

The nanny state, I believe, is the terminology for this.

Well I don't think there's a nanny anywhere who wouldn't love the Hyundai 'toddler' ad.

It's sooo cute.

But not cute enough for the Advertising Standards Bureau who've gone and banned it!

And why? Because "it sent the wrong message to preschoolers about driving cars."

The Bureau were also not happy that the toddlers were wearing seatbelts, instead of approved child restraints.

I'm struggling to wrap up this post because I am, quite literally, lost for words.

You've come a long way baby

Happy 20th birthday to the Aussie mobile phone.

Mel Ward, then MD of Telecom Australia, made the nation's first mobile call on a Mitsubishi handset from the Sydney Opera House on February 23, 1987.

Back then mobile phones were the size of a briefcase, cost over $4,000 and had a battery life of less than half an hour.

Now a staple of modern life, the mobile has long since shaken off its 'Wall St' yuppy image.

As for Mitsubishi, well I'm sure they make nice cars, but their time as mobile telephony trailblazers has long since passed into history.

Obviously being first isn't always best.

Altered Images

I remember many years ago attending a presentation about the power of images and how to manipulate them.

One of the speakers showed us a photo of legendary baseballer Babe Ruth about to swing his bat.

He then showed us a much wider version of the same shot, with Ruth looking tiny surrounded by stadium stands filled with people.

That clever display of cropping has stayed with me for years.

Today I came across a pic by photo-journalist Muhammed Muheisen on Wooster.

It's a great photo, that tells a story.

After I cropped it, it told a very different story.

Bud on ice

I came to advertising business late in life. At least it seemed pretty late at the time.

Anyway. One of the benefits of coming to copywriting late is you've got some life experience to draw on.

This ad for Budweiser feels like a real life experience to me.

Maybe not on the scale pictured in the ad, but somewhere out there is, I reckon, someone who once used a fishtank as a beer cooler.

Cheers to RKCR Y&R London.

Black History Day

Maybe I'm being a bit over sensitive, which is unlike me to be honest.

But 'dark meat' chicken!?

What on earth were they thinking?

Click pic for a closer look.

Via CMM

Pirelli Mission Zero

Shades of Kill Bill in this ‘poster’ for the Pirelli online film Mission Zero.

The combination of Uma Thurman and the colour yellow is practically a mnemonic device.

Sadly the five minute film has none of the cleverness we’ve come to expect from Tarantino. I don't think that's the fault of director Kathryn Bigelow though.

This is definitely not in the same league as any of the BMW Films, although I’m pretty sure it would like to be.

Nope. This is standard car chase fare, with Uma behind the wheel of a yellow Lamborghini.

The payoff is unexpected. But it’s also a serious let down.

I won’t go and spoil it for you. Click here and watch Uma smoulder in Mission Zero.

Modern spin on the Folkways

An excellent retrospective of the late graphic designer Ronald Clyne opens tomorrow at The Narrows in Melbourne.

The exhibition will feature more than fifty of his most famous album cover designs for Folkways Records.

Clyne’s best known Folkways cover is also their best known recording, Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music.

Whilst the music may have been a little out of step with the times, Clyne’s designs were striking modernist masterpieces.

For want of a better cliché, this show is not to be missed.

The Narrows, 2/141 Flinders Lane, Melbourne. Runs 23 February to 17 March.

You can never have too many ideas

I’ve been working on a pitch with a local agency for the last few days.

Over the course of a day, the head-of-art and I generated enough ideas to fill three walls of the office we were working in.

Obviously many of those ideas will never see the light of day.

They might be off brief. They could be wrong for the brand. Quite a few of them are probably crap.

None of that matters, at least I don’t think so.

The more ideas you have, the more chance you have of cracking a really big one.

I found a great little piece on this very subject on the always interesting Thought Spurs.

A few years back the Mini production line in England was stopped each week so that the workers could brainstorm new ideas.

Each worker was asked to generate three small ideas a year. This resulted in 14,000 new ideas, 11,000 of which were implemented.

Not bad.

Except that over in Japan, Toyota’s employee suggestion scheme generates two million ideas a year of which around 85% are implemented.

Just goes to show, the best way to have a great idea is to have car loads of them.

Even if most of them are crap.

Attenborough on advertising

In a recent interview in The Guardian, everyone’s favourite natural history film maker, David Attenborough, spewed forth his thoughts on advertising.

“I hate advertisements, virulently and with ferocity.”

He cites them as the reason why he would never work for a TV channel other than the good old BBC.

“If that set has any damage,” he says, whilst pointing to his widescreen plasma, “it's because I have thrown something at it when it came to an important point in a drama and they showed a picture of a chocolate bar.”

I wonder how he feels when the BBC sell his shows off to those nasty commercial channels, which is quite common outside of the UK?

Perhaps that's a question we should ask his bank manager instead.

Kicking goals online

Chelsea Football Club are launching their own channel on YouTube.

The Chelsea channel will feature archive footage, daily news and assorted clips of some of Britain’s most overpaid footballers.

Whether the online venture will help Chelsea balance their books remains to be seen.

They reported a loss of £80.2million in 2006, resulting in a staggering £308million combined loss for the last three years.

Who let this one through?

We’re in the boardroom of a major tobacco company.

“So,” says the Chairman, “how are we going to ensure we maintain our numbers in the all important female teenage market?”

There’s silence at the table…

“Come on,” says the Chairman, “what the hell am I paying you for?”

“I know,” says the Marketing Director, “how ‘bout we find one of the hottest chicks on the planet and get her to smoke in an ad.”

“Brilliant!” says the Chairman. “Just like we used to do back in the sixties.”

“No way,” pipes up the Legal Counsel. “We’ll never get it past legal. Not in Australia.”

“Well let’s say we could,” says the Chairman, “who’d be desperate enough for the money to dare to tarnish their squeaky clean image?”

Failure to exist

Another insightful piece of thinking by Lynette.

There are still so many marketing people out there who think that simply having a web presence is enough.

Well it's not.

I worked on a big website project last year.

Our brief was to develop a website. Nothing more.

A month after the site went live the client was stressed out because the site wasn't ranked in the top three in a Google search.

It took us a lot of time to get them to understand how important search and search optimisation was.

What a pity we never had Lynette's visual at the time.

Building a website just isn't enough.

As Lynette says, you have to write yourself into existence.

Frank advertising

I've posted several times on this blog about New Zealand advertising.

I don't know why, but for a country so small and so remote, they sure do make some great ads.

This campaign for Frank by the mighty Colenso is just lovely.

Sweet, simple and very clever use of dodgy American voiceover.

Thanks to Jason for pointing it in my direction.

Oz Telco poo poos iPhone

Greg Winn, operations chief of Telstra, thinks that rather than trying to break into the phone market, Apple should ‘stick to their knitting.’

“Apple is not a mobile phone manufacturer, that's not their knitting," said Winn.

With Nokia currently claiming to be in the computing business, not the mobile phone business, I'd say that claim is probably a bit shortsighted.

So what is it that has our man from Telstra so sure that the iPhone isn’t gonna fly down under?

The iPhone designers opted to use EDGE technology rather than 3G which is rapidly gaining a strong foothold in Australia.

Personally I don’t think this is a major stumbling block.

When I was in Japan a while back I was tempted by several of the phones that I saw on my trip.

However the salesmen talked me out of making a purchase, as none of the phones was suitable for the Australian market.

I'm pretty sure the same thing would apply if you bought an iPhone in the US.

A phone needs to be set up for local market conditions. No phone works in every country in the world straight out of the box.

Now I could be wrong, but I doubt that technology is the real issue. I’m sure Apple will adapt the iPhone to local market conditions.

No, I think Greg Winn’s problem is his relationships with mobile phone manufacturers.

He obviously can’t be seen to be recommending a product from a first time manufacturer.

Especially a newcomer with a track record like Apple.

"You can pretty much be assured that Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and others will be coming out with devices that have similar functionality," claimed Winn.

And I think you can be pretty much assured that the likes of Optus, 3 and Virgin are already in talks with Apple about an iPhone for their networks.

Happy Chinese New Year

Driving home from the city on Friday I noticed a hawkers market had been set up on the banks of the Yarra on the Crown Promenade.

Must be the Chinese New Year I thought to myself.

The Year of The Pig, or DingHai as it's known formally, kicks off today.

The A-League football grand final is also today.

This coinciding of events had me a little puzzled.

You see last year my son Max and I went to the hawkers market after a football game, but it was in January.

I took the pic above while we were there.

So why is the new year being celebrated in mid February this time 'round?

A quick google search revealed that last year, the Year of The Dog, was a leap year.

And rather than adding a day as we do in the international calendar, the Chinese calendar adds a whole month.

A whole month!

Now that's what I call a calendar.

Twiddling your thumbs

The combination of Guinness, hands and a little stop motion makes for heaps of fun for all the family.

Well family members of 18 and over anyway.

Guinness were one of the pioneers of innovation online.

They had an online magazine with its own Pub Quiz back in the late nineties.

Good to see them keeping one step ahead of the rest.

If you've got nothing better to do, click here and start twiddling your thumbs.

Another post about love

Much chattering out there on the web this week about the Google Valentine logo.

It certainly made cynical old me smile, that’s for sure.

What I can’t believe is how many people have got nothing better to do than crap on about how there’s no L in the logo.

Was it a mistake?

Was it an homage to some bloke called Googe who wrote love letters?

Was it some designer’s practical joke?

Honestly people, get a life!

Just accept it for what it is - an unexpected touch of sweetness in your day.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Google would obviously be loving the coverage this has generated.

The type of publicity that money just can't buy.

By the way, now that they’re an item, I wonder when G and L will announce their engagement?

Show some love

There’s been much discussion in recent years about childhood obesity. It’s obviously a complex issue and the result of a variety of factors.

Regardless of the politics and fingerpointing the fact is, I believe, we need to get our kids moving more.

Nike set up the Nike Go program with this as its mission.

To publicise the program Wieden &Kennedy have done three very sweet mini movies with falling in love with a sport as their theme.

I don’t know if the love theme was meant to tie in with Valentines Day, but it can’t be a coincidence the work popped up this week.

Click here to check out Show Some Love. For more info on the Nike Go program click here.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it

One of the world’s greatest Lovemarks is under threat.

Some half brained marketing man has decided that after 30 years the I Love NY campaign is in need of the advertising equivalent of a Botox injection.

Surely there must be some way to have Milton Glaser’s iconic logo device protected under law?

With $16million earmarked for the campaign makeover we can only hope the money’s spent wisely.

MySpace is lining Rupert's coffers

Social networking monitor Mashable reports that MySpace is currently raking in around $25million a month in advertising revenue.

That's a hell of a lot of ugly, flashing and rather annoying banner ads in anyone's language.

The MySpace people are also predicting revenue growth of some 30% per quarter.

No wonder old Rupert Murdoch was so keen to add it to his empire.

Roll the dice

If you're an art director who's sick and tired of people telling you how to do your job, help is at hand.

Well kind of.

Simply click here and download your very own copy of Art Director - The Board Game.

From making logos bigger, to misspelling words in headlines, this game really does have something for everyone.

Found at Adland

Unwashed and slightly dazed

Saatchi’s Sydney CD David Nobay is in Buenos Aires at the moment, judging the Andy awards.

While he’s over there he’s posting an online diary (of sorts) on the Campaign Brief blog.

Never one to do things by halves, Nobby’s first post is littered with the casually dropped names of advertising bigwigs.

One that I found interesting was Bob Greenberg, head of R/GA, who was described as having a CV that lists previous lives as a boxer, biker and film producer.

Nobby goes on to compare this to Neil French, whose CV includes matador, rock band manager and debt collector.

I love these kind of well travelled creatives, I really do.

By ‘well travelled’ I don’t mean over paid art directors who go on a lot of big budget tv shoots.

I mean people who lived, worked and experienced life before heeding the call of adland.

Even your humble Brand DNA scribe spent time as a scale mechanic, weights & measures inspector and short order cook before putting a homemade folio together.

In AdAge today Mike Byrne, creative head of Anomaly in the US, had this to say:

"I met with a guy last week who, when he was 18, got a DUI, drove into a ditch, ended up going to the Army instead of jail. Then he decided to design tattoos and did this documentary on this Christian rock band he followed around. He's never done an ad in his life, and I'm going to hire him. For me, that's the future. These self-made pioneers who are ambitious, have an incredibly strong work ethic and are conceptual-driven by big ideas."

I’m not advocating our young folks walk away from their advertising degrees and creative courses. Far from it.

I just think we need a few more maverick Ted Horton types in our industry. Ordinary people who are anything but ordinary.

Job title of the week

Draft-FCB has promoted Michael Fassnacht from their Chigaco office to the newly created global role of Chief Customer Intelligence Officer.

Now that’s what I call a job title!

I wonder what he says when his Mum asks him what he does for a living?

I'd hazard a guess that he’d tell her he “provides strategy and management for data and customer intelligence across the DraftFCB network.”

If he did, and she failed to be impressed, he could always add that he also “creates tools and direct methodologies illustrating the agency's 'Return on Ideas' positioning.”

Sadly I have no idea what that means.

Which is probably why I’m in the creative department and he’s a global guru.

Quotes via Brand Republic and Draft FCB PR

World first eBay auction

Renowned Melbourne design group Letterbox are intending to auction one of their creations on eBay.

Nothing new in that you’re thinking. But Letterbox are going to auction off a brand new font.

Known as Bisque, the seriously stylish typeface will be up for grabs on eBay from 17 April, in celebration of World Graphic Design Day.

The lucky bidder will gain exclusive international rights to the font for twelve months.

Letterbox claim this font auction will be a world first.

Whether that’s true or not, the event is guaranteed to generate plenty of publicity.

Old words and new meanings

Although I am often irritated by American spellings, I love the way the English language is continually evolving.

Every year new words are not only created, but also added to our dictionaries.

Of course we also create new meanings for words, and this Australian ad from the fifties is a prime example of that.

Not that there's anything wrong with it as Jerry Seinfeld would say.

Found on adland

The big tick

The team from the Golden Arches recieved the Heart Foundation's tick of approval on several of their menu items this week.

I wonder how long it'll be before we start seeing that used as an insight or proposition in a creative brief?

McDonalds. It's good for you - Honest!

Untapped voiceover talent

I went to see the Leonard Cohen film I'm Your Man yesterday. A fascinating tribute to a true one-off.

Strangely what struck me most during the film was Cohen's voice.

Not his singing voice, but his speaking voice. A voice of the ages, rich with life and gravitas.

The kind of voice we don't seem to hear in ads.

Now I know this is probably sacrilegious, but I reckon old Len would make a brilliant voiceover man.

His voice shares many of the qualities of Orson Welles, who was of course no stranger to the V/O booth.

I very much doubt old Len needs a V/O gig somehow.

However if you are looking for a strong yet understated male voice for your next ad why not drop him a message on his MySpace page.

Embrace failure

Classic Nike spot from a few years ago.

Turn up your speakers and listen closely.

Is that great copywriting or Michael Jordan baring his soul?

Who cares when there's more wisdom in those 30 seconds than all the overhyped Super Bowl ads put together.

Via HBM

Who would have guessed?

For some reason the news that Anna Nicole Smith had died didn't really come as a surprise to me.

Trouble and weirdness has followed her around for years.

Long before she became a figure of fun Anna was the face (and body) of Guess Jeans.

I prefer to remember her this way.

Very very sticky Post-its

I'm note sure why you'd need an extra sticky post-it note, but this is an excellent product demo none the less.

The post-it in the ad reads, "Switch off fan when you leave."

Good thinking from the Joburg office of Grey Worldwide.

Click pic to enlarge.

Not all good advice is good

An article for small business caught my eye in this morning’s paper.

It offered 10 tips on how to get a marketing effort up and running for minimal cost.

Tip seven interested me the most as it was about writing copy.

It argued that copywriting is something best done in house.

Judging by the piece above that I tore out of the paper I’d have to disagree.

“Your best copyrighters are in-house.”

That may be so, but your best spellers are obviously not.

This following snippet shows that copyrighters don’t even bother to read their own copy.

“Transcribe that they say and you will find key words and ‘nuggets’ what you are looking for.”

Hmmm!?

Perhaps it might be best to leave copywriting to copywriters.

Thoughts on Steve's thoughts

There’s been much talk today about Steve Jobs just published thoughts on digital music and copyright.

Given his thoughts ran to over 1,800 words, perhaps thoughts isn’t quite the right word.

Having said that, he did make some very interesting points on who to blame for digital rights management.

What pricked my ears up though, was an intriguing fact buried within the body of the document about the sales figures of the iTunes store.

According to Jobs, Apple had sold 90 million iPods and 2 billion songs from the iTunes store by the end of last year.

That averages out to around 22 iTunes store songs for every iPod sold.

It’s not much is it? In fact, tracks from the iTunes store account for less than 3% of the music on the average iPod.

That means 97% of the music most people listen to on their iPod has come from somewhere other than Apple.

Now that’s a bloody good sales opportunity if ever I saw one.

And perhaps that’s why Steve Jobs has suddenly started talking about removal of digital rights management.

Pic via Gizmodo

Don't follow me, I'm lost too

When I was in Sydney the other week, I got in and out of two taxis because the drivers had no idea how to get to where I wanted to go.

Still it could have been worse. I could have got picked up by a taxi driver who got his directions via Google Maps.

Seems they have less idea about finding their way around Sydney than the taxi drivers I turned away.

The SMH reports that a trip across the street from the Shelbourne Hotel at 200 Sussex St to Google headquarters at 201 Sussex St via Google Maps directions would involve a 10km detour that requires crossing the Harbour Bridge twice.

That’s for a trip that requires nothing more than crossing the road.

Oh, I forgot to mention Google’s recommended route would also set you back three bucks in bridge tolls.

Looking to deflect the issue, Google's Carl Sjogreen claimed that Google Maps in Australia was still a beta product.

Pardon the pun, but it sound’s to me like it probably still has a fair way to go.

VBS squares off against Bud.tv

Two much awaited web video sites went live this week.

Budweiser’s Bud.tv and Vice magazine’s VBS.tv.

First up I took a look at Bud or at least I tried to.


The Bud registration form was a bit much for me so I gave it a miss and went to VBS instead.

There was plenty of stuff of interest here, but what caught my eye was a fascinating video of Fred Rogers.

I had no idea who Rogers was, but after watching the video I went straight to the Wikipedia to find out more.

So there you have it. Two new video sites.

One with an overly complex registration form. The other with Mr Spike Jonze himself as Creative Director.

The choice is yours my friends.

Taking over the world

This great graphic from the ever inventive Lynette shows the ongoing growth of the MySpace empire.

The stats are derived from an article in The Guardian from a few months back.

At last count MySpace had over 110 million registered users.

I think I'm a bit too old for MySpace myself, or perhaps it's because I can't stand all that bad do it yourself design stuff.

Still 110 million people can't be wrong. Can they?

Brilliant video clears up the web

Tip of the hat to Digital Agency

Life in the fast lane

First time author Karen Quinn has taken a (excuse the pun) novel approach to publicising her first book, Life In The Fast Lane.

She’s set up a web based competition where people post smart one liners about how they realised they were living their life in the fast lane.

Karen’s publisher has been running some sweet little online ads which have obviously inspired some fun entries.

The one above is my personal favourite.

To see some of the other ads click here.

For info on the contest and further quotes click here.

Via Whats next

I'm not a rambling man

I discovered a new word today.

A word so new to me I couldn’t even take a guess at what it meant.

Prolix.

It was in an obituary for the spiritual jazz performer Alice Coltrane in this morning’s paper.

The writer, Ben Ratliff, described Coltrane’s music as becoming “wilder and more prolix”.

Not just plain old prolix, but more prolix.

I pushed the paper aside and typed dictionary.com into my browser.

Prolix - Given to speaking or writing at great or tedious length.

As someone who built their writing career on being short, sharp and to the point, I can’t believe I didn’t know that.

All I need to do now is find an opportunity to use my new word.

I've got a couple of client meetings this week, so I suspect I won’t have to wait long.

One word....Why?

Isherwood booked in for eye test

Bob Isherwood was back in Melbourne for a couple of days this week.

Always the good Samaritan, he agreed to stop by for a student Q&A session at his old college RMIT.

The gig was MC’d by a couple of final year ad students, Ed and Fran. That's them in the picture above.

A good time was had by all, with Bob being more than generous to the students with his time and wisdom.

As a show of thanks Ed and Fran had organised a bottle of Bob’s favourite wine, a ’76 Penfold’s Grange Hermitage.

Isherwood was completely overwhelmed. A bottle of Grange is never cheap, but the ’76 would usually set you back in excess of $1,000.

Chatting backstage with staff members, Bob took a closer look at the bottle and discovered he’d been well and truly duped.

Seems Ed and Fran had bought a cheap bottle of red and made up fake labels, which they aged with teabags and wine.

Nice one kids!

Turn off your computer kids

Computers. I love ‘em. I’d be lost without one to tell you the truth.

But when it comes to generating ideas and concepts, I tend to give the Mac a miss.

As far as I’m concerned if you want to get a big idea you need to use a big pad and a big pen.

For me that’s always an A3 and a black Pentel sign pen.

Only after I have an idea that I’m truly happy with would I even consider working it up on the Mac.

It’s personal preference obviously, but I often find hand drawn concepts are that little bit easier to work with when presenting to clients.

As an example here’s what W&K’s multi award winning St Wayne ad for Nike looked like at concept stage.


Nothing controversial or frightening about that was there?

If your concept is just a drawing it helps clients feel more involved. As if they’re a part of the creative process.

By presenting roughs you and they can discuss the idea and they can contribute to the final outcome.

In essence you have a smoother ride because you have allowed them to feel like part of the process.

You give them a sense of ownership. Which is funny, because it is their ad after all.

Here for those who missed it (all two of you) is how St Wayne looked when it was launched.

Farewell Paul Jones

Sad news today with the passing of Paul Jones, one of the legends of Aussie advertising.

One of the founding fathers of AWARD, Paul did some great work for the likes of Coke and McDonalds during the seventies and eighties.

He’s best remembered as the creative force behind the Labour Party’s “It’s Time” campaign, which saw Gough Whitlam swept into power back in 1972.

An ad the likes of which we will probably never see again. Well not in my lifetime anyway.

Where there’s smoke

Newsweek in the USA is offering to supply a tobacco ad-free copy of their magazine to subscribers.

It’s part of an initiative sponsored by New York anti-smoking groups.

I am quite literally stunned.

Not by the idea, but by the fact that they still allow cigarette advertising in America.

Honestly I can’t remember the last time I saw a tobacco ad.

Can’t say I’ve missed them either.

Chair men of the bored

How would you feel knowing you were about to spend $500million advertising a product that comes free with most computers?

About as excited as the Microsoft geeks in this picture from the New York Times I reckon.

Could they look any less excited?

Bored? They're the chair men of the bored.

Thanks to Seth Godin.