Look. Cadbury's and Fallon really want you to like their Charity Shoppe ad, not only have they released several music versions, now they've released the "making of". Since they created a giant sized charity shoppe and stuck dancers in oversized clothes, the making of video is in many ways more fun than the ads. The directing team Megaforce are hanging out in an oversized couch doing the interview! Bliss!

The most recent sound-version is set to "Whoomp there it is"

The other day, when my way too cool for school teenage niece asked me if I liked Urban Outfitters, I bit my tongue not to roll into a Badland tirade. I do love the store, you can get all kinds of crap-you-never-knew-you-totally-needed there (fashions? Not so much), but I have seen this sort of thing play out too often.

We find the collection of women+product ads at "Sälj grej med tjej" hilarious and sad (sell stuff with babe), even if fake ads like the 2006 meme Breyers "lickable" spoof ad has snuck in there.

There seems to be a slight retro-revival with a new twist to the students wanting your attention right now. The Young Lions winning team are selling the "media space" of their thank you speech in Cannes, which is new, but also relying on the traditional 'Ebay-auction' to spread the idea (and hopefully sell).

Hire Christine has fallen in love with the red internetbutton of yore, and if you click, click, click, click, click it you can see her portfolio. Eventually. This is very cute.

Ulrike Schulz takes on the "I'm sorry" photograph meme, and has people fill a tumblr account with "Hire Ulrike" photos of themselves instead. #HireUlrike is an account executive, and has made this film to boot. She's looking for her dream job in the London ad scene. She's got it all, even her own hashtag.

We love the Simpsons. The Simpsons typeface, not so much. But it'll be perfect for writing angry notes to hang in the office kitchen saying stuff like "put your mug away Marge doesn't work here" and for the required "???? PROFIT" at the end of our business plan presentations.

Sh*t The Creative Director/CEO/Account Guy/Client/Intern Says is a really good way to get an ad agency near you to consider banning facebook during office hours. Where are your timesheets?

Ever have one of those days at the office where no matter how much your partner tries to be quiet, and no matter where you try and hide in the open-plan office, you just can't get a moment of peace to think? Enter the Ostrich Pillow, a bizarre-looking thing that can be used to hide in.

OSTRICH offers a micro environment in which to take a warm and comfortable power nap at ease. It is neither a pillow nor a cushion, nor a bed, nor a garment, but a bit of each at the same time. Its soothing cave-like interior shelters and isolates our head and hands (mind, senses and body) for a few minutes, without needing to leave our desk.

Next question is, can we make some that will suffocate the wearer? Please?

Victor and Andreas, students at the Berghs School of Communication and the winners of the Young Lions Print category are selling out namespace in their planned Cannes Lions thank-you speech on an open auction site (Tradera is Swededn's Ebay if you will).

"As students, with no income other than student loands, it's hard to get the money for a trip to Cannes. That's why we're selling the only media space that we own: the thank you speech. Ad agencies, production agencies, anyone can bid. The winning bidder will get 20 seconds where we'll say anything you want us to. The auction closes Friday the 27th of May

I have a strong feeling they'll regret that "anything you want" promise. Lets buy some bad "I am a Nazi" jokes and se how long it takes before they're booted from the festival. ;)

Vitamintalent has posted the ad agency bloodline, with the awesome large view available here and I suspect it'll hang on many cubicle-walls soon.

As helper monkeys, we're quite curious. And as a talented, creative individual (who clearly knows where to find great info), we thought you might be curious, too. So we created this infographic (check out the full graphic) to give a look at the mergers, acquisitions, and launches of some of the largest agencies in the world, from the early 1800s to today.

It's spiffy.

It's been popping up everywhere as of late, Judgementday2011 and ads that inform us about the upcoming rapture. The website even has nifty doomsdaybunkers for sale in case you need one of them. Cash upfront only. :P
It's not a small campaign that has been funded by Robert Fitzpatrick, a 60-year-old Staten Island resident, NineMSN says that the advertising has appeared on 1000 placards on subway carriages and on bus shelters across the Big Apple. This spread cost him $140,000, his life savings.

Like the iconic Che Guevara photo taken by Alberto Korda in the 1960s, Noam Galai's self portrait is found on walls, book covers, in magazines and on T-shirts..... and even seen in ad campaigns.

At the Vancouver Art Gallery there's a giant cereal box. The box, more than 32-feet long and over 20-feet high, spiked lots of guessing what might be inside. Turns out, apart from the gigantic round pieces of "cereal", there was a Honda inside. A blue ninth-generation Civic rolled out of it the other day, for the Civic's official BC launch.

The stunt was created by Elvis Communications and Dare Vancouver.

As we start to peel, shave, wax, slim down, get manis and pedis and new haircuts and then try on new bikinis for the summer, let me remind all you creatives that fruit & veg peeled in bikini fashions has been done. It's fun to do, but we've seen it. ;)

The fat veg on the right are for magimix XL food processor, and were done by Grey, Tel-Aviv, Israel. The idea is to show "fat" fruit, as the processor can handle big veg. The "Fresh All Summer" fruit was done for Calgary market by WAX last year, and extolls the virtues of eating fruit to look fresh. Thus another idea, but the visual we've seen already. I suspect we all start drawing bikinis on stuff once the sun if out after a winter as long as the last one we had..... Really, who can blame us?

A Reddit user has spotted a Wikileaks billboard outside of Chicago. It reads: Wikileaks: giving us the truth when everyone else refuses to

Harald and Adrian are the creative team that decided to get a facebook profile together. Like really together, their photo album shows one person built out of photographs of the two. Like the photographer Alexandra Oudin and the later Schweppes facebook app they use the layout of the photo albums to really mesh together. Cute.

In Australia, they're killing the tobacco-logo: No-frills fight against Big Tobacco: Cigarette packets to be ugly olive green. Under proposed legislation aimed at reducing smoking rates in Australia, all logos will be removed from cigarette packaging, and tobacco companies will be required to print their brand name in a specific font. Olive green happens to be my favorite color, so "ugly" is not my choice of words here, but will a plain pack make a difference? In some respects, surely - Philip Morris spokesman Chris Argent said plain packaging would fuel the illicit trade in tobacco products, it would clearly be easier to spoof a bunch of simple olive green scare-packets than countless differently designed brands.

No, it's not an April Fools, on Tuesday Adzookie mobile ads announced the "turn my home into a billboard idea, and by late afternoon they already had 1000 applicants. One was even a church.

"It really blew my mind," Mendoza said. "I knew the economy was tough, but it's sad to see how many homeowners are really struggling."

CEO Romeo Mendoza said to CNN Money.

It might not just be the free mortgage that's the draw here. Three months as a billboard, and in the end "we'll repaint your house back to the original colors." That's a free paintjob thrown in on top for good measure. Yes please! I'll do it. Oh that's right. My house is brick.

On Monday, just barely and perhaps not so coincidentally a week after his interactive panel discussion at SXSW, Michael Ian Black sent out a tweet expressing his desire to become the spokesman for Taco Bell.

And the world listened.

And by “the world,” I mean 50 or so people including myself, one of a few ad geeks who not only love his work, but also remember his stint as Pets.com spokesman, and and in a Sierra Mist spot.

But then it started to grow.

Because Black’s strategy ticks off the boxes needed to make something like this grow. Take note:

Participation. Michael Ian Black is not only championing himself, but enthusiastically communicating with his twitter followers. (Engagement)

A hashtag #mib4tacobell (An instantly recognizable calling card.)

PA¥ FOR JAPAN has collected stuff you can buy into one simple page, and slapped the #prayforjapan tag with the name. You can follow @payforjapan on twitter as well, where they announce new things as they arrive. So if you want the Lady Gaga bracelet, a skateboard or the wheels for one you'll probably find something that strikes your fancy here. The w+k poster we mentioned earlier is listed, and if you created something where the money goes to Japan, make sure to let them know.

The degree of destruction in Japan is hard to fathom, but some creatives got on the brief to encourage donations in various ways at once. Like the news about the earthquake and tsunami, twitter is full of messages on how to help.

First one we spotted was @VictorsnSpoils tweeting about T-Shirt designs at threadless where they ask you to create an inspirational tee around the theme of "Sunrise.", or simply vote and buy as a way to get involved. It's quicker to text the Red Cross some money, but of course there's people out there who want to use their design skills for a good cause.

Next we found that @Bing is tweeting they'll help if you retweet this;

Tommy Noonan at Amalgamated made the QR code that looks like Jesus in this high-tech Augmented Reality celebration of Lent. Those who couldn't make it to the nearest priest with sooty fingers yesterday could just stick the QR code on their forehead, point their webcamera at themselves, and pick the ash patterns they liked.
"When you can't make it to church on Ash Wednesday, they you can get them virtually."

High-tech religion. So very cyberpunk. Oh god, I just said cyberpunk. I'm old.