Narrowdesign presents: the digital agencies of the future... by loading their websites in an iPhone and getting stuck on the first page asking for Flash. Some agencies have a designed page, asking you to get flash, some even have a wee mobile page that shows you sparse info, like the locations said agency available, but the vast majority of hip ad agency sites simply have the tiny blue "plugin missing" symbol and nothing else.

Aw, that's kinda sad. Quick, if your agency is on there, grab the chance to redesign the whole thing!

AIGA Los Angeles has a great story from Michael Doret, on how a neon sign helped him break a font-funk, and then got him hired by the great-granddaughter of the original neon sign owner! "When I started my Deliscript project I couldn’t have forseen how it could have triggered this series of serendipitous events. What started out as my source of inspiration spun around, did a 360, and found me as their source. "

Forget just chasing down the most popular celeb around and gifting them with free stuff, hoping that your branded bag will find it's way to the limelight of paparazzi-flashes while clutched by the likes of Madonna, Taylor Swift, Taylor Momsen or lady Gaga. Brands give away free swag to top ten celebs and reality TV celebs, wanna-be-celebs and dramatic pop star celebs, and now brands are torpedoing each other by giving Snooki their competitors branded bags. Because nothing says tacky like the queen of pouf-dos in Jersey Shore. At least according to the rumors in this Observer article.

Allegedly, the anxious folks at these various luxury houses are all aggressively gifting our gal Snookums with free bags. No surprise, right? But here's the shocker: They are not sending her their own bags. They are sending her each other's bags! Competitors' bags!
Call it what you will — "preemptive product placement"? "unbranding"? — either way, it's brilliant, and it makes total sense. As much as one might adore Miss Snickerdoodle, her ability to inspire dress-alikes among her fans is questionable. The bottom line? Nobody in fashion wants to co-brand with Snooki.

I pray that nobody ever gifts Snooki a Hemes Kelly bag. Just don't, that would be cruel.

Like our mate Bill of make the logo bigger says; but wait... there's more, here's some linkage to waste Friday afternoon on: Typography geeks rejoice, we can now show our disdain for Comic Sans on our clothing via Not My Type shirts. Cute. Meanwhile Beverly Shu marries her love of typography with her love of baking cookies and created helvetica-cookies with her Helvetica® Cookie Cutters! Mmmmm, cookies.
In the Netherlands, Kerrie Finch posted a short column about sexism in the PR Industry, which predictably has 50 comments straying off topic.

Miami advertising in Gothenburg have been playing the small nimble underdog to the local major agencies for eight years now, and have outgrown the role of "newbies" as they land ever larger pieces of business. Time for a restart. As one of the founders - Gustaf Inger - has left Miami to pursue other opportunities, the other founder Fredrik Olsson said "Perhaps I felt the need to go to the extreme other direction, to keep everything balanced." He branded himself with the Miami advertising logo, in the form of a large ink tattoo in his available shoulder.

What if music videos had film posters? That seems to be the question Federico Mancosu decided to tackle, and you can see the collection of music video posters created at Behance. There's everything from Michael Jackson's "Thiller" to Jamiroquai's Virtual Insanity. There's a stunning mad dog representing Madonna's "Frozen", and a sea of red for Red Hot Chili Peppers "Scar tissue". Teenage walls and dormrooms may never be the same again.

@judy_pollack just tweeted this photo, seems she's found mysterious Alex Bogusky posters, and @Adage says they've been spotted near their headquarters. The posters have a QR Code, and a sender in the far right that I can't make out. Would be funny if it read betyourasssky, but I doubt it. So what is this for? Any takers?

The DailyKos has a post showing an amazingly insulting ad for Summer's Eve personal hygine products. They probably didn't start with "belitteling the target groups concerns" as a strategy, but that is where they ended up. See, to ask for a raise you need to be confident and confidence in the advertising world is something that can be bought, usually in small pink packaging that smells of spring flowers. Glad we have that sorted out.

I thought everyone knew this by now, but apparently not. @John_Hegarty on twitter is as fake as @SirSorrel was, and @bbhlondon wants it stopped.

How did I know? The first day he was on twitter I tweeted him an injoke that the real John Hegarty would have known - something to do with condoms and yes I know what that sounds like. Please don't make me explain, trust me in that it really is one of those "You had to be there" stories. It's an ancient joke that stems from way back in the day when John was one of my fantastic tutors at The School of communication arts in London and every student in the school was making condom ads - kind of like how every student these days make tabasco ads. Stop it. Anyway, the fake John Hegarty did not respond. Thusly, I knew he was fake.

Seems not everyone is savvy to this though, so now you know. Unlike @davetrott @Heywhipple and @markwnek - John on twitter isn't the real deal. He's as fake as @BogusBogusky .

It was @darrylohrt who tipped me off to this one, so I had to give Paper.li a go, and when I made a feed of @dabitch's twitter friends, It turned out to be quite a nice paper, check it out: paper.li/dabitch

Darryl's paper is at paper.li/darrylohrt. Now I'm hoping for a subscribe feature where we could pay to get rid of the ads!

Dior Hides Renovations Behind World's Classiest Scaffolding found via Brandflakesforbreakfast. Yes, when you have to renovate your shop, you might as well use that ugly old scaffolding in a creative way to make your brand still stand out. After all, you are paying for that spot.

Finally, we can get that Camera Lens Mug we've lusted after for a year or two.

When Sharad Haksar created the "Camera Lens Calender" as a DM piece I spoke to them about getting me one. They were quite expensive per piece, one had to do a large run in order to make it worthwhile (and I only wanted one). As I admitted then (revealing what I was about to get the beau for his birthday);

My Significant Other is a photographer, so when his birthday was coming up I spent a silly amount of time trying to make a camera-lens travel-mug for him to drag his coffee around in. I failed, my welding skills aren't what they used to be and I never did look as cool as Jennifer Beals doing it.

Then LeslieBAP posted "It's a lens, it's a coffee mug, it's a desert topping...", proving that other people had the same idea, but also better skills in making the mug. This one was a limited edition mug made for the press by Canon as swag during the Olympic games, and it looked just like the 70-200mm. swooon!

Now finally, there's one to buy for the likes of you and me! It'll only set you back $24 at Photojojo!

Fragrance and Beauty Limited has released a "Sex Pistols" perfume that has lemon and black pepper notes, and thankfully no Johhny Rotten stink.

It also has hints of: "Electrified by aldehydes, the fragrance exudes pure energy, pared down and pumped up by leather, shot through with heliotrope and brought back down to earth by a raunchy patchouli. " or that's the way The Fragrance Shop describes it. A bottle will only set you back £19.99.

Taglines used to market this are: “Is this the scent of anarchy?” and “Certainly, there’s a revolution in this bottle.” Malcolm McLaren is reportedly laughing his head off in his grave.

In We are not time travelers Alex Varanese has the advertising tone-of-voice and the faux wood panel clunky look of the products down perfect, as he daydreams about going back to 1977 and unleashing the mp3-player, the laptop and the cellular phone on the daisy dukes wearing public.

Awesome.

Yes, I'm a bit slow with posting this one, but it's suitably hilarious for a Friday. Thinkgeek received a cease and desist from the National Pork Board who claimed that they were infringing on the slogan "The Other White Meat" with their April fools ad for Canned Unicorn Meat - it's sparkly.

Luckily, the Sisters at Radiant Farms, where the unicorns are nursed through old age before being slaughtered, canned, and brought to market at ThinkGeek, have nothing to worry about--this kind of use is protected as a parody. (We're hoping the NPB doesn't tell the Sisters that unicorns don't actually exist; it'd break their little sparkly hearts.)

I'm off to hide in the sites inner workings & code now, because I'd like to get working on the improvements you adgrunts suggested a.s.a.p - thanks for all the input guys! Keep it coming.

Creative Review has a yummy photo-peek at Brooklyn-based artist/designer Scott Albrecht's exhibitions at at The Curiosity Shoppe in San Francisco called "Somethingmistakenfornothing".

Scott has re-represented popular sayings using second-hand and found materials, and the result is tactile beauty.

....and this shaking hand heart really reminds me of a logo for something. It's not united way, but strikes me as suitable for a similar type of charitable organization, perhaps a big brothers & sisters thing or a college fund? Anyone else recognize it? Anyone? Bueller? Post an image in the comments.

As I was heading to bed last night I found that 'mediamemo at all things digital' was raising warning flags regarding the white-board girl link being passed around in "Meet the Prankster Brothers Behind “Jenny,” the Whiteboard-Using, Farmville-Exposing, HPOA Girl". They hadn't confirmed it was a total hoax just yet, but they were pretty much there showing the prankster history of the TheChive site, and asking the creators point-blank about "Jenny".

And Derober’s moment in the spotlight came back in December 2007, when it made up a story about Donald Trump leaving a $10,000 tip on a $82.27 bill. The story was convincing enough to fool Fox News and the New York Post (both of which are owned by News Corp., which also owns this site).
- So Jenny is a fake, too. Right, Leo Resig?
- No, Resig says over the phone. “Jenny’s very real.”

Either that was a total fib, or you were answering another question, Resig.

Now TechCrunch has confirmed that the HOPA girl quitting is a hoax. Kinda figures she was an actress pulling those fantastic faces, and using that creativity - rather than a broker-wannabe.

The brothers Resig came up with the idea for “Dry Erase Girl” about a month ago at the King’s Head Bar in Santa Monica, CA, and wrote down the details on paper napkins, including the etymology of HOPA (see below). Says John Resig, “We came up with a hoax that was completely relatable. It wasn’t spread by TechCrunch and Reddit. It was spread by Facebook and inter-office email. Everyone wants to quit their jobs like this.“

Well, everyone wants to be famous too, which Elyse now is, watch as people actually employ this quitting technique and fail in 4...3...2..

Todays awesome eye-candy distraction is this website showcasing manner posters that appeared in the Tokyo subways between 1976 and 1982. There's posters featuring space invaders, posters modeled after paintings by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Napoleon, Hitler, Marilyn Monroe, Marcel Marceau, Superman, John Wayne and of course Godzilla-like subway monsters. In short, it is awesome and a total must-see.

You've read about it by now, the flight attendant that got so fed up with cranky passengers and his job that he made the ultimate dramatic exit as he quit. The Fed-Up Flight Attendant Makes Sliding Exit. It's been rolling around my head since last night, when @purplesime & @mtlb we're wondering if advertising has any "I Quit" stories that dramatic. Now I finally realized why. Steven Slater is now the most interesting man in the world.

....he pulled the lever that activates the emergency-evacuation chute and slid down, making a dramatic exit not only from the plane but, one imagines, also from his airline career.
On his way out the door, he paused to grab a beer from the beverage cart.

Stay thirsty, my friends

(c'mon Dos Equis, help finance that mans defense fund by having him star in one of your ads, pretty please!)

"He's a combination of believing something and being so good at selling it that you can't tell the difference between the two." --unnamed creative director

There's a long often flattering article at Fast Company about Alex Bogusky, talking to him about his future plans, the various startups all potential disrupters of the status quo, that he's involved in and even if all this is a mid-life crisis.

Toward the end of the article, the journalist Danielle Sachs calls up a few former CP+B people who have very few nice things to say. That's pretty much bound to happen.

While former Crispinites describe the experience as akin to everything from Harvard to Army boot camp, they all make it clear there was only one dictator -- Bogusky. "My beef with Alex is if you start disagreeing with him on something, he finds ways to humiliate you in front of people," says one former copywriter. He believes that Bogusky once canned the agency's best writer just to signal that "if he got fired, everyone else was expendable." When this copywriter tendered his own resignation, he claims Bogusky insulted him by saying he wasn't that talented, anyway -- a complaint I heard from several people who had resigned.

Of course, this business being the way it is, one of the sources emailed Sachs and said that "anybody named in [your article] is a dead man in the career of advertising". So get in there and see if you recognize anyones quotes.