Now that Bob Barrie - former Art Director at Fallon - is seen showing a cameraman who's boss, we finally have an explanation for those strange virals where Jeff Kling caresses his pencil.

Turns out it's all a competition, it's touting the "Larger Than Life cinema advertising contest" where ad creatives have the opportunity to submit an original 60 second cinema advertising spot, and have their work shot by RSA and run on National CineMedia's theatre network in AMC, Cinemark and Regal Entertainment Group Theatres nationwide.
By nationwide we mean "The United States" and by creatives we mean anyone over 18 residing in the United states who are are employed at a media, advertising or
creative agency. Everyone else can say a collective "meh" now. ;)

See print call for entries inside.

Adforum (no, not our adforum) has a competition on where you can win an iPod nano by selecting the Bravia balls ad. ;)

"Entrants must be 18 years of age or over" but it doesn't say tha they must be US residents! So hey, go play!

Greetings adgrunts! To celebrate the tenth birthday of Adland, I've made The memory quiz - where every answer except one is found on this website. Befriend the supersearch and dig deeper - if you manage to score a perfect ten correct answers, you will be upgraded with a months worth of super adgrunt juice as soon as I see your score.

Like our other quizzes, it's got one trick question....This one is dead obvious though, and easy to guess. ;)

The Battle ofthe ad blogs, sponsored by Jewelboxing and pixiesdiscs got pretty heated. Ambush attacks and all! Now that the dust has settled, I can show you what went on. Whats an award without a little controversy?

I'm not to type to play with my cards hidden (I truly suck at poker), I'll show you what the logs revealed. Yes, as some suspected, and many alerted me to, a few people were cheating best they could. Lets not assume that it was on the blog-owners suggestion, it might just have been overzelous fans. Okay? I'd hate it if people got mad at each other for this. Though yes I know, in love and (blog)wars.... ;)
First let me apologise for buying a shoddy script that did not do as advertised. [EDIT: "As advertised" means that the script should not have allowed for more than one vote per IP# - it seemed that this only worked when it wanted to. Some people could not vote twice from the same IP#, others could vote as many times as they liked!] Me of all people should know better than to listen to the sell-spiel. Next year I will build a better mousetrap myself.

1) Some IP-numbers actually has managed to vote more than once on the same question, up to 75 times actually, it will be reduced to one vote (per ip# and Q) as announced in the rules.
2) People have been using "anonymizers" (or other IP hiding software) plenty to vote, these votes will be annulled.

Read more and I'll show you exactly what I found, screendumps and all.

I'm still getting a few people expressing concern about the voting here on the battle of the adblogs, the idea that someone, or a few, contenders are cheating is worrying some honest battlers. I must repeat though that the Adverka Russians and the Brainstorm9 Brazilians have an honest-to-god non-cheating advantage in the numbers of people who read these blogs. Don't assume that they are the cheaters beacuse of their high number of votes as they are battling each other to a pulp, I see no signs of foul play in their records in the log.

So here is the deal, while this is the very last day for you to vote - tomorrow the tenth is the end of the battle - I will take the logs home and pour through them with a fine toothed comb. If i find that:

1) One IP# actually has managed to vote more than once, it will be reduced to one vote as announced in the rules.
2) People have been using "anonymizers" (or other IP hiding software) to vote, these votes will be annulled.

Come sunday I'll show you the findings. Personally, I doubt people are cheating, but I think good of people naive that I am. ;9 This is supposed to be friendly and fun, but it's clear some players took the idea of "war" very seriously. hehe.

If you have one of those anonymizer software things installed and voted with that on, turn it off and make your vote count by voting for your favorites again. May the best blog win. Good luck to all!

So, the Sunday game update is a little late this Sunday, as it is officially Monday here in Denmark now. Sorry about that, but I was busy pouring through the logs - manually as I trust no one but my own eyes (it's a control freak thing I won't let you understand), looking for any signs of foul play.

And I found none. So y'all can breathe a sigh of relief now. Some battle-bloggers and cheerleaders were a little concerned that some blogs enourmus spikes were created through good old fashioned cheating. It isn't. But don't worry kids, I'll keep a close eye on the logs just in case.

Read more - Sunday traditional linkfest inside. Lets see how our players are doing!

Aw shucks. Some people are a little dissapointed that they weren't nominated to the Battle of the Ad Blogs 2006, and we're sorry that not everyone could make it onto the nominee list or if we simply missed a fantastic new blog out there. See, we started with the blogs listed in the ad links , two hundred odd, and suggestions from an invited group of hardcore adgrunts. We then went about voting ourselves for the ones that should be in the final nominations, as 200 odd blogs would be a wee bit too much. Just a tad, aye?

How we will collect the contenders for the battle next year remains to be seen, we're already discussing an open submissions form and then a vote, but if you want to keep yourselves in the searchlight here, make sure your blog is submitted to the adlinks.

Read more - linkfest inside. We've sorted out anchors so that it's easier to link directly to each category in the battle.

I remember when the blogosphere was a very lonely place when you blogged solely about advertising, as all the cool kids were blogging about anything but. But since ca 2003, that has all changed as the advertising blogosphere suddenly mushroomed and is still getting bigger every day.

So welcome to the Battle of the Ad Blogs 2006, where a posse of adgrunts have sifted through the ever growing pile of ad blogs to find the gems and pit them against each other. Your vote is needed to sort out the creme de la creme! We've sorted the blogs with the right stuff into categories and want you to vote in any or all of them.

The blog with the most votes in a category wins the battle 2006, a badge to proudly wear on their blog and a snazzy t-shirt (their choice of size and colour) with their battle tank #1 Ad Blog status on it, full bragging rights included. The blog with most votes overall will get something extra. * Update: the something extra is; all winners get a Tank tee and a Pixies Live Disc, while the jammy blog that gets the most votes overall gets the tee, the disc and a 100-pack of Jewelboxings! Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

The battle will rage until Friday Feb 10, when we'll announce the verdict of the worlds ad blog readers. Who will win? :9
Bets of luck to all battle-blogs!

Like it's predecessor, the Ad Trivia Quiz (a.k.a the very difficult ad quiz) it turned out that the Ad Quiz the Viral, Buzz and Word of Mouth edition was harder than it looked. Beats me why, as I thought it was dead easy, and so did the following winners - h.surfa , Tarbos, MeMyselfAndI, aDude, and the first one to score a perfect ten opinion-leading. These clever adgrunts all win a signed personal copy of the book Connected Marketing by Justin Kirby and Paul Marsden. Read on to see what the right answers were and more.....

Remember the viral quiz where you could win a book?
Oh you poor sods. I don't know how I manage but it seems that when I aim for 'tricky' I accidently make the quizzes 'bloody hard' or something. Only one single person has scored a perfect ten in the Adland Viral Quiz so far - adgrunt opinion-leading. That's one single signed Connected Marketing book that has a new home, but what about the other nine? Give us a break here, I barely have room in my bookshelf for my collection of national lampoon as it is, these books must find a new home!

So that's why I'm extending the Adland Viral Quiz. Every single adgrunt who braved it and tried to score a perfect ten so far, got a +35 days of commercial watching super adgruntness added to their accounts just for effort. I can't blame it on the eggnog this year, I'm just a sentimental sap and luv you all to bits. Read more to see who scored.

Adgrunts, start your engines, it's time for another Quiz - all logged in adgrunts can enter once only in the Adland viral quizz.

Enter the quiz and you can win the book "Connected Marketing: The Viral, Buzz and Word of Mouth Revolution", or a months upgrade to super adgrunt. Sound good? It is good! Read more!

In all we have 30 neato prizes to the first 30 adgrunts to get all ten answers correct! Even if you can enter only once you have a pretty good chance of being one of those thirty.

The NameGame which we announced here had a simple goal and even simpler participation "rules" (email your suggestions to a specific email address = not very hard to do). But all is fair in love and war and nobody reads on the internet, so suggestions were being sent all over the place - and some entrepreneurial people even tracked down the agency - also not hard to do. After all, the name game and the agency who wanted a new one were mentioned in Dagens Media (Sweden), Propaganda (Norway), Børsen (Denmark) and as far away as Brazil in Clube de Criação de São Paulo.

Well, in the end nobody is getting points for being internet sleuths here, but for their actual name suggestions. Without further ado here are the winners that the crew at the "formely known as Lunds" ad agency in Copenhagen decided were the best, after the jump. ;)

Wordwizards and cunning linguists, we have a little game for you - if you come up with a winning name for a nameless ad agency you can win neat stuff!

The 1st prize is one ipod mini 4Gb. or Knomo ixopo laptop bag
2nd prize ipod Shuffle 512 Mb
3rd prize Creative Advertising: Ideas and Techniques from the World's Best Campaigns (a very good read.)

And the booby-prizes? 20 super adgrunt memberships here on Adland. It's all good! Read more on how to play inside.

Those who like to dabble with art and images, you can win the inventory at rightbrainterrain!

Yes, the folks that brought you brilliant posters such as patience and focus want to see what you can do. Entering is quite simple, whip together an image with your name somewhere on it, make it a gif image 350*350 pixels, and email it to rightbrainterrain. Your inspiration is the lyrics from Lennon's "Imagine". Hurry! Winners will be announced May 1.

Dear Adgrunts, ad-guessers and ad-dicts - y'all didn't do too well on that quiz I'm afraid. On the one hand I feel sorry that we made it so tough, on the other I'm really surprised that you actually thought it was that tough.
OK, so I admit it, lots of 'urban ad-myths' were chosen for the quiz as I'm getting really tired of hearing professionals parrot that bullshit when it has no base in reality, so a lazy google-hunt might turn up the wrong answer, but a more thorough one would have led you to the right answer. Friends call me "sticky brains" because stupid trivia will never leave my head, but honestly now, was this quiz that hard? Lets have a look at each question and answer complete with links to reliable sources.

Honestly adgrunts, I'm beginning to feel a little sorry for y'all.

See, we dug up some of the most widely known advertising myths and a few difficult ad-nerdy questions because we thought everyone would employ google when they tried doing the Quiz. We even thought people would post the right answers in their blogs, email them between each other, and all sorts of things, so instead of letting everyone who scored a perfect ten get an upgrade, which was the original idea, we put our limit at 100.

But it looks like you all are honest folk (in advertising? who knew!), trying to beat it with your wits alone! And so, very few have scored a perfect ten. I've even upgraded everyone who scored 9 points just because you guys were so close. I don't want to be unfair to anyone so since people who scored 9 get an upgrade, that'll be the rule from now on. Kay?

Words of encouragement, and a warning, this quiz is not meant to be easy. You can only try once! Hint: Myth will help you a long way. Relax, take your time, and give it a go. AdLand Quiz: Ad Trivia, Truth and Myth

So far, the clever adgrunts who scored have been; caffeinegoddess who needs no upgrade, mikker, chong.eileen, brandonbarr & RocknrollAdvertising with a perfect ten each. SweetPigs, yaksox & slydecix who got upgrades for their 9 points. C'mon people, try harder, there are so many upgrades to give away! We want to celebrate our ninth birthday in style!

Congratulations kids, we're nine years old today! Or 121.5 if you count in internet years my collegue here insists, but don't ask me to explain the math on that one.

In honor of our birthday were having a competition where 100 adgrunts can win a super adgruntship! Yes, one-hundred of you. That's a lotta chances to win innit? Read more.

AdBeast wants your input on the top ten commercials of all time. As thanks for casting your vote you may be eligable to win some neat prizes. Four lucky people can win the first prize which is one night’s accommodation for two adults on the Club Level of the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel. This includes a deluxe continental breakfast for 2 persons; and evening hors d’oeuvres for 2 persons, in the Club Lounge of this Hotel.

Listen up you North Americans, anyone currently residing in Canada or the USofA can win tickets for a free trip to the 2005 Clio Festival, so if you feel lucky - punk - enter and pray to win.
If you're feeling less than lucky be smart and order the 2005 Clio Passport with %25 off online.

Hello all and thank you for participating in our contests!

Winners of the 2004 CA Ad Annual (posters names were drawn out of a hat) are: Andreas-Udd, Alec, and deep.ed.
UPDATE: Andreas- Udd (already owning a copy of the annual) has graciously asked us to pick another name. Thank you all for playing and sharing your favorite ads.

Winners of Book Smarts Books:
Based on originality, insight, how close they were to the Book Smarts tone of voice (research), a set of books goes to...

GOLD
by slydecix
You can trademark anything.™

BRONZE
by tomatosoup
What I really want to do is direct.

Enjoy.

Congrats to the winners!