LAVA communications created a YouTube channel and 7 videos for Optiver Trading, one of the World's leading derivative trading companies. They are the first of a series of videos targeted at university graduates.

Quiet Glover has an interview with Max Isaacson - director of the "oh sorry didn't mean to be seen by anyone but my friends" Sprite blowjob ad. I can't make out if Max is incredibly naive or just blowing smoke up our arses in an effort to establish total ignorance as a legal defense or something, but at one point he says;
I wanted to be able to get a laugh out of people while still trying to make some kind of commentary on the overuse of sexuality in advertising. I mean, how could these be real?
So perhaps he is naive, and thought this would make us talk about sexual images in advertising rather than the fact that it was "'a banned german' ad. Seriously, something labeled "BANNED GERMAN SPRITE COMMERCIAL -BJ!!" isn't likely to be seen just 'by a few friends', everyone knows by now that "banned+commercial" is code for "kick-start a meme" and used on a daily basis by viral hacks whose ads may or may not ever reach the amount of eyeballs as this Sprite film did.

As I recall the youtube page read something like this;
BANNED GERMAN SPRITE AD - BJ!!! and the description stated something like Young horny Britney Spears looking lovely performing oral sex but wishing she had a Sprite instead. Spec Commercial. - and this blurry image of the Safari cache is all I can bring back from that page since google never caches youtube, but it backs my memory up. Now, would anyone - never mind working in advertising or not - seriously think that a description containing "Britney Spears" and "oral sex" wasn't going to attract a whole bunch of people via random searches? "....hell they weren't even supposed to get popular on the internet" - then why put that description, you could have left it at "Spec ad".

If you fancy seeing the whole page, click here.

For stats on the sudden surge of traffic to this ad, check the viral chart. Quite the sudden spike there.

Quiteglover has a poll up: "since you've seen the banned Sprite commercial you will....?" and there's your three choices. Go clickie some buttons and pass it around. Lets see if a spec ad that goes viral helps or hinders in the selling of Soda pop.

Previous sprite ad linkies - The so called "banned commercial" itself is here if you haven't seen it yet.

Greencard Pictures does not endorse that fake "banned" "German" soda pop advertisment
Max "Banned German Sprite Blowjob commercial" Isaacson speaks.
Porn-like Sprite "banned" blow-job ad made by Brooklyn hipsters Greencard Pictures

If you have a secret addiction to the Americas Next Top Model show with Tyra Banks, and can't stand creepy sexist douchebag Dov Charney and hos porno-esque Amerian Apparel campaigns you just might find this old skit funny.

I just figured that our ad-pals that link us deserve a link back, and I was thinking a post would be great because then people trying to find advertising blogs and ad sites in general might have a good place to start. All of the following link other ad collecting blogs as well so you can fall deep deep into the rabbit hole here. Have fun!

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First up: guys who link to Adland.tv - this also serves a quick trip around the world. Neat!
I'll start here simply because it brings up the unusual suspects, and you may find new people here to follow/blogroll/read. This is in no particular order (well, they're in the order that I have found them, actually).
Now, I'm positive that people will tap me on the shoulder here and say, "you missed me", so I think this will become a regular feature. I've been trying to build a new 'adlinks' section as we had before, but the ad blog list there grew so large (over 300 ad blog links alone) and it was hard to navigate and keep up to date, a monthly post like this one might be a better idea.

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Running in circles with scisscors - this Mississippi girl is very very brave. She could get hurt!

Admaniac - in Hungary.

reklamyazilari there's a lot of presentation slides here. Also hungarian, I think. Maybe?

Are You a brand In India

Creativity Blab - Angelo is in Italy

Unknown Divide about the design around us (wow, sexy look).

Kennygvs Blog Shoutout to Chicago!

Santana Adworks avid ad collector, recent examples of ads includes this fantastic "what goes around comes around" poster campaign.

MTN Company Italy again. Nice one.

Boris Domain - this is all in Russian - no it isn't, Boris informs me that he's in beautiful Sofia, Bulgaria - so I still can't read it but it looks hella interesting.

BunnehMunches - I'm not sure where Zana is, India? She's a rat race riding copywriter with a designer heart. Links to beautiful things.

La comunicazione d'impresa Links both to adland.tv and further down, commercial-archive.com :))

Daswell is thinking a student at USF

Plakart in french, which I don't read but I still like them.

diabloguemarketing Dublin! Shoutout to the stoutmasters.

DrinkMoxie USA - and as the name implies, thinks about drink advertising specifically.

Easily Distracted By Shiny Objec...Oh look a bug! Julio is in Sunny Miami, Florida

Popping the Cultrure Cherry trendspotter, designlover, idea spreader.

"โลกอิ่มเอม" I can't read this, but oh god it's so purdy! Nice shots of baking bread and the design is yummy. Imaim seems to like food and taking pretty pictures.

Extraverted Inrospection - she reads adsites but talks about everything between heaven and earth.

Marketing alltop one stop shopping for the latest RSS feeds from all the big adblogs.

O&M (or rather Oakes and Mowat) my new heroes because they have found HELLO KITTY BEER!

SilverMayer - a Swedish copywriter - Annika Mayer - gossips about life at her agency which she runs with Pia Silver. (In Swedish)

SupaDupa Tokyo - can't read it but they find such purdy things.

W6MARKETING Cleveland Ohio - talks about campaigns and ideas.

Viralmente - Italian (I think), concentrating more on the areas of ambient and viral marketing.

Variasikta I won't guess which language this is, but the most recent post is showing garbage mens revenge on someone who parked in their way which made me laugh.

Update! I knew I missed someone Illegal Advertising have us on their friend-list. Wehey! We're buddies.

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People who link to commercial-archive.com - also buddies! This is more or less off the top of my head as my google-fu is failing today.

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AdScam we simply adore George. He's our own whisky-swilling ad-santa and inventor of faboo cursewords.

Adrants - Steve & Angela keep many irons in their fire and the blogroll pretty up-to-date. Ahem. Part from the link to AdJab which shut down 2 years ago. ;) I'm so glad I never sold them my adrag.com domain, which he asked for, I knew they'd stop blogging sooner than I.

American Copywriter what can I say, I think they're great.

Kontaktmannen.com a very caustic copywriter rants in Swedish about all angles of advertising.

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People who link http://ad-rag.com - which yaknow, still works but it's been three years since we stopped using that URL. See post: We've switched to our old domain back in 2006. Again, totally off the top of my head.

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Adfreak

Advertising Design Goodness (Fredrik Samuel)

The Hidden Persuader

Adpulp always ready with commentary.

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All of the above ad-rag / comercial-archive URL's still lead to Rome, which is Adland.TV these days. :))

I've had a little theory for a bunch of years now, that all funny ad-posts (or "viral" stuff if you will) go around the web in loops every two years or so. In rare cases you'll see a second run start before the two year period. I have a few examples posted here on Adland a gazillion years ago that keep cropping up on other websites a two-year, three-year, five-year or seven-year loop later. Yes, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, as in prime numbers. One such example are these condom ads.

The original posting here was Too graphical? January 15 2002.

The story is simple - "Before the Brazil v Argentina game recently, an Argentinian condom manufacturer posted the first advert" to show what they intended to do to Brazil.

After the game, which Brazil won, Brazil responded.

Right now they're doing the rounds again (and being dugg like crazy!), at Drivesmart, who found them via TotalProSports, who found them via funny emails. This is not the first time I've seen these ads travel the world (I bet that condom manufacturer wishes they had a bigger logo on those posters)

In 2007 it was spotted here (with wording still stating "before recent game") Leetsoft blog - and on Metafilter who linked to it.

Previous rounds seem to have been in 2005/2006 as a commentor on adsoftheworld says he posted it before adsoftheworld. It was sailing around the web in 2006 Kiruba has it, as well as a bunch of others.

It clearly jumped straight to being mailed around early on, this is a posting from 2002 at Brainsluice stating that he'd gotten it in his inbox that morning.

So this is what viral people are after, right? The constant cycle of getting emailed around much like dogs that look like their owners, the VW suicide bomber ad (which now keeps reappering on youtube as a "banned ad"), the Amnesty ads that show what's happening in other parts of the world, the Flags of the world campaign (which people still call "art" not advertising), the Toy cars 'r' us twins, the Puma ads (with cum), the i love cum... and wow, there are many more but I can't recall all of them right now.

To bottle the email-waves it seems you'll need a) funny b) a little racy c) small images to attach to the emails and most importantly d) get to the point fast. Then when the first wave dies, all you have to do is wait two years for fresh faces to find the funny again, much like people do with countless* (advertising) jokes, sigfile taglines and email hoaxes about Microsoft paying people money for something. It's a neverending loop!

* I'll count them anyway, these are popular: the AD, CW, AE and genie, what we say to clients, The Exec, Magic Lamp for suits, do you work in advertising or are you a prostitute? and the unspoken rules of graphic design.

In October last year we posted about the SocialMedia guys, who could use your face in facebook ads without you knowing it.. That was soon implemented and an ad campaign for Danish Politicians had people vouching for politicians they never liked, the former editor (journalist) of a newspaper was seen in ads being a fan of the conservative party, which put his journalistic integrity into question. He simply followed all political leaders on Facebook because he reports on politics.

This ad tops them all however - Cheryl Smith of culturesmith consulting (site down at the time of posting) has her face appear in a singles ad directed at her husband.

Not too long ago, my husband Peter had this ad appear on his Facebook page. Good thing we both have a sense of humor!

The Advertising Standards Authority almost banned it as she wasn't wearing a helmet and recklessly pedaled through a supermarket. "Diet Coke's now about inspiring women to take control and do the right thing for themselves." said the creatives at Mother behind the ad. So why a bike moment? Why the supermarket destination? Why does Duffy sound so terrible singing that song? Am I the only one who does not get it?
Nope. Channel Bee reckon that Drunken ideas man created the Duffy Diet Coke advert, and their spy on the wall reveals it looked something like this (inside because it auto-plays);

I usually ignore banner ads scrolling at the top of most every web site these days, but this one not only caught my attention, but it made me do a double take. Sometimes, as can be seen in this banner ad, words are put together in a way that have a tendency to imply something that was not intend.

The Fight Network banner ad is not a call to arms for visitors to follow The Fight Network in its fight against Twitter, as I first thought, but rather it is inviting visitors to follow The Fight Network on Twitter. At least, that is what I believe, but I have been wrong before. It is The Fight Network, after all.

Toddle screams iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiyyyyPhoooooooooone! You think he's addicted? Countdown to Apple buying this as an ad and producing toddler-iPhone's now: 4...3....2.....

Ad agency creatives at Euro RSCG turned once again to production company @radical media and Editor Jeff Ferruzzo of Outside to take Dos Equis' award-winning "Most Interesting Man" commercial campaign online for a new series of action-packed webisodes. The series, directed by Paul Lind, is entitled "Survival in the Modern Era" and features a young adventurer -- Bear Grylls -- as he details the lessons to be learned online at Dos Equis' "Most Interesting Academy."

The webisodes launched last week. To view the new series online, go to: www.mostinterestingacademy.com

A modern-day survivor, Grylls stars in each episode precariously navigating through his urban terrain as he offers enlightenment on such topics as "Commuting," "Personal Safety," "Overcoming Obstacles," and Making an Entrance." In one comical episode, "Personal Safety," Grylls provides tips on self-defense. Two tattooed-roughnecks engage him in a scuffle. The first is defeated when he is quickly overtaken; the second drops his chain weapon in fear and runs away.

Ah those lovely crazy Danes, the land of the forbidden deeplink, the latest windmill they're fighting now is adblockers. Danish media house Berlingske has gone so far as to block people from reading BT if they have adblockers installed - instead they are greeted with this;
--- Dear Reader message
You can read a google translation of that page here - they say;

We can see that your computer has installed an AdBlock, which allows us can not show you our ads on the website.

We can only give you free journalistic quality content, if we have ads on our sites, because they pay very much the costs associated with running a website. If ads will be removed, lost our income, and then we will not be able to continue to offer you free news on www.bt.dk

Have questions or comments please feel free to contact us

Naturally this started a thread over in AdblockPlus' forums on how to get around this.

This began with AidOnline's charity plugin - it replaces teh ads of a newspaper (or website) with their own, and when you surf you collect donations to charities involved. This didn't go down well when the newspapers realized that their advertising space was 'hijacked' and on Aidonline's homepage it now reads (bad google translation);

After a meetings with the charitable organizations where it was clear that pressure from their partners have been too large, AidOnline.com and organizations have agreed to stop cooperation immediately.
The computer program AidOnline which works by blocking advertisements on the Internet and use the space to insert new advertisements will not continue. The program worked by the user downloading a little heart into their computer.

I can understand the need to safeguard the media space that advertisers in fact pay for, but this will not wendell. I mean end well. Sorry, wendell, that's your cue.

It's no official, the teaser campaign (or "stealth viral" as Adage dubbed it) Zack16.com, where a boy wakes up with "girl parts" one day and learns to love Tampax by the end of the week is created for Procter & Gamble's Tampax.

The campaign was created by Leo Burnett, Chicago and there was no mention of Tampax until poor Zack suddenly had a visit from aunt Flo and found a Tampax vending machine in the girls restroom.

As AdAge says, that wasn't the only thing "stealthy" about this viral campaign:

The campaign's backer hasn't been the only thing stealthy about it. As of this week, the most viewed of nine online videos produced had been seen fewer than 6,000 times on YouTube, though it's had a few thousand additional views on such sites as Funny or Die and StupidVideos.com. The fictional Mr. Johnson also has a Twitter account, @ZackJohnson16, with 949 followers.

So something weird happened to me last night and I'm just trying to deal. Went to the bathroom this morning to find that I suddenly possessed the aiming ability of a defective garden sprinkler. Soon thereafter I discovered that a super important body part of mine had gone missing. Maybe it went for a midnight stroll and fell into a pond? Decided to seek medical attention. Had an awkward discussion with the school nurse. Didn't tell her what really happened. I will remain elusive. Chelsea Carr walked by my locker today and we made meaningful eye contact. At least I think it was meaningful. I dunno, I'm confused. Maybe this is just a bad dream. I'm sure everything will be back to normal tomorrow.

Brands are always talking about how they can leverage the power of social networks, like Facebook. Studiocom recently has created an opportunity for Dunkin' Donuts to explore a new way to engage fans.

Dunkin' Donuts and Studiocom, its digital agency of record since 2007, launched a new experience for Facebook fans on their Fan Page (www.dunkindonuts.com/keepitcoolatta). In conjunction with the nationwide $1.99 Coolatta(R) offer and the reintroduction of Vanilla Bean Coolatta(R), Studiocom crafted the unique daily giveaway where fans "Grab It, Snap It, Post It, Win It".

Always looking for new opportunities to provide Dunkin' Donuts with better ways to engage with their customers through social media, Studiocom came up with the "Keep It Coolatta" sweepstakes in order to create excitement around the product, generate awareness and reward fans for participating.

Take it from someone who does this for a living, a bare living, it isn't like this at all. Not where I work, anyway. Forget that.

This is the world of Armor All car detailing where it is just so fast and easy to make your car shine like the top of the Chrysler building!

Okay, maybe your car, but not the majority of cars I have to clean at work. However, I don't use Armor All products at work, and I don't have an assistant. That's why I'm so wrong on this.

Well, back to school, then.

Armor All Hot Body Academy

These past two days a "viral" that really stunk to high heaven of forced spontaneity has circulated the Swedish parts of the intarwebs and "microblogs". In a clip on youtube veteran journalist Elisabet Höglund is seen pushing a biker dudes motorcycle over. The Youtube account was a virgin account, and when I first saw the film it had 500 viewings (now it's above 11000 - but since the story has appeared in Resumé, and the tabloids Expressen and Metro it's had significant traffic pull from 'old media')

For those who don't speak bork-bork, here's a translation of their "spontanious" conversation.

- Did you go home together or what?
- Yes yes, we went home, got home, she wanted me to wear my motorcycle helmet... Could you please stop filming I don't think...[turns around]
- Isn't that her.. Her from "Let's Dance".. whatsit?
- What the hell is she doing?
(The Lady from Let's dance yells -"You can't park here!")
- Who's the guy? That's her from "Lets Dance". You're filming right?
- Oh no, that's gonna cost her!

Now the tagline has appeared on the youtube film: "Take it easy MC-guy, "IF" will help you."

First mistake: the director has left in all the chatter from the "friends" in an effort to set the scene - "we're just playing with the camera and then WOW, that happened" - which isn't how a real person would be doing it. If you're playing with your camera and suddenly capture something that's interesting enough to share on youtube, you edit away the rubbish.

Also, it fails to become a viral since there's no nude animal puppets - see The Official AdLand Advertising Tutorial: Viral Advertising. Don't underestimate the power of nude animal puppets!

Update : Rumor has it that SNASK are the agency behind this. and boy was that wrong, Resumé now says it's created by Studio Total.

Number 1 position holder, Hannes Arch drinks Red Bull before he flies, don't you know? ;-)

Luke sent us a message on Fri, 5 Jun saying:

I don't know if you've seen the GM:Reinvention spot but there's a very well-produced parody at http://gmretardation.com/

I asked Luke if he had any more info, but no reply yet, either way, you all knew this was bound to happen the moment you laid eyes on the demo-love like General Motors - Reinvention commercial, right. It was practically gagging for it when they used the line "...fewer stronger brands, fewer stronger models..." .