Most artists are resigned to the fact they won't make money through their art. Christophe Bruno, however, decided to try use his art to lose it instead. And in the process he came up with a fantastic way to subvert search engine advertising.

His site tells an interesting story about how he bought Adword space on google and used it for his poems, and how google ended up censoring him.

It raises an interesting question about how the nature and value of words has changed - with 'free' being the most expensive keyword on sale.

Something to think about next time those focus group results come in...

http://www.bad-ad.org This promising site needs your help in finding the very worst the industry has to offer, including a couple of badland candidates.

It's fresh invective on a familiar theme - so submit your own suggestions and help build a worthy anti-tribute.

Or just blame the clients.

"we fly all over this bitch". a flashanimation mocking most everything and airline travel ads. Wink to Mefi [thats link from mefi].

It's April 1, 2002 and thetruth.com just aired a new April Fools commercial against the poor, defenseless tobacco companies (both Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds have decided not to advertise in magazines this year).

What are they going to do? Won't somebody help those struggling tobacco companies?

Click here to go to thetruth.com and view their despicable quicktime spot.

French Connection founder Stephen Marks has apologised for last year's "kinkybugger" campaign,
admitting it was "a mistake" for the brand.

(click read more)

If you haven't heard yet - Ghostonly just launched it's site. The idea being that those never-to-be-published brilliant ideas you have lying about - sometimes known as scam ads when they nab awards - should have a place to be apreciated for what they are. Great ideas. Have any brilliant ideas in your drawer you will submit - if not - why not? You've got until March 25 to get your kit together! Flash site.

It all started as print ads designed to communicate the power of advertising to corporate decision makers (advertise more dammit!). Now, the iconic "Great Brands" campaign, commissioned by The American Advertising Federation, has fully bloomed into 15-second commercials. The agency responsible to this propaganda is Carmichael-Lynch (our saviors).

The only thing worse than reading a newspaper ad is writing one....until now.

The Newspaper Association of America recently asked (bribed?) top notch advertising gurus to create newspaper ads, selling, uh...newspaper ads.

Featured on their website are newspaper ads by Neil French, Luke Sullivan, Mike Hughes and Lee Clow.

http://www.naa.org/artpage.cfm?AID=3931&SID=34&CFID=51766&CFTOKEN=2131730

The pro bono spots first started with Woody Allen, Barbara Walters, Ben Stiller, Kevin Bacon, Robert DeNiro, Billy Crystal, Henry Kissinger, and Yogi Berra. BBDO/New York has now added Christopher Walken, Al Roker and Vanessa Williams to the roster.

You can check out all the spots here:

http://www.nycmiracle.com

Do you ever wonder how your ads and marketing strategies impact culture and society? Sure you do. Still, sometimes living in the agency vacuum can narrow your perspective a bit.

Did you know that No Logo by Naomi Klein finally did make paperback? Did you also notice that amazon.com has a 42 pages excerpt?

I saw this story in Adweek last week and had to check it out for myself. Numbskull or Brainiac??? We'll find out soon enough

At SponsorMyMelon.com, this gentleman is selling ad space on his bald head.

Personally, there's not a client on my agency's roster who would consider doing this. But it could be great for clients who advertise hats, Hair Removal, Barber shops, Floor Wax, Bowling Balls, Pool Cues, Grass Fertilizer, Weed-B-Gone, and lots of other interesting products.

New topic for Adland - "circulating on the web". Which is just a long winded way of saying 'viral'. Often funny emails are sent around with piss takes of famous campaigns/spoof's or jokes regarding our loved and much hated profession and it's product - advertising. Often advertising itself is a pisstake or joke and becomes a much loved and passed around viral.

I thought it would be nice to post them.

Here's a coke-joke that just landed in my inbox.

I'll let it speak for itself - check out the CNN news story and then check out the banner ad in the left column of the page.

Holy craperoni! What a coup!

NOTE: I didn't want this überfunky visual to run away from us, so just in case elements have changed since I posted this bit, I took the precaution of taking a screen shot and posting it

here. Enjoy.

If you are in the states - you have seen countless asinine political ads in the past few weeks -and you have probably also seen countless little "scooters" all them trendy kids must have nowadays.

NYC copywriter Justin Kaswan made this "crappy little faux political ad" to let the world know that it takes a village to whup your scooter riding ass. Click to see 2.3 megabyte film (on cable a two minute load.)