if you dare wear short shorts...

... then you're subject to unknowingly being a walking billboard for New Zealand clothing store, Superette. These clever, sneaky little marketers secured raised metal plates on benches all over the city, in fashion districts, malls, etc. so that when someone wearing short shorts sat down on them, it would leave an impression of Superette's ads in the back of of their thighs. At least this is a good way to guarantee that most of the people advertising for you are fit and hip enough to pull off the style... or at least you hope.

for you geeky soccer moms

Ever been behind a minivan with those stupid little stick figure stickers of mom, dad, son with a soccer ball, daughter with ballet slippers, a dog, and even a freakin' cat? Ever get the urge to rear-end them like I do, but then decide not to because the damage to your own car is just not worth the thrill? Yeah. Well, if I saw a car with any of these awesomely geeky versions of those stickers, I would soooo let them in traffic... and even give them the wave.

the color perfect hotel

Pantone, the people who make perfect color matching possible for designers across the globe, have taken their color matching experience one step further into the real world: they've created the Pantone Hotel.

Each room is decorated with a different Pantone color, and all of the typical boutique hotel amenities. This is where cool people who dress in dark colors and wear scarves will stay, when visiting Brussels. From @margiedana

building better courts and hoops with sprite

Sprite just launched a cool promotion where they're pumping some much needed money and love into the basketball courts of local communities across the nation.

Spark Parks automatically determines your location and serves up the basketball courts in your hood that are eligible. All you need to do is nominate your local court. The more nominations, the better chance you have of winning a refreshed court.

Awesome promotion, with a well produced Facebook presence, and a fantastic happy ending for local communities. Everyone wins. Drink up.

crowdsourcing a game into a novel

The Black Helix is an Alternate Reality Game where players are creating the story based on the actions they take in game play. Once complete, the results will be published into the first ever crowdsourced alternate reality game novel.

The game just went live today, and there's even a live component kicking in soon, too.

So...you play an online video game. You impact the story. Story becomes a novel. You're now a writer, and you never left your cubicle. We should write all books this way.

how to get a blogger's attention

We get pitched a lot of stuff at Brand Flakes for Breakfast, cuz we're sexy like that, and everyone wants their stuff on the hottest blog on earth. But it's not often that we get our heads exploded with awesomeness in a pitch for a post.

Such is the case for the launch of the new HBO show Game of Thrones, based on the fantasy book series "A Song of Ice and Fire," by George R.R. Martin.

As part of HBO's outreach program, they sent us a captivating treasure box for us to explore:



The entire box is an immersive experience of the Land of Westeros, featuring a bunch of scent experiences, storytelling scrolls, and corked vials ready for testing the scents.




The amount of detail in this package is extraordinary. Each piece of the package is hand crafted, with stunning detail. It's a work of art all on its own.

Did it get our attention? Did a crowd gather at the agency upon it's unveiling? Will we be checking Game of Thrones? You bet. This is blogger outreach done over the top with awesome on top.

putting puppies in your tweetstream

If you like puppies, and you like coder hacky things, then you're going to want to follow Charm Dog.

All puppies, all the time, delivered right to your twitter stream. Bet you can't follow without sayint "awwww".

farmville for dummies

Farmville for dummies. There's just nothing else to say.

winter & ice made fun

Sure, you're tired of winter and thinking that Spring might be right around the corner. Maybe that's because your city doesn't embrace winter in the most creative way.

BFFB buddy Tim Brunelle gives us a little taste of winter in Minneapolis, where they celebrate with magnificent sculptures and outdoor fun. (And there's plenty more pics on Flickr.)

As awesome as cold can get.

spreading happiness across the world

Coke just ramped up their business of happiness to another level, with the release of the Happiness truck. If you haven't already seen this, it will indeed make you happy.

But they didn't just produce a video for YouTube. Their Where Will Happiness Strike Next (WWHSN) tab on Facebook creates a worldwide dashboard for plotting happiness activities for the brand. That, and a deep Facebook presence that begs for exploration, and serves as an excellent Facebook marketing example for other brands.

Happiness kind of rocks, doesn't it?

willem dafoe as everyone

This clip is a beautiful film of what Willem Dafoe is capable of. It's also an ad for Jim Beam. And both are pretty damn awesome.

flip your profile

Flip has launched what seems like a fun campaign for Facebook, that lets you replace your Facebook profile photo with a video clip.

Sounds totally awesome, although we couldn't get it to work, after two tries. That's proof that even the greatest campaigns with new tools come with logistical challenges, which marketers need to be ready for.

Even so, I've walked away with a positive impression of a brand trying to push the limits of what's possible on an otherwise overly controlled Facebook platform.

roi: just a stalling tactic?

Beth Harte has a great post about ROI and digital/social media, and suggests that most marketers won't have what they need to actually calculate ROI anywhere in the near future. It's not about the number of fans or followers you garner. It's about net profit. And for many brands, this data is difficult if not impossible to obtain. It's also not something that other campaigns are always held up to.

So before you go ROI on your social campaigns, ask your self:
+ Are you doing the same for other campaigns, or just stalling?
+ Do you really have what you need to calculate ROI, or are you just stalling?

A great post for marketers, and a reminder on how the calculation of ROI is quite simple: ROI = Net Profit/Sales x Sales/Investment.

From @dirktherabbit

fedex, in first.

Pretty sure that this is spec work, but regardless, it's a cute piece for FedEx, showing how they're always ahead of the competition. From @hazeliz.

all chicken, all the time

Swiss Chalet, a place that serves delicious bbq chicken in Canada, has just created the best cable tv channel that ever existed, since the creation of television:

A 24 hour rotisserie chicken channel. Nothing but tasty chicken on a rotisserie, cooking, and cooking, and cooking.

Since the brand is already known as the "go to" place for chicken, they didn't have to overly brand the channel. Just put delicious chicken in front of people, and they'll know where to go. Scrumptious. From @satisfeye.

so you want to work in social media...

Socialcast has created a fun info graphic illustrating the typical day of a Social Media Manager. As BFFB BF @halthomas points out, it's pretty damn accurate.

suffocating the statue of liberty for fun and profit

What could you do with a bunch of industrial shrink wrap, and the Statue of Liberty?

To raise awareness for Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency, a rare lung disease, the crew at Digital DraftFCB created the ultimate stunt where it looked like they actually wrapped the Statue of Liberty in plastic, symbolic of how people who suffer from the deficiency are suffocating.

CNN thought it was real. It took queen of all adblogs Ask Wapling some simple sleuthing to confirm that the stunt was indeed virtual, done in post production, and the glorious statue was never touched.

Not only a fantastic promotional stunt, but another great example of how some bloggers can get to the truth faster than mainstream media. And liberty for all.

promoting yourself, one living room at a time

You've heard about the long tail, and micromarketing. Here's the ultimate example of how both are working wonders in the music industry:

Artist Bobby Bare is promoting his new release with a living room tour. He announces the cities where his band will be touring, and fans sign up to host a show. In their living room.

This is like punk rock, after punk rock, without punk rock. Totally awesome.

emoticons: good for business

I once had an employee who actually got yelled at by a former boss, who exclaimed that using emoticons in email was a poor reflection of their company. Seriously.

If you're stuck dealing with a nitwit of this order, send him this outstanding post on 99% about how emoticons can help create more meaningful and effective business communication.

Sometimes a smile or a wink can communicate so much more than ridiculous corporate speak. :)

tumblr hottness

Tumblr is the blogging platform that's making everyone hot right now. Our favorite agency in the land of Princess weddings has embraced the platform like no other agency we've seen, by building their entire site on it. They're living and breathing Tumblr in a way that's so much richer than a company blog.

You might say "WTF?", but they've got a stream of Tumblr goodness that details just how the platform is the hottest thing on the internet. (That is, if you don't count celebrities in Wonder Woman costumes.)

Awesomeness, tumbled.

every building in nyc...drawn.

Artist James Gulliver Hancock is on a mission to draw every building in New York City. Ambitious? Sure. But in the meantime, he's seeing and documenting the city he loves in a very personal, hand-crafted way.

Great work with a varied style, that's all New York. Get in on the fun by purchasing a print of your favorite building or neighborhood. From The Gothamist.

the twitter race that requires actual running

Nike just launched some campaign that sounds a little confusing and crazy, but being a runner and a tweeter, I just had to share.

You tweet to your followers. You get more followers. You run in a race. And somehow, it all comes together in one event. Sounds boldly similar to the Mercedes Benz tweet race, that BFFB BF @tsand won a few weeks ago. From @scottyhendo.

when parents text

This is the best Tumblr you'll find this week: When Parents Text.

It's exactly what you think it is, and it's about time someone's documenting these historic text messages.

the toughest client you'll ever work for

Meet marketing client bear. He's the lovable, huggable client bear who's not afraid to ask silly questions, make unreasonable demands, or just sport a bear-like attitude. It's what marketing client bears do.

Awesome with paws. From @elizaword

student interns on call

Agent Anything puts college students to work, completing whatever tasks you might need done but don't have time for are too lazy to do yourself.

Got something you want done? Post a mission, spell out what you're willing to pay for said mission, and college students sign up to make it happen.

College kids get money, and you get your dry cleaning picked up. Everyone wins.

Right now the service is only available in New York and New Jersey, with expected expansion to other cities across the country.

sketchbooks on tour

The Sketchbook Project is a rolling art show featuring the works of different artists from around the country, who have completed books just for the show.

Each artist was given the exact same blank Moleskine sketchbook, with which they could do whatever they wanted.

Books submitted go on tour across the country, and eventually come to rest at the Brooklyn Art Library, as a part of their permanent collection. From Elaine Espinosa.

smart car: can drive circles around this

Here's a fun way to illustrate the tight turning ration for a Smart car. On a cement truck. From @luckthelady.

what could you do, locked in a hotel room for 24 hours?

If you're sports photographer Tom Guilmette and you're also locked in the room with a $150K slomo camera, you put it to awesome use.

This is the most beautiful bored night in a hotel room that you'll ever see. Ever.

cookies...delivered

You're walking down the street and your tummy starts to rumble. And the one and only thing that you maybe think of even more than sex is...cookies. And then it hits you: a sign with a bag, hanging from a window of a two story apartment. And the smell of cookies is in the air.

Meet Fat Cookies. A new business model for a most scrumptious business in San Francisco. You put your money in clothespin, the team at Fat Cookies pulls it up and lowers down a hot delicious snack that will satisfy your tummy rumblings.

Please bring this to every neighborhood, all across the world.

find more places that are like your favorite places

FourSquare not enough detail for you? Yelp too general? You know what you like and you just want to find more places that are just like the ones you already like?

Check out Bizzy, a recommendation engine that suggests cool places for you to go based on where you already go. Kind of like Netflix on movies or Amazon on shopping, but for your going out and getting something to eat tool.

twitter oopsy saves lives

For those of you that tweet on behalf of a brand or company, you know exactly what that heart pounding moment feels like when you hold your breath, click "tweet," and hope to god you didn't somehow accidentally tweet a personal tweet to the wrong account. Yeah, luckily I have yet to make that mistake, however, poor Gloria Huang can't say the same when she accidentally tweeted a personal tweet about #gettingslizzard on the American Red Cross's Twitter account.

Luckily for Gloria, Dogfish Head beer found it hi-larious and used it to encourage fans to donate blood, which led to several actual donations. The American Red Cross handled this mishap like champs too, laughing at themselves with a witty follow up and the statement that basically said we're all human. Pretty awesome Red Cross, pretty awesome!

you're on candid asscam

These extremely hot chicks from LA put cameras on their butts to see what really happens when they walk by people. Give ya one guess what happens? Yep, pretty much EVERYONE checks them out. Hell, I would too, I mean look at them. Think my fave is the couple on the escalator, pretty sure she's just about to slap him.

epic songs as awesome wallpaper

What could be better than mixing typography with epic song lyrics?

Music Philosophy has gathered the most awesome graphic & typographic explorations of the most epic lyrics from bands of every generation.

And they offer them to us as free downloads for your iPhone wallpaper. And they make new ones each and every week. Just because they're filled with awesome sauce, and want to share it with you. Wonderous. From @lenkendall.

some ads never get old

This spot for Nike Skateboarding goes back several years, but is making its way around the internet all over again.

What's awesome is that it still holds up - partly because runners still dress the same as they did when this spot was made, and partly because skate culture hasn't changed much at all. And largely because great creative is timeless. From @rpesce

winnie the pooh, redesigned

What if we threw away the style guides and did a wholesale redesign of the Winnie the Pooh characters?

What would they look like? That's exactly what Sound of Design has explored. From @coudal.

how to get huge on the internet

Looking to make it really big on the internet? This awesome laptop webcam attachment makes you look really big. Literally.

Fe, fi, fo, fum. I smell some really cool Skype call fun. From @elizaword.

back to the future

You know those old photos of you as a baby in the bathtub? The ones your mom whipped out to show your new BF/GF what an adorable little naked butt you had? Um yeah. Thankfully those photos are safely tucked away in a worn out photo album in an ancient hope chest in you parent's attic, right? Well, not if photographer Irina Werning got her hands on em.

Irina's taking those epic childhood photos and recreating them in the same exact spot, the same exact pose, wearing the same exact clothes, making the same exact faces. The result is awesomely fascinating, surprisingly beautiful, and sometimes kinda creepy.

Thanks @andrea_zimmer

it's a small world afterall

UK street artist, Slinkachu, has been leaving little painted people all over London in elaborately staged tiny little scenes for over 5 years now, but recently his work has become mainstream viral. Maybe it's the little kid in me that use to build "massive" forts in the dirt, with puddles for lakes, so my Fisher Price Little People had a place to play, but these photos just make me smile!

banksy goes to hollywood

In case you're wondering what Banksy's been up to this week, he's apparently hitting up Hollywood according to these recent spottings of his latest work in LA. Makes sense since he's up for an Oscar for "Exit Through the Giftshop." What doesn't make sense, however, is that Lauren Conrad (of the Hills) was supposedly the first one to spot them. I love you Banksy, but that she may have just officially made you uncool in one fell swoop.

lies, they're all lies I tell ya

The saying goes "believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see" but when it comes to television that other half of what you see is a whole lotta crap too. So, in case you were holding onto any suspension of disbelief, this behind-the-scenes video will pretty much kill it for you. Still pretty cool to see how it all goes down.

past meets present

Irina Werning's series of "Back to the Future" photos seems to have reignited an interest in Jason Powell's beautifully shot "Looking Into the Past" series of old time photos juxtaposed against the modern day version of the same exact scene. These too are beautifully intriguing!

the language of typography

Who needs coffee this morning when you can wake up your senses to this series of absolutely stunning videos created by Niklas Johansson, Albin Holmqvist, and Gustav Johansson, illustrating the mortifying, yet exhilarating, experience of learning a new language in some of the world's most amazing cities via beautiful typography. Aaaaand, if the typography doesn't do it got you, they're also filled with pretty people.

the other star wars

It seems like every day I scour the internet for awesomeness I happen upon something new to do with Star Wars. So I've concluded that Star Wars love transcends all space and time. Case in point:

This 14-part documentary called Star Wars Begins, created by uber fans, is a compilation of lost footage, audio, interviews, deleted scenes, and more, all which tell an entirely different Star Wars story. Thank you to our even geekier friends for these 10 minutes of viewing pleasure.

the mayor of yo momma

I've seen some pretty ridiculous foursquare mayorships since I started using it last year, but these ones from BuzzFeed are just plain sad.

the best type of love

This dude, from Clusterflock's tweet of the day, knows what he wants in a soulmate and we can understand. She'd have to be a font geek to fall for a guy with an Arial tattoo, but then again, at least it's not comic sans.

the united states of good beer

Good has put together the handiest info graphic of all: a US map of Good beer. Nuff said.

(Dare you to put this in a PowerPoint deck today.)

welcome to steampunk, massachusetts

Waltham, a town right outside of Boston, is becoming International Steampunk City, come May 6-8.

They've pulled together a city-wide celebration of steampunk that includes films, art, performances, shopping and beer.

What an awesome promotion that's uniquely own-able, while appealing to young, old, geeky and families alike. Get your steamer sunglasses ready. From Boing Boing.

valentine cards for radio geeks

NPR (a radio station) just released some fun online Valentine's Day cards that you can email, share on Facebook, or if you're feeling real old school, print out and hand to your lover of choice.

Cool, simple fun promotion that ties in their geeky fan brand love well. From curiosity counts.

shout it from the mountaintop

AT&T is launching a fun promotion today that's put a burly mountain man (and his team of mountain men helpers) on the top of a mountain top, to shout your Valentine's message from the mountain.

Go to the Facebook page and enter your shout out, and they start shouting them LIVE later this morning. If you don't have a loved one to shout out to, it's ok, because they also have loads of mountain man videos. And everyone loves a peek into the mountain man lifestyle.

Awesome promotion concept, and the live aspect makes it tweetable, while adding excitement.

in the land of google, even forms are easy

You already know about the awesomeness of Google Docs, and how it's replaced the need for a word processing program on your machine, allows for multiple team members to make edits, and is otherwise filled with awesomeness.

Did you know that you can also use it to produce web-based forms? Without having a web development agency, team of developers, or knowing even a line of html code?

Here's a form that I created in five minutes or less, this morning. (Fill it out, and help us learn more about the awesomeness of Brand Flakes for Breakfast!)

Once complete, they even supply Googleicious results, tabulated with pie charts and coolness that will impress your friends when you put it in a PowerPoint deck, and show it off at parties.

Love Google more.

the brightest house in the neighborhood

Video mapping masters Klip created this video house as part of a campaign for Charter Communications.

The result is a super awesome production that definitely impressed the neighbors. Even more impressive: the whole thing was produced in a matter of weeks. Want to try this at home? There's even a behind the scenes clip!

from the agency archives

AdViews is a digital archive of thousands of vintage television commercials created or collected by the ad agency Benton & Bowles and/or its successor, D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B).

The archive features spots dating as far back as the 1950's all the way through the glorious 1980s, and represents a pretty sweet collection of stuff that you won't necessarily find on the YouTube. Thanks, @bakertweets!

joy division brought to life in playmobil

Someone's re-created the Joy Division set from their famed British television appearance.

There's some debate whether the audio track is from a John Peel sessions recording, or the film soundtrack of Control, a 2007 film. Regardless, the concept of bringing bands to live with stop motion is pure awesomeness on fire.

(This would be perfect for a brand to adopt as a concept, and release an entire series!) Thanks, @scottyhendo!

leaving notes for strangers

Notologist places notes in random places across the world with questions and statements that beg for interaction. People that pick up the notes are asked to submit their responses on the Notologist website.

The result is a fun, interactive art experiment that pulls together content from random strangers worldwide, and presents them as a collection that's reflective of society. Or something really cool like that. From Quipsologies.