This battle of light (and sabers) will take place in New York City, on September 24th. Mark your calendar. Get the day off work. This is what you've been waiting for. (And this is why flash mobs were invented.)
Marshmallow Fluff. It's that magic stuff that comes in a tub and tastes great on absolutely anything. You can eat with your fingers right out of the tub if you want. Or of course, on a Fluff-nutter.
The white magic goo is made in a small town in Massachusetts, and they're not about to let that go unnoticed. So they created What the Fluff - a street festival celebrating the magic of Fluff.
There's nothing funnier than farts and boogers. Except maybe an out of control drippy nose, on a statue.
This drippy nose statue in Sao Paulo is actually set up to promote Naldecon - an antihistamine/decongestant. A fun outdoor piece that's good fun for the whole family.
Coke just launched an app where you can mix and match the popular Coke brands together to build your own perfectly mixed oddball beverage. And if you're lucky, they'll bring an actual vending machine to your city, to make your custom mixing possible in real life.
This is the internet remix culture coming to life, for real. Drink up.
Maybe you're tired of the disaster porn that the media is lambasting you with featuring hurricane Irene. But then maybe you haven't seen it through the eyes of Instagram users.
Because it could be done, someone's created a page that pulls Instagram photos tagged #Irene. This is the event, as told by the people. Or the people who are using Instagram.
(Brands: this is also a great example of how easy it is to pull together relevant content for your cause/campaign/worldtakeover.)
Agency Traction has what they call a "Burning Man Policy." They encourage their employees to take in events (like Burning Man) that can inspire or enhance their creative development. From their employee manual:
Traction will prioritize requests for time-off—even if people have no vacation time left—to attend events that inspire or enhance professional and/or creative development such as Burning Man or SxSW.
Because they know that grand life experience will translate to better work, better employees, and happier clients. And they've got an agency that's ten years old, where less than ten people have ever chosen to leave. This is how you inspire.
You know those yellow sticky things that used to be all over your desk, back in the days when you used paper products? 3M invented the PostIt note, and they're not about to let it just fall by the wayside as we adopt our digital lifestyles. So they invented PopNotes.
PopNotes are digital versions of the classic PostIt notes. But with the digital version, you can activate your note to remind you, ask it to vanish after a defined period of time, and even take your note social.
Yes...PopNotes can be shared with friends. Try that with a sticky piece of paper. From @southsideadguy
Lots of agencies have tried to produce a "culture" video, but few agencies the size of Chiat/Day can pull it off and still seem fun, inspiring and interesting. Or genuine. Chiat/Day does.
Let this be a lesson for other ginormous agencies: you can't fake culture. Either you have it, or you don't.
The founder of Delicious (that bookmarking service that will change the way you organize your internet) has launched a new product. Jig is a recommendation site. You present the world with your challenge, and Jig helps find someone that can help you.
Right now it's filled with people looking to build websites for $7 and some other ridiculous questions, but don't underestimate the power of the maker of Delicious. This could be something...
Everyone's upset to see the magic man in mock turtlenecks leave the company that we worship, but one devoted fan in Japan has taken it a step further. Joseph Tame decided to take the very Apple products that Steve Jobs made possible and use them to run across Tokyo in a loop shaped like an Apple logo.
We all show love in different ways. But when you do it with Apple products, it really counts. Thanks, @gariphic!
Photographer James Stone is starting a Tumblr featuring portraits that he shoots at the event. The blog is a beautiful representation of what he's capable of shooting and a wonderous collection of human portraits like you probably won't see on at your local photography show. From Urban Outfitters.
If the internet were more private, then Tom Waits could have a listening party for just a few special people like you. But now everyone's connected, and listening, and watching, and ruining everything.
This could have been awesome, until all of those people showed up.
Let's say you're planning a wedding. Or an office or home remodel. Or anything where a handful of people will likely be pulling images and things from the magical internet and and then collecting and sharing together. Where will you put them?
Pinterest is a virtual pinboard that lets you and your friends pin up stuff related to the topic. People can comment, like and share the items. It's like a giant social bulletin board that your friends are invited to.
This has grand applications...including promotional, focus group testing, and more. Let's start sharing...
Comment Mixer lets you take any YouTube video and play it like a record.
Now you can remix your favorite all time viral videos into the soundtrack of your afternoon office party. Impress your friends. Get the girl of your dreams. And become a YouTube dj superstar. Awesome.
(English speakers: click "cc" for subtitles, and you'll see how it all works.)
About.me has been all re-vamped and cleaned up, and now it's ready for your ultimate attention. Because you really need one place where you can link to that includes all the links to your social self.
Because Google+ is not going to kill Facebook and Unthink is not going to kill Google+ and Twitter is not going away and you're addicted to Instagram and have to use LinkedIn for work. (Remember when there was just MySpace??)
You know that Powerpoint is for account dorks. And maybe you're not totally in love with Apple's Keynote. You're a web development nerd, and you want more control. You want to embed your decks everywhere. And you want your decks to work on iPhones, iPads and other mobile i devices.
Meet Deck JS. It's a coded, Javascript tool that lets you build custom decks that are playable, usable, and produceable on the best place in the world: the grand ole word, wide, web.
(Marketing nerds: move along. Nothing to see here. Just pass this link to your web dev department, and they'll keep you happy and stuff.)
Lisa Taylor is a copywriter. And any good copywriter knows that you need to tailor your copy to your target audience. But with agency people all over the map, how's she's supposed to know what you expect in a cover letter?
So Lisa invented the cover letter customizer. Just fill in the blanks, and you'll get a custom letter targeted directly at you. Just the way you like it. And then you can get on with hiring Lisa to do more important stuff for you.
Followgram is a tool that lets you create a custom follow button and vanity url for your Instagram feed. One of the early entrants to the coming Instagram economy.
You're spending hours a day on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. But there's at least an hour or two of the day that you're still devoting to work. This needs to stop.
Unthink is here suck up any possibly productive time that you had left in your day. Unthink appears to be (we're not in yet) another social network. Better than Facebook. Better than Google+. Even though you won't give either of those up, anyway...maybe Unthink will be the fourth network in your life.
EASTPAK has commissioned several indie artists to produce custom one-of-a-kind back packs that will be sold to raise money for local charities in their country.
Artists get a new outlet. Local non-profits get funds. Little Johnny gets a badass backpack. And EASTPAK gets buzz. More proof that great marketing isn't just about coupons and Facebook pages.
Now you can get lots of your favorite catalogs via your iPad.
Google Catalogs presents some of the most popular direct mail catalogs right at your fingertips. Without having to touch all of that dirty paper. Your mailman is going to be pissed.
Here's a fantastic direct mail piece that puts the solution right into the hands of its recipient. Have a crack in the windshield of your Mercedes? Fix it fast and easy.
Here's something that feels very much like a trailer to a movie that you must absolutely totally go see this weekend. But it's an ad. For Burn Energy Drinks. And that might be better, because now you can watch it all unfold on the internet.
Burn is doing what a good brand can do. Creating, supporting and delivering awesome content that's perfectly tuned to the audience that they want to reach. Providing value to their fans and potential fans. Refreshing, isn't it?
Peter Shankman is a Morton's Steak House customer and fan. Peter Shankman jokingly made a tweet praising them, wishing they could meet him at Newark Aiport when his plane landed.
We're not usually hot for lists of people to follow, as they typically turn into ridiculous popularity contests where people brag about being on lists, or beg, campaign and tweet about getting on lists. Most lists...suck.
But you're new to Google+. Your old fashioned friends from Facebook aren't there yet. And you need some help building your new community.
Recommended Users is a list of who to follow on Google Plus. Use it, and then deny that you ever used a list. (Don't tweet about this.)
You mean well. You seriously intend to reduce your inbox today. It's just there's Facebook, and Google+, and Twitter, and Instagram...all getting in the way of your productivity.
So what if you had an obnoxious friend that wouldn't leave you alone until you accomplish what you're supposed to do? Like an asshat boss that you ask to hassle you?
Hasslers.org is here to save your day. They'll call, text and email you until you get your task done. Because they care. (For as long as you'll pay them to.) Brilliant.
Brand Flakes for Breakfast BFF Josh Mishell is one of the contestants in Ford's new F-150 EcoBoost Challenge. He gets to drive an F-150 around, competing against other drivers for the best MPG. And if he wins, Ford is buying gas for everyone in his hometown, Denver. Like the entire city.
You can help by voting for him on the Facebook page, thereby pushing him past his competitors. Because he's a Brand Flakes reader, it's our job to make him a Brand Flakes winner. That's how it works for our BFFB BFF's. Vote now, vote often.
The awesome thing about the internet is it gives everyone a voice and platform to share it on. The sucky thing about the internet is it gives everyone a voice and platform to share it on. Um yeah. See, because some people are just asses, like these Yelpers on yet another fun Tumblr. Ah yes, this wonderful display of snobbery, racism, and complete idiocy makes for hours of entertainment.
Anyone that's ever tried to understand their privacy rights on Facebook knows that their terms of service are ridiculously unclear and change every 90 seconds. So the folks over at Slacktory decided to break 'em down in f-bombs, dudes, and shenanigans actually making them entertaining and somewhat understandable.
Funny, but when you watch this parody from Funny Or Die you become painfully aware of how absolutely ridiculous TV/internet clip shows are. With a host hybrid of Joel McHale, Chris Hardwick and Daniel Tosh, this video nails down the schtick formula and makes me a little embarrassed to admit I want these shows. But not embarrassed enough to stop of course.
In the olden days before apps, iPads, inboxes and rocketships, people needed to write things down to have a productive day. And yet they never had anything quite as nice as the Two Point Oh! Daily Page.
Print this handy guide each day (if you dare to use a printing device), and your day will never be more organized. Your life will have order and purpose. And you'll be a better person.
All from just a little...piece of paper. From @kaitvillanova
For $750 (a little more than your GI Joe went for back in the day), you can get three of those action figures, a load of outfits and a collector box. And at least some of the money goes to two fantastic causes, Pablove Foundation and Alex's Lemonade Stand.
Say what? Unable to master the art of the mysterious hipster language? Then try Hipster Ipsum. A fun little app that generates random text laden with silly hipster terms to impress your friends. That is if you weren't such a hipster and actually cared about impressing anyone. Social acceptance is so lame. Brooklyn, PBR and beards forever!
Frijj, a British flavored milk brand, wants to prepare consumers for their "unexpected" flavors by training them to handle unexpected things with a straight face. To do that they're featuring a series of funny videos on their website and simultaneously running face tracking technology to detect if a viewer is laughing. As soon as they laugh, they're kicked out of the game. It can even capture your reaction and post it to Facebook or Twitter. Hopefully none of which involve milk coming out of a nose. I surprisingly made it through for a while, but only because the videos were a little lame. But, still, the concept is pretty fun in theory. via Adverblog
With the help of artists Ellis Gallagher and Pablo Power, Newcastle and Vitro, their ad agency, turned just another billboard into an awesome art piece. Using over 3,000 Newcastle Brown Ale bottle caps, the artists used light and shadows to create this ghostly looking dude reaching for a cold one. And, it's not just gratuitous artsiness either; the concept is meant to illustrate the contradiction of it's light taste to it's dark color. Love it when that all works out. via Adfreak
Evisors is a new service that matches advisers with people that need advice. It's a simple internet tool that connects you to the exact type of professional that you need.
Need help with a cover letter? Or a marathon training program? No need to bother your family or friends, when you can get real answers from people who actually understand your question.
The internet. Connecting people together since who knows when. Not that your mom couldn't put together a fantastic marathon training program. We're sure she could...
This making of the "Evolution of Games" is an impressive, coordinated and directed masterpiece, and proof that not everything is done inside of a computer.
It's fun to see the piece come to life while watching the finished piece in the same window. Hooray for handiwork.
Orbit Gum extends their "dirty mouth" campaign to Facebook, with customizable videos to freak out your friends. Just type in your own dirty mouth style words and then send/share with all of your friends.
With characters like creepy dude pictured above at your side, you're sure to impress your friends.
Ever wonder how they made giant signs the size of buildings, before they could just ordered a bunch of flat screens from Best Buy?
Creative Review shows exactly how the iconic Coca Cola neon sign came to life in London's Piccadilly Circus, giving you a great appreciation for the (now) rare art of sign making.
Guys always wonder how they can take the perfect profile pic for their Facebook page. And then they end up doing something douchey, and taking their shirt off.
Proof that if you're willing to let go, have fun and do something creative, your most unimportant, unexpected content can go viral. Pay attention, brands. Thanks, Eliza!
Uniqlo has launched yet another beauteous production that profiles loads of interesting New Yorkers who are making a difference in their city. You get a video interview, all of their social media connections, and a peek at one of their favorite places in the city.
Oh, and they're wearing Uniqlo fashions. This is what a well thought out, impeccably produced interactive piece looks like. Via Adverblog
You may think that you have enough social media communication tools. You may think that Twitter is enough for you, and that there's not room for another 140 character messaging social media system/tool/tweetingmachine.
But if you don't think those things, there's Heello. It's like Twitter, but it's not Twitter. Because this is what internet bubbles are made for.
Maybe it's too soon to have fun with the London Riots. But if it's not, then PhotoshopLooter is going to make your day.
Here's how it works: take any photo of a dumbass looting in London. Replace the product that he's stealing with something more fun. Spirits are immediately lifted.
You're going to a nerd festival, and you don't want to stick out like a ridiculously dorky marketing geek. How will you know how to pronounce the super cool words that are a part of our pop culture?
The Pronunciation Book is a YouTube channel devoted to demonstrating exactly how current popular words are pronounced. So that you don't have to read that super complicated dictionary explanation thing. From Laughing Squid.
Fauxgo is a blog dedicated to documenting the fictitious logos that Hollywood has included in our favorite films.
From McDowells (Coming to America) to Initech (Office Space), they're all there. Now they need to setup the corporate gift shop, so that we can get the coffee mug. Thanks, Eliza!
No, not that navy tattoo of a half naked mermaid your grandpa could make dance on his arm, but perhaps just as ridiculous. This is a tattoo with a QR-like code on some French guy named Marco's chest that you snap a picture of to turn it into an augmented reality show.
What's pretty cool is he can change what the QR code (actually called an EZ Code) links to so he can change his tattoo whenever he wants. Sort of takes some of that fear of commitment thing out of the picture. That is, of course, you don't regret getting a tattoo of something that will likely be obsolete and completely useless in a couple years. Hmm.
MTV and the Dahli Lama apparently believe that if you just simply "Give a Shit" about the world's problems, they will go away. So to spread the word and make a difference, MTV's asking people everywhere to tweet or post what they give a shit about in the world, while they... well... take a shit. What? You know you all do it. While I'm pretty sure just giving a shit ain't gonna do shit, it's a pretty fun campaign.
German TV channel 13th Street put together a fun stunt to promote their horror programming. Zombie head bowling balls. They replaced them in the ball returns, to the surprise of bowlers, mid-game.
Bowlers next looked so badass. Thanks, Dave & Casey!
The internet is a big place. And it's getting bigger. And you want to read the entire internet every day, but there's just not enough time. So you put those longer posts, articles and pieces away for the weekend, with the intention of catching up on the internet. But then your life gets in the way...this is the challenge that Gist.to is looking to solve.
Gist.to is a new project that just received funding on Kickstarter, that strives to be a crowd-sourced cliff notes, for the internet. Don't have time to read a particularly lng (but interesting) post? Not to worry. Someone else has, and they've posted a summary for you.
Before you know it, the entire internet has been summarized just like the world is now documented on Wikipedia. There's a lot of internet in our future, and we're going to have to help each other out, if we want to read it all.
Jonathan Stark has started an interesting project. He's provided the pic above that you can download to your phone and buy coffee with, the next time you're at Starbucks.
It's not a scam. It's a real card -- Jonathan's -- and he believes that there are as many people in the world willing to reload the card as there are willing to use it.
Want to buy a coffee? Just download the image to your phone, and charge your purchase to it. Want to buy someone else a cup of coffee? Just reload Starbucks card #6061006913522430. Instructions are here. Be responsible, ok?
You know how they say all the good men/women are already taken? Well the same might be said for good digital talent. So what do you do when you're a digital agency looking to hire only the best? According to this campaign by Euro RSCG Brussels, you launch an ambush on the competition.
To get the attention of the best digital talent from the best digital agencies out there, Euro RSCG is driving by each of these said agencies everyday and checking-in on Foursquare to eventually become the mayor of each of them. Of course, the ultimate goal is that their employees will take notice, think how awesome, creative and cool Euro RSCG is, and then therefore want to interview for a job with them.
Very unique and interesting strategy, but will it work? Would you fall for it?
Ever get annoyed with those Facebook friends, Tweeps, blog commenters, whatever, that seem to misspell every word in the English language? Ever wish there was a way to filter them out? Ever wish there was actually a non-annoying use of CAPTCHA codes? If you answered yes to these questions, then you'll love Defective Yetti's proposal to implement this across the internet.
Because you can never really tell when people are being sarcastic in their social media updates, some interns at BBH have started a movement to get things changed.
One of the most awesome things about Twitter is that pretty much anyone can talk to anyone else. We can even give a shout to celebrities that we might not otherwise have access to. And sometimes our celebrity friends need just a little friendly kick in the pants. Or face.