Walk a mile in my underpants

One unsuspecting neighbor reserved their parking space with this cardboard box and then left for work.

Today is recycling day.

Attention Viagra, Cialis and Hooters. You’ve officially missed your opportunity to sponsor the world’s largest erection.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/01/04/dubai.burj/index.html

Kids are pretty dumb. I remember growing up, kids used to say “I’m rubber, you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.”

How come no one ever thought to reply, “I think you’re a beautiful person?”

Someone told me that I curse like a sailor.

How come sailors are the ones who get pegged as cursers?

All of the sailors that I know drive beamers and wear L.L. Bean.

I think the saying should be, “you curse like David Mamet.”

Another sign that the apocalypse is upon us: I’ve just been invited to follow the dictionary on Twitter. http://twitter.com/dictionarycom

I walked into the bathroom at the Daily Grind and washed my hands.

I turned off the sink, stepped over to the paper towel dispenser and waved my hand in front of it.

Nothing happened.

I waved at it again.

Still nothing.

A man never feels more humbled than the moment he realizes that he’s been waving at a manual paper towel dispenser.

There are now over 25,000 iPhone apps.

Over 100 of those allow your iPhone to make farting sounds.

At chicken weddings, do they do the people dance?

As the ad market’s getting tougher, the world’s best agencies are knocking
down the walls and redefining the business. Advertising is quickly becoming
less and less about advertising and more and more about business, ideas,
experiences and entertainment.

Here’s an article on the trend from last week’s NYT

Agencies are finding new ways to build business by developing innovative
self-promotions, products, brands, media outlets and content.

Today, Wieden + Kennedy/Portland launched a new radio station. W+K Radio
gives listeners a mix of music (an employee playlist), talk shows and a look
inside one of history’s greatest advertising agencies.

In November, Red Tettemer launched a brand of Agency-made Gin.

Brooklyn Brothers are making a brand of chocolate

Anomaly created a food television show with chef Eric Ripert.

Crispin Porter + Bogusky published a diet book.

And created a website where agency folks give you guitar lessons (They sent
out 900 guitars for the holidays with a link to the site).

By embracing new ventures and proving successful in them, these agencies are
padding their capabilities and expanding the kinds of work they can get from
clients. Here are just a few examples of the new kinds of work that top agencies are bringing in:

Modernista got into the magazine business by redesigning Businessweek.

Crispin Porter and Bogusky created and sold video games and meat-scented
cologne for Burger King:

And BBDO created a short film for HBO, the “Voyeur” viral program, which went
on to win the grand prize at just about every award show in the world:

It’s easy to dismiss this as creatives gone wild.

But the fact is, good creative sells products.

Take Burger King.

Whether or not you liked Subservient Chicken, The King, the Whopper Freakout
and the and the other image-based campaigns that Crispin has rolled out
since they took over the account in 2003, you can’t argue with the numbers.

Since Crispin won the business, BK’s total revenue has grown 109%.

And the agency won an EFFIE for them in 2005.

Fortune magazine just published their list of the world’s 500 largest companies. WalMart is ranked number 1. The company has 2,055,000 employees. Exxon Mobil, the world’s #2 company has a mere 107,100.

If all of WalMart’s employees lived together in the same place, WalMart would be the 5th largest city in the United States, narrowly losing out to Houston Texas.

That is messed up.