Recently in advertising Category

The MTV-owned cable channel has announced a new identity which will debut this fall, its biggest change in 25 years. While the new logo has not officially aired, it can already be seen on material for the upcoming Nickelodeon Animation Festival and new merchandise like DVD box set

Vince, the spokesperson for Slap Chop, lets us know that if you buy this great product, not only will you're life improve, but you'll love his nuts (54 seconds into the video).

Vince also endorses the ShamWow!, but does not mention his nuts.

Totally bizarre yet genius commercial - can't we all just get along?

Mad Men is back in August. (Teaser.) Can't freekin' wait!

Jon Hamm on the timeline, etc.:

The series jumps up to 1962. Was that weird to film?
Well, think about what you were doing fourteen months ago. Maybe you had different glasses, but it was pretty close. So it wasn't "OH MY GOD they have muttonchops and go to the disco."

From Basket of Kisses:

Mad Men is a serious exploration of how we became who we are. How the generation that grew up in the Great Depression, fought two consecutive wars and gave birth to the baby boom, also transitioned our society from its rural, localized roots, into a global economic and cultural force mighty enough to sustain and win the Cold War.

But it's also about how we went from simple to complicated, from contented citizens to ravenous acquirers. It's about how we learned to sell. And consume.

In this context, we meet Don Draper. We meet him in medias res, which is Latin for "in the midst of affairs," so that's both a literal and figurative phrase. Fairly quickly we find out that he's unfaithful yet strangely loyal. He's inspiring yet he doesn't always live up to his word. He's dazzlingly attractive yet prone to letting people down. He appears rock solid, yet is constantly reinventing himself. He portrays brilliant confidence, yet is deeply scared inside. He looks like an insider, yet identifies with those on the outside. He's constructed a veneer of high polish, yet possesses no real depth. He's admired, but not really known. He's foolish yet wise.

Yep. Like the U.S. of A. looking in the mirror.

In the late '90s, activist, provocateur, and aging hippy John Barlow began calling this drift [toward digital socialism], somewhat tongue in cheek, "dot-communism." He defined it as a "workforce composed entirely of free agents," a decentralized gift or barter economy where there is no property and where technological architecture defines the political space. He was right on the virtual money. But there is one way in which socialism is the wrong word for what is happening: It is not an ideology. It demands no rigid creed. Rather, [the digital revolution] is a spectrum of attitudes, techniques, and tools that promote collaboration, sharing, aggregation, coordination, ad hocracy, and a host of other newly enabled types of social cooperation. It is a design frontier and a particularly fertile space for innovation.

NYT: Wired is ad-starved and propped up by Conde Nast; online readers vastly outnumber subscription readers.

Innovation in online media business models would help right about now. Can we aggregate that?

Alternative rock band Weezer has teamed forces with the people who created the Snuggie and are currently in the process of developing a Weezer-themed Snuggie, aka, the Wuggie. [via pitchfork media]

Memetician EA Blair - will you be trading in your Snuggie for a Wuggie?

I love the latest ad campaign from Quaker Oats. It turns out, however, that Quaker isn't just trying to be catchy. They would like humans to empower themselves and end childhood hunger.