Gillette has a series of how-to videos on YouTube to help dudes shave their head, groin, chest, back and shoulders, and armpits.

Creative

TweetBucks is a new service that makes affiliate linking through shortened urls easier. The way it works is basically thus, you use bit.ly to shorten a link to a third party site, let’s say 1-800-FLOWERS, and post it to Twitter or Facebook. TweetBucks scans its database of merchants for affiliate programs matching the destination site. If they are able to match your link to an affiliate program and someone clicks through your shortened url and generates a sale you keep 70% of the commission.

Industry News

YouTube is testing pre-roll ads before content provided by some U.K. partners including Channel 4, BBC Worldwide, National Geographic and Discovery Networks. In the trial content owners are allowed to select which content will be opened to advertisers and YouTube’s sales staff sell ads against it on a CPM basis.

Industry News

I like this interactive McDonald’s billboard in Piccadilly Circus. I wonder if tourists are really posing with it without being prompted. Also, why haven’t I seen this in Times Square?

Creative

from Wieden + Kennedy

Creative

Adland asked a number of ad people what they would do differently in their careers if they could and published some of the best answers.

My favorites:

Anon: I would have been more outlandish, taken more risks, been less afraid.

Mark Wnek, Chief creative officer of Lowe NY, AdAge columnist: I would have started my own agency very early on.

John Fountain (@Fountainjohn), Copywriter: I wouldn’t have spent so much of the 1980’s in a bar.

Careerism

Ad Age published an interview with Nick Denton of Gawker Media in which he discusses the under-40 set’s preferences for Gossip Girl over NBC Nightly News, original news vs regurgitated blog posts and new ad formats.

Maybe the most interesting thing Denton shares in the interview is that a Nielsen Research report found that nearly 34% of Gawker readers have their own blogs.

Industry News

Crispin Porter + Bogusky is auctioning three months of their intern’s labor in an eBay auction. The highest bid at the time of this writing is $5,400 which is quite cheap, but bidders should know that the auction winner will receive a presentation on strategy and brand positioning and now production work.

Agency News

Hulu is has succeeded to inspire at least one advertiser to try brand-building on the fledgling online TV platform. Pepsi produced 15 second retro commercials to promote their new retro Throwback drink which they are running against TV shows from 70’s and 80’s on Hulu.

I expect this is a very exciting vote of confidence for the people at Hulu. When I watch their programming I notice a large percentage of their ad slots filled with PSA’s.

Creative, Industry News, Trends

Jalopnik has collected what they think are the ten worst car commercials of all time. They’re undeniably bad but I’m not sure they can compete with the 1,000’s of brain meltingly bad local car spots.

Witness:

Creative