-Another day at Cannes produces another infographic from SapientNitro. Now, we head to the ’70s and a nod to Vivienne Westwood. link

-In case you missed it, above we have a recent Samsung digital short created by Huge (which is also busy vindicating Cap’n Crunch) and starring Usher. link

-Well, Steve Stoute  was truthful in telling us that his agency Translation still maintains a healthy relationship with A-B InBev (on Bud Light Platinum, Made In America, etc.), though not on sole ad duties for Bud Light. link

-Brian Sheehan, former Saatchi & Saatchi Japan/Australia and Team One CEO, has written a book called Loveworks. link

-Blast Radius Vancouver has promoted longtime staffer Michael Howatson to the newly created role of executive creative director, platforms/West, effective immediately. link

-Digitas has launched the next phase of its “The Big State” campaign for the New York Stock Exchange. link

-Dunkin Donuts says its “Time to make the donuts” slogan is dead and that it’s now appealing to the gluten-free demo. link

Millionaire software developer-turned-jungle-dwelling recluse-turned recent murder suspect John McAfee is here with a four-minute video about uninstalling his namesake software because life’s just weird like that sometimes.

In this video, McAfree says “fuck” and “shit” (which is why you’ve seen this video tagged NSFW by everyone today because no one trusts you to act like an adult and bring headphones to work, you child), does blow, takes his shirt off to flaunt his tribal tattoos, shoots a gun, and gets dry-humped by strippers who the credits tell us appear courtesy of Portland’s Club Exotica. So, I guess if any Guatemalan or Belizean assassins are currently looking for McAfee, he’s in Portland. With strippers and guns.

The video functions as an advertisement for whoismcafee.com, a visit to which tells us that McAfee is a guy with a blog about himself that he finances with the help of remnant ads. Also, George Jung, the cocaine kingpin that Johnny Depp portrayed in the 2001 biopic Blow, is apparently currently writing McAfee’s biography. So yeah, weird, right? Consider yourself totally weirded out by John McAfee. Credits after the jump.

Read more

We’ve received confirmation that Havas Discovery, a network with a handful of offices ranging from Baltimore to Toronto, has parted ways with managing director Chris Oliver, who had served head of the agency’s CRM practice for three years. Oliver was based out of the Baltimore office of Discovery, which serves as the data, analytics, digital and CRM arm of the holding company that has worked with past and present clients including Chase, Sonic and Liberty Mutual.

Prior to his most recent gig, Oliver spent several years as a client partner at what was EHS 4D and worked as account director at TBWA\Tequila for nearly five years before that. No word yet on a replacement for Oliver at Havas Discovery, which recently promoted current president Paul Marobella to a larger role as group president, a title that now calls for him to also oversee ops at experiential agency Havas Impact and brand agency, Palm + Havas.

Before I wrote this, my editor jokingly told me I’d been typecast as the Rooster Guy, but I won’t complain. Jason Statham has been typecast as the Rooster Guy of the film industry, and he’s probably worth $50 million. We’ve covered a few Rooster side projects recently, and now they’re back in the news, teaming with Microsoft for a co-ideation Windows 8 skateboarding app.

The project allows users to build a digital Vans skate park – would you expect anything else from Rooster? – while on Skype calls. The callers can then watch a Vans Pro skater board across the customized park on their phones and tablets. The app will include the inevitable links to merchandise and social media pages. Let’s hope the Microsoft money will let Rooster continue to make their quirky skateboard-related projects, so in turn, I can continue to be the Rooster Guy. And if you’re keeping score, let’s also hope Gavin McInness has finally seen an episode of Game of Thrones.

With a fresh site and video spot, an Italian agency is now offering mind-to-mind advertising. As io9 reports, via the agency’s release: “Telepathy Advertising is a full service agency which works on telepathic scripts and its emission converting concepts into visual, verbal, tactile and sensorial stimulus with a location-aware target segmentation.”

They employ a team of five “telepathies,” each gifted in a different realm of communication. Together, they can translate an advertising campaign on all sensory levels, delivering the ultimate multimedia message.

Though the project is basically a publicity stunt, it’s interesting because it’s not a fully far-fetched idea. Though the existence of telepathic people or technology is dubious at best, advertisement via Google Glass, for example, might be so attuned with our daily lives that it feels subconscious.

In any case, hopefully the agency behind the stunt will publish a report of calls and emails from people who thought this was the ultimate revelation for the future of advertising. If you’re not telepathic, you can get in touch via their “conventional” contact form.

Well, after some cuts here and a shuttering there, we finally have some positive news to report in 2013 about iCrossing, mainly that the Hearst-owned digital agency has promoted six-year vet Brian Powley to global president. Powley, who initially joined iCrossing in 2007 to manage the agency’s San Francisco office before taking on the role of chief client officer and subsequently president of its North American operations. Powley takes over for president/CEO Don Scales, who’s leaving iCrossing after seven years at the helm.

Prior to his joining iCrossing, which currently counts 18 global offices and clients including Beam, Coca-Cola, Pep Boys and FedEx (but no DirecTV?), Powley held managing director positions on the West Coast at both MRM and what was then Modem Media.

This parody reality show trend is tiresome, especially because reality shows are already a parody of life. Earlier this month, PBS invented fake reality shows like “Knitting Wars” and advertised them coupled with their own message: “The fact that you thought this was real says a lot about the state of TV. Support Quality Programming.”

Now, Brooklyn-based agency/organic farming advocate Carrot Creative has come up with a series of new shows on the “Unpakt Network,” all centered on moving house. On “America’s Next Top Mover,” contestants struggle with boxes as European-accented judges critique their form. In “Mover Wars,” three movers grit their teeth as they consider the lowest prices they’ll accept. Additional trailers offer previews of “The Moving Truck Whisperer” and “Movebusters.”

Fans can suggest the name of the next show by tweeting to @unpakt with the hashtag #unpaktreality. If the reality theme is here to stay, I hope at least for a parody of Dance Moms, with moving men and women grooming their children to move boxes in tutus.

See the other videos after the jump

Read more

-If you have about nine minutes to spare, here are your Cannes, Day 2 highlights, which include OMD Australia (Sydney) and O&M Amsterdam picking up Media Agency of the Year and Media Grand Prix awards, respectively. link

-In cased you missed it at Cannes, Creativeland Asia launched a new “creative experiential learning program” called “Soultripin,” which begins in the motherland (above). link

-WPP Digital unit Possible and Google-owned Wildfire have formed a strategic alliance for a global rollout of the latter’s Social Marketing Suite for Enterprises.

-Sid Lee has been appointed as global marketing agency for luxury villa (sounds redundant, no?) rental company, Luxury Retreats.

-Talent/production support services company Talent Partners has hired Sue Renaldo as director of operations.

-NYC-based shop Sub Rosa has been named AOR for color/color systems brand Pantone, marking the first such appointment by the latter in over six years.

Code and Theory is a creative agency behind publishing websites like “The Verge,” and “Interview” magazine. They also have an odd fondness for the Dewey Decimal System.

Managing partners Steve Baer and Mike Treff took the mediabistroTV crew on an Olde Timey New York meets modern design tour of their fifth floor offices. The guys showed how they added wide open spaces, planned randomness and hip wood floors to the windows, the wood and the brick that originally came with the building built by the Astor family in 1886. Then there were the books, the many, many, many books.

You can view our other MediabistroTV productions on our YouTube Channel.

Chris Zander, managing director/partner at Venice, CA-based prodco, Backyard, chimes in from the French Riviera and talks about why Cannes is still worth attending. So, we’ll indulge and live vicariously through him for the next few days. Stay tuned for more and you can follow Zander at @realchriszander.

I’ve come to Cannes eleven times over the past thirteen years, and most of the trips have blurred into each other.  Whenever somebody asks me what has changed since my first trip here, I usually answer that nothing has really changed but some of the faces.  Tuesday night here could always be counted on for being quiet…the calm before the storm.  But last night, for the first Tuesday night ever, the restaurants and bars were packed.  The streets were buzzing, and the Carlton was overflowing like the typical Thursday nights of the past.  Digital and Innovation have finally caught up to TV.  There is a palpable energy here, and a bigger SXSW-type of crowd.  There is an energy of excitement…what is coming next??

Read more