Would you want to work for a company that asks you to do a blindfolded trustfall off of a building? Probably not, although if Goldman Sachs asked some young jobseekers to do the trustfall while calculating a probability brainteaser, I’m sure there are people who’d sign up. That’s the point of the new faux recruiting video from SpareFoot, an Austin-based storage finder start-up. You’ll find all the trappings of an exaggerated office culture: crazy bosses, scared underlings, and an HR rep who likes Vin Diesel. We’re guessing working at SpareFoot isn’t actually like this, but CEO Chuck “Commodore” Gordon does resemble a Gary Busey stunt double (well played on the self-deprecation).

These types of office-culture riffs have been done before, but SpareFoot has chosen an interesting path by linking the video on the company website Jobs page. I’m not sure if such a jokey pitch would make me want to apply to work there, because although we get to see what SpareFoot culture isn’t like, we never really get to see what it’s actually like in the office. The risk may turn people off, but during a time when using the wrong resume font can lead employers to ignore you, having a sense of humor in the workplace feels refreshing.

As mentioned, IFC is marketing the new season of original series Comedy Bang Bang as “the ultimate comedy fantasy.” In the video spot, hosts Reggie Watts and Scott Aukerman bounce along in a psychedelic van that runs on autopilot, produces a stewardess proffering pillows, and plays the radio (“Come Back,” by The J Geils Band). Watts and Aukerman exchange lines in their usual cheerful deadpan until their chariot announces the start of the new season.

The accompanying poster features Watts riding a centaur that has Aukerman’s head, and a background similar to a poster you probably bought from the book fair in fifth grade.

Though not especially enticing, the idea is cute and fans of Comedy Bang Bang will continue watching regardless. For newbies, the trailer for Season 1 gives better evidence of a show worth checking out.

Poster after the jump

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And now, your silly aside of the day courtesy of, yes, another memo from Grey New York, which our tips box has been adequately filled with over the last couple of years. The latest opus comes from Grey NY president/CCO Tor Myhren, who decided to bless his staffers on this, the hottest of weeks in the Big Apple, by letting them wear shorts all this week. Why? Well, agency staffers helped find candidates for the apparent “hiring spree” Grey’s on (we’re assuming the newly won Gillette biz has plenty to do with it). Anyways, consider us jealous once we dare step outside and roast. Read on if you’d like, though we did redact a couple of the names just to be fair.

“I’m fighting against every fiber of my being as I write this. But it’s hot out there. Like, really hot. And as [redacted] has pointed out, you guys did a great job helping us fill the ridiculous amount of new hires we needed over the past few months. So it is with absolutely zero pleasure that I announce you can all wear shorts for the rest of the week. Run home now and change, [redacted], because this is the day you’ve been waiting for.

Michael and I agree this offer is only good for the rest of this week, so enjoy it people. You’ve earned it.

Love,
Tor.

P.S. In two hours I’m strategically off to LA for the rest of the week and won’t have to witness this atrocity. So in my head, it never really happened.”

These days, it’s easy being hip. You think waffles taste good? You should probably just put on your Ray-Bans and bang your head against your bird-wallpapered wall because you’re a f*cking hipster. You went to college? Might want to reconsider the granola in your cupboard and the tattered Converse in your closet, because your hipster is already showing. Find out what else makes you a candidate for hipster-shaming via Hipstertest.com, a side project from Noise Marketing copywriter Daniel Blaser and designer Keith Maneri. Blaser’s last public service was banning the word awesome from the agency lexicon.

Answer yes to the Hipstertest, and you’ll get affirmation (“You are a hipster!”), accessorized with a mustache, glasses, and bird. Answer no, and the site simply serves you the next question. In the latter case, I’d love to get some other snarky response, like “You must wear only Brooks Brothers loafers,” or “Do you own a gun?”

Hipstertest is an on-point reminder that the hipster label now means nothing, and those who use it acerbically are stuck in 2011. But if it’s hurled ironically? We need another test for that “hipster.”

Seeing as it’s lunchtime and all over here on the East Coast, figured you may have a few minutes to view a new web series concocted by a handful of folks including current and former ad creatives/execs who decided to delve into a completely non-agency project. Ladies and gents, we bring you Transfurter, essentially an adults-only animated series filled with innuendo, breasts, phalluses and more. And that’s just one episode (“A Hotdogbit’s Tale, Pt 1/1000,” which you can see above).

You might cringe, chuckle or just shut if off, but whatever the case, you can blame it all on mastermind Joe Croson, a former VP group executive producer at BBDO and writer for [Adult Swim]. Obviously, Croson’s latter gig informs this current effort aplenty, but the Transfurter creator tells us that the seed was planted four years ago. He tells us, “It was a seed idea in 2009 that I drew on a post-it note and did some stupid VO for.  With the help of my friends Miguel, Mike, Rachel, Nick and Justin and some of my awesome interns, I pitched it to a few different cable networks, who either told us that it was too sick for broadcast, or wanted to see it in action online first.”

Along with Croson, Transfurter features the handiwork of Dan Cordella, currently a senior copywriter at Digitas, Monica Lo, whose day job is senior art director at kbs+, and Jake Grupp from Sound Lounge. If you have more time to kill, you can view more episodes from the ongoing series as well as learn more about the project here. Reminder: It’s kinda NSFW.

The world is weird, and Snapple has succeeded in giving us small moments to reflect and delight in that with every juice. Now with their latest digital campaign from Code and Theory (check out our recent Cubes tour with the shop here), those moments are deepened via “Re-enFACTments,” videos that bring Snapple Real Facts to life.

The most recent bit of useless knowledge re-enFACTed is that the ostrich’s brain is smaller than its eyeball. To prove this point, we see the ostrich peck moodily at the camera, allow humans to ride on its feathery back, and make vague humming sounds. But the real point is that, “the true measurement of a champion *isn’t* the size of its brain.”

365: Neck-in-Neck is an HBO-24/7-style sports documentary on the wild world of ostrich racing. In the 5-minute (riveting and thus justified) spot, we watch the townfolk of Chandler, Arizona, put on their annual ostrich race, featuring both riding and chariot racing. Snapple interviews the head trainer and his prize ostrich, Julio, who was apparently bullied as a youngster. He hid his head in the sand but was still mercilessly attacked by vicious teenage beaks. Today he is a winner.

This is all real, seconded by a Daily Mail article on the “Hilarious and Unpredictable World of the Great American Ostrich Races.” There’s something fascinating about ostriches, and seeing fully-grown men on their backs is even more bizarre. Snapple strikes us with wonder every time we open a juice, and this campaign lengthens that curiosity, engaging until the last sip.

Credits after the jump

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With all the hullabaloo surrounding the Campbell Ewald news and everything else under the sun yesterday, forgot Whit Hiler‘s note to us that, yes, brands have latched on, literally, to his “Beardvertising” effort. Hiler, of course, is one of the parties involved in the “Kentucky Kicks Ass” tourism campaign launched towards the end of last year. Two months ago, the creative and his agency Lexington, KY-based agency Cornett Integrated Marketing Solutions decided to launch an effort called “Beardvertising,” in which still-patent-pending “beardboards”–or miniature billboards–would be placed on willing participants’ beards.

Well, suffice it to say, we were skeptical, but now Hiler tells us that “Beardvertising” is building momentum, in a sense, in that the project has nabbed brands including A&W Restaurants and most recently (and aptly enough), Dollar Shave Club. In a statement, the latter company’s founder Michael Dubin says, “We’re excited to be building our business of beardlessness with these badass, bushy Beardboards.” Yesterday, the Beardvertising effort officially took off with 25 participants from around the U.S. who will sport beardboards, and Hiler says there are 1,400 more “eager guys” willing to participate. Perhaps one of the most prominent beardvertisers for DSC thus far is Gerald Okamura (below), who you may recognize from films including Big Trouble in Little China and Showdown in Little Tokyo.

You can check out more Beardvertising hijinks on Instagram here.

Betty White, Joe Pesci, Robin Williams, and… Kenny G. Aside from picking the most odds-and-sods group of entertainers out there, Snickers and BBDO New York have a knack for choosing celebrities with just enough relevance for the “You’re not you when you’re hungry” campaign. The title for best Snickers jokester is a toss-up between White’s roughhousing football player and Pesci’s whiny wingman. The latest spot, “Cards,” won’t top its predecessors, mainly because Kenny G doesn’t speak throughout the whole clip, but you can always lose yourself in his patented melancholy saxophoning.

It’s strange to think that the first ad with White came out over three years ago, but these spots seem to have enough social support to keep on kicking, even as the celebrities get less celebratory. Maybe for the next one, BBDO could get all four celebs in one room at the same time – a group of hungry people who all need to eat Snickers. That way, we could get Pesci to look at Kenny G and unleash a “Who is this fuckin’ guy?” tirade. Everybody wins, even Kenny G, since he’d be in two commercials in the past decade instead of one. Credits after the jump.

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Never before has the “What The…?” category tag been used more appropriately. No, Gary Busey is not the new spokesman for Men’s Wearhouse, but the folks at Jimmy Kimmel Live! had some fun with the recent ousting of MW co-founder, George Zimmer. Zimmer’s velvety rasp has been replaced with Busey’s unvelvety crazy that complements his devious smile and plaid clown suit. When Zimmer said “You’re gonna like the way you look, I guarantee it,” it made you want to buy a suit. When Busey says the same line, you almost expect him to follow it with: “It puts the lotion on its skin.” Normally I’d be kidding, but not with Gary Busey. He’s one of few people who can make brand parody truly frightening.

h/t AR

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

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