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With the season of love/loneliness upon us, W+K Portland has its design studio in the holiday spirit with a series of letterpress Valentine’s Day cards.

Now, these cards aren’t of the “I Choo-Choo Choose You” variety. No, most of these are best for expressing your cupidity with octopi “hugging,” rabbits ready to pounce on one other or text messages declaring, “I Fucking Love You.”

So, if your significant other is tired of soft-focus photos of roses or pictures of Spider-Man saying, “I’m caught in your web, Valentine,” adorning your cards, consider switching it up this year. Hopefully, we’ll get Terry Crews in a romantic Old Spice spot as we near the 14th. Check out one more Valentine card after the jump.

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Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

 

Back in April, Facebook unveiled the Evolution Bureau-built “Facebook Studio,” a digital space where creative marketing types could showcase and archive their work and comment on the work of others.

At the time of its launch, you probably thought Facebook Studio sounded like a neat idea and something you would submit your agencies’ campaign work to once you had a free minute to upload a case study. Then, as you were reading this, you thought, “Oh yeah, that Facebook ad thing I forgot to do,” and visited Facebook Studio’s site to see if other creatives were making use of the portal.

As it turns out, a lot of agencies have been using Facebook Studio, specifically for the purpose of drawing some attention to social media-specific campaigns and pretty custom tabs. And, perhaps to inspire you to post even more work to the FB space, EVB has now rolled out a series of print ads that urge advertising pros to enter the Facebook Studio Awards, which was announced a couple of months back and is yet another opportunity for self-congratulation among those in the industry who like trophies.

 

To refresh your memory, the deadline for submission is December 31, and entries will be judged based on the following criteria:

• Is the campaign social? Are people and social interactions at the core of the idea? Does it motivate people to share?

• Does it make full use of Facebook marketing products? Does the campaign take advantage of Facebook’s full potential?

• Does it integrate with other media? Is the Facebook idea part of a larger multimedia campaign?

• Does it scale? Is it easy for people to interact with and share your content.

Interested competitors can submit their work here. Check out one more ad and credits from EVB after the jump.

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Mark Svartz, a former BBH NY ACD who was jointly responsible for perhaps one of the most creative Halloween costumes we saw this year, has written a book called I Hate You, Kelly Donahue. If the title doesn’t give away too much, let us tell you that it looks and sounds like the second coming of Heathers.

Right now, Svartz is going all-out to profess his loathing and promote his book, which comes out Jan. 15, via a Facebook presence, website and even a street campaign (poster above) that lets you dial-in your hate for Kelly (some of the more bizarre messages are posted on the Facebook page). Guess she now knows what Tommy Tutone felt like in the ’80s. We’re looking to get actual page grabs from the book so stay tuned if you’d like. FYI, Svartz is currently back copywriting on the freelance circuit.

Update: Regarding the phone number he posted, Svartz tells us that the calls go to a Google Voice # he set up. He then recorded the voicemail message so it sounds like it’s actually Donahue’s phone line. The scribe then gets email notifications whenever someone leaves a message or text, and it saves the voicemails as mp3s. According to Svartz, he’s already received over 100 messages.

Update 2: Pics!

 

The late NWA co-founder Eazy-E and attorney/Angels in America protagonist Roy Cohn are the centerpieces of a new, peculiar campaign from the now corporation, which recent gave us Capital One’s “Mascot Challenge” and is now marking today, World AIDS Day, with “This Prick.” We’re not sure why there’s a Colombian “family soldier” being memorialized on the site, but however the shop is approaching it, the goal here is to end AIDS once and for all. The video below featuring various sound bites emphasizes the effort a bit more sincerely than the “Prick” poster work. Now just wear the damn ribbon, Kramer.

 

Well, we gave Michael Wolff until the end of the year, but it looks like Prometheus Global Media couldn’t wait that long. The parent company of Adweek has announced that the Murdoch-obsessed media maven will be leaving his post as editorial director of the trade and will be replaced by executive editor Jim Cooper, who will oversee day-to-day Adweek operations, effective immediately (here’s a letter from Cooper to Adweek readers).

A month back, the New York Post (along with Gawker) reported that Prometheus was looking to replace Wolff, which wasn’t too much of a shock considering the detour Adweek had taken under his watch after its relaunch. Of course, now that the parties are parting ways, the niceties come out. Wolff says in a statement, “I’ve had a fantastic time at Adweek. It’s been my privilege to be part of the brilliant transformation of the magazine and site. I can’t rave enough about Adweek’s remarkable staff. I am sad to leave but sure the talent here will continue to do great things. I’m grateful to everybody at Prometheus for giving me this opportunity and this wonderful year.”

What a year it’s been. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane and remember what Wolff told us six months back about the new Adweek.

 

Skyler Dobin is a man on a mission. The recent Creative Circus grad/JWT Atlanta intern is (like many, we think) bemoaning the state of the United States Postal Service, which has been bleeding billions and could go bankrupt by year’s end without government intervention. Fearing the end is nigh (or at least the end of Saturday delivery, as well as hundreds of thousands of layoffs, etc.), Dobin and his art directing partner Jennifer Fisher are stepping into action.

The two have come up with their own ad campaign concept that urges people to send more hand-written letters and includes print, OOH and even a Facebook component which lets you design and purchase stamps. The “Save the Stamp: Keep the USPS Alive” effort has been ongoing for some time, and while the USPS has yet to really embrace it (aren’t they still in the midst of their $100 million review?), Dobin and Fisher have talked to agency officials, who assure that they are getting the campaign into the right hands (which is always reassuring and totally heartfelt). In addition, the pair has gotten the attention of/kudos from U.S. senators. Dobin has since returned to NYC and is looking for a copywriting gig while his USPS-saving effort progresses.

 

Since Best Picture Oscar contender Human Centipede 2: The Full Sequence has seen limited release (and now it’s unbanned in Britain!), why not kick off this work week with a new poster from Trailer Park division Art Machine, which takes the film’s title rather literally (and no, it’s not based on the film’s premise).Peep it after the jump and see what you think.

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From Carmichael Lynch CD Brock Davis comes this striking front cover for the October 10th issue of TIME, which hit newsstands next week. Last Friday, TIME asked Davis to submit artwork for their issue about America’s great spending divide, and Davis’ winning concept features an image of the magazine torn in half.

Given limited time to submit his concept, Davis apparently had to get creative for designing said cover. As his Minneapolis-based agency describes in its announce, “Davis had only a day to shoot and composite the entire image. In order to shoot a stack of cash, he had to get creative. He cut down 2,500 sheets of copy paper to resemble a stack of hundred dollar bills. Being resourceful he hammered down some of his son’s chalk to create a powder and mixed it until the hue matched. Davis then took his wife’s makeup brush and dusted the powder over the stack of fake money. Now Davis had the shot he needed and took an X-acto knife and made the slice across the TIME cover. To create the visual depth of the center split, he glued multiple magazines together and sliced and frayed their edges and lit them from the side to give it some dimension and shadow.”

We also like that it can be seen as a subtle comment on the value of print magazines these days. A hat tip to Davis for what’s sure to be the most visually stunning cover of TIME we’ve seen in a long while. Watch TIME‘s managing editor Richard Stengel reveal the cover on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” after the jump.
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International construction company OHL just released the above image as part of a new print campaign from agency Kastner & Partners, Mexico. As we can see, Joe construction worker blankets a dirt road with a sturdy new concrete highway that runs adjacent to the school/prison/housing projects off in the background. It’s a cute spot, but not one we’d really bat too much of an eye at. That is, until we received an anonymous tip accusing OHL and Kaster & Partners of foul play.

It was in this anonymous tip that we were whisked away to the portfolio of Swedish photographer and retoucher, Erik Johansson. It would seem that someone out there in ad world who knows Johansson thinks that Kastner & Partners is guilty of an advertising ripoff, noting that Johansson has a very similar photo serving as the lead image on his portfolio site (below). Basically, tipsters wondered why Johansson wasn’t in the Kastner credits.

 

So, dear readers, we leave this in your hands. Are OHL and Kastner & Partners guilty of an ad ripoff, or is the whole “the road is a blanket” concept played-out? Maybe this is a sign that if the concept wasn’t played-out before, it certainly is now.

Aloe Blacc‘s soulful R&B/hip-hop hybrid landed him an early bit fame when his track “I Need a Dollar” was featured as the theme song for HBO’s series How to Make it in America. And, with Tanqueray sponsoring the vocalist’s new music video for, “Tonight Downtown,” Blacc might finally break through to a mainstream audience, or at least those who like to drink their gin in smokey bars.

After winning Tanqueray from W+K back in December, Mother NY has done little for the brand in the vein of full-scale campaigns. But with a four-minute music video, an interactive version that lets users download “Tonight Downtown” and submit their own remixes, as well as a stylish new print campaign featuring actors Michael Pitt and Idris Elba and model/Jack White’s ex-wife Karen Elson (after the jump), it would seem that the agency has spent the last nine months ramping up a re-introduction to the Diageo brand using the slogan, “Tonight We Tanqueray.”

It’s a far cry from W+K’s “Resist Simple” campaign from two years ago, but will start-studded launch events be enough to make Tanqueray the gin of choice for young professionals ready for a night on the town?

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