“What would you do, if you were stranded on a tropical island with only a smartphone?” Les Stroud, survival expert and reality TV star, asks in Samsung’s new spot. #SOS? Daily selfies? Think of your answer and get it put to the test with Samsung’s promo for the Galaxy S4 Zoom. Sixteen chosen contestants will be flown to the Caribbean where they’ll learn survival skills from Mr. Stroud. The best eight will move to a secret island, where they will compete in survival challenges, accompanied by their Galaxy gadgets. Viewers of the show then vote on the contestants in real time via their social media posts. The winner gets an island (or $100,000, so an “island experience,” whatever that means).

“It’s an ambitious project but one that will surely not be forgotten,” said Craig Borders, the producer and director behind series like Laguna Beach and Ink Master and SOS Island‘s executive producer. “People crave new entertainment experiences and this series is sure to deliver, while tapping into the social media realm in an unprecedented way.”

It’ll be interesting to see how Samsung avoids a clusterfuck when they’re dealing with a cadre of stranded people, all documenting their experiences in real time. The solution, of course, is for nothing to be in real time, and no one to be really stranded. In that case, we’ll be watching another piece of canned TV. There’s nothing enticing about that, social media streamed or not.

Discovery’s annual Shark Week extravaganza not only confirms that viewers go crazy for underwater creatures that can rip them into a thousand pieces, but that brands will use just about any tangential connection to a popular theme to try and wring out that extra dollar. Take the fat, colorful Tide billboard above the Lincoln Tunnel that I came across yesterday: “We get the blood out, too.” That’s one way to do it.

Volkswagen and Deutsch are going all in as well, bringing cars and sharks a lot closer than they’ve ever been before, a true sharknado of brand association if there ever was one. The VW campaign is loaded on social media, mainly focusing on sharable videos through Instagram and Vine. VW created a Beetle convertible that will be used as an underwater cage hooked up to cameras for the remainder of the week, hoping to conquer a chunk of the digital space floating around with these exclusive videos. Credits after the jump.

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And now for something completely different:

A tipster points us to a quaint little discussion in Reddit’s Advertising sub-reddit that asks: “Do agencies drug test? Or is it something that’s on an agency by agency basis? I’m more of a creative and about to start entering the field, just wondering what to look out for.” We figure it’s our duty to distract you from this whole Publicis/Omnicom thing with a few of our favorite responses.

User auto-didact imagined an employee having to break the drug test results with the boss:

“Well, the designers all showed up positive for marijuana. So we fired them. Most of the creative directors too. All the account honchos came up positive for opiates. Most likely coke. They’re gone. All our PLD’s and software engineers tripped up for speed. Not surprising. We’ll have to offshore that work now. Oh, and almost all the senior leadership was clean, but bloodwork showed liver failure in progress. We caught our IT guy huffing cans of spray paint.”

User panthur offers a different experience:

They did at my agency. It was a local agency but now we are owned by a giganto agency conglomerate. A lot of them are owned by big companies and testing unfortunately tends to come with that.

Finally, user pugofwar responded simply with:

Never. (I’m at W+K.)

You can read the whole thread here, and we invite you to share your own experience in the comments.

About a year ago, Intel and Toshiba partnered together with the help of Pereira & O’Dell to create “The Beauty Inside,” a so-called “social movie” that paired not-quite-movie stars Topher Grace and Mary Elizabeth Winstead as two young actors who can’t believe that this is where their careers have taken them thus far. The big budget online film was apparently effective enough at whatever it was trying to do to spawn a spiritual sequel, “The Power Inside,” starring Harvey Keitel as a guy you kind of feel sorry for until you you consider that he’s still finding work at his age.

As a press release tells us, the heavily product integrated plot will consist of “An alien invasion by a race of extraterrestrial moustaches and unibrows who take over the upper lips and eyes of people around the world. The main character is Neil, who together with his friends and the help of technology discovers his inner strength to defeat the moustache and unibrow invaders called Uricks. Intel-inspired Ultrabook™ devices by Toshiba play an important role in Neil’s journey of self-discovery.” We assume “inner strength” and “Intel-inspired Ultrabook™ devices by Toshiba” are pretty interchangeable in this scenario.

Similar to its predecessor, computer processor fans every can be part of the film by interacting with the protagonist via Facebook. Users can also upload a photo of themselves, edit that photo with a moustache and unibrow, and reach self-actualization after the process is completed. Credits after the jump.

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Ted Mccagg describes himself as “a recovering ad man.” You may recognize him from the 2011 book Paper Doll Orgy, where Mccagg compiled doodles and drawings from his freelance time at places like Y&R and McCann (not to mention some juicy agency potshots in the book’s acknowledgements). Mccagg is back, now with a new film, Bloom, a John Hughes homage about two girls planning to lose their virginity the night before high school graduation.

While the film’s narrative covers standard ground in the teen-sex narrative, Mccagg has gone all out on the social media publicity front, briefly slipping back on his advertising hat. And all out might be an understatement. The movie’s promotional website includes detailed Proust questionnaires (28 questions) for the 10 main characters in their respective voices. There’s also a link to a blog where anyone can vote on who is more “V-Worthy” in head-to-head matchups. In addition to the site’s material, Mccagg has worked up an expansive world supplemental to the film: a character’s Tumblr dedicated to Neil Degrasse Tyson, another character’s book actually available for purchase on Amazon, etc. Once the movie premieres, Mccagg may want to look into a James Franco impersonation job.

Bloom will be released on August 5th.

This new Tumblr account comes from Avery Harrison, creative intern at Digitas and student at Miami Ad School, San Francisco. ‘Ads For Anything‘ was built under the premise of ideas that appeared brilliant in Harrison’s head at first-thought and not-so-brilliant once those ideas had a chance to roll around in his brain for a while. The dreaded creative letdown, an affliction that comes down like a thunderbolt after the initial honeymoon period. Been there myself, Mr. Harrison.

Scroll through the Tumblr, and you’ll see generic photos with blocks of generic fortune-cookie text that could be about any product. For example: “Live against the grain” is set over a wooden texture with a “Your Logo Here” block. Many of these genericisms could be early drafts of Mercedes spots, which probably doesn’t say a lot about Mercedes or Jon Hamm voice-overs. In fact, I’m somewhat surprised Mercedes hasn’t plucked Harrison for a job already – “To some people, passion is just a word” and ” There is always enough time to go for it” beg for Hamm’s voice to be played while a black SL zooms around a bend.

In early June, San Fran-based Camp + King took over as the first AOR for the mobile dating site Zoosk. Seven weeks later, we herald the return of Heart Friend, the chatty heart-shaped mascot who is now doling out dating advice for inquiring users. Zoosk asked its users to post questions on Facebook, and then the Zoosk team selected the best posts for our little buddy, Heart Friend.

Each week, Heart Friend will answer one question by video for the site’s YouTube channel. This week: what to wear on a first date. Heart Friend does some rambling about men being bulls and then goes into an awkward aside about a red dress. Heart Friend has a man’s voice, but then shows up wearing a dress, which is supposed to make you laugh, I think? Cupid must already be under contract elsewhere. Credits after the jump.

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Do you hate your car? Do you want to let the world know how frustrated you are driving around in a jalopy that is beyond repair? Honda can help – sort of. For the rest of today, Honda will be tweeting back Vine videos at unhappy drivers who post #WantNewCar on Twitter. The Twitter/Vine combo, developed by the automaker’s longtime agency RPA, is part of Honda’s Summer Clearance Sales Event, and is meant to provide some catharsis to drivers even though there aren’t any discounts or financial incentives for using the hashtag. There probably should be.

If you watch the promo clip above, you’ll see what it looks like when brands use social media for the sake of using social media rather than really committing to interacting with consumers on various social platforms.Take KFC and their annoying, yet memorable, #IAteTheBones campaign. It’s made to go viral and is primarily identifiable to KFC and no other brand. On Twitter, KFC offers followers free merchandise and deals related to the hashtag on a regular basis. Honda is only responding for one day. Even though Honda’s hashtag is much more relatable (one could argue it’s too generic) the execution feels unsure of itself, just like a teenage driver getting behind the wheel for the first time. Credits after the jump.

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While we’ve seem almost every iteration of brands turning fans’ tweets into ads by this point, here’s a new spot for Wendy’s new Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger from agency VML that adds a musical component to this formula.

Using that hashtag #PretzelLoveSongs on Twitter AND Facebook (gah, Facebook has hashtags now), consumers who say exceedingly positive things about Wendy’s new burger had the opportunity for their praises to be turned into a musical number, with some having even been sung by former 98° frontman/Jessica Simpson spouse Nick Lachey during a live event last night in New York, where live-streams always take place for some reason. While the press release doesn’t say if the specific location was Times Square, we’re going to go ahead and guess this happened in Times Square.

Nothing like watching a former boy band member/reality star sing about a cheeseburger in probably Times Square. Oh, and VML offered the chance to participate via your social media, because the most effective use of it is to either praise or make fun of brands who spend a lot of money on advertising. If we’re lucky, it might even be a trending tweet. Update: The event actually took place at a Wendy’s location, natch, on 34th St in NYC.

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.