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.

As much as I appreciate a good fail video and laugh regularly from schadenfreude, Lowe Roche’s latest for Fuzz Wax Bar in Toronto just made me cringe. To advertise their dedication to smoother skin, Fuzz covered a male model in wax strips and sent him onto the streets. People could tear the strips (and hair) off him to receive a 25% off gift certificate. The strips were illustrated with grim-faced smileys, varying based on the amount of pain they would cause. Many people appeared to delight in making this man shout in agony.

“Street Waxing” seems to me the opposite of an attractive ad campaign. The selling point of waxing is the final product: smooth skin. In between appointments, one primary goal is to forget about the pain. That makes this experience more of an anti-waxing PSA. Fuzz Wax Bar reminds us, very viscerally, that waxing is not a pleasant experience. And adding insult to injury, (unlike this model), you’re going to have to pay to get yours yanked off.

Credits after the jump

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Listen up, people. T3′s Brian Thompson and his shirt are here to give you four simple steps to nailing your next client presentation!

For those of you who prefer your tips in text format as opposed to video, here are the key points:

1. Posture: Stand up straight. This requires putting your shoulders back and chest out, allowing your clients a better opportunity to check out your God-given physical attributes. If you’re packing in the rear, knock a pen off the table and take an extra-long time to pick it up. It’s this negotiation tactic that made up the basis of Legally Blonde, after all!
2. Gesture: Pinkies out! Pinkies always, always out! It shows class. Also, remember: When you’re presenting your “big idea,” try to stretch your arms out as wide as you possibly can. This will help the client better understand the enormity of your concept. When saying your goodbyes, give the client a firm handshake, while simultaneously using your middle finger to subtly tickle their palms.
3. Pause: The best tactic for keeping your client on their toes is to suddenly stop mid-sentence when you’re in the middle of your presentation. Believe me, they’ll never see it coming. Only resume your presentation after the client asks you AT MINIMUM three times if everything’s okay.
4. Eye Connection: Never, EVER, break eye contact. Have everything memorized so you can talk about your concept without ever looking at it. Avoid blinking if possible; the only time an eye should close is when winking. If you wear contacts or have naturally dry eyes, try to wink at least once a minute. Remember, this is about eye connection, not contact. Pretend the client is Leonardo DiCaprio‘s character at the end of Titanic, and you’re Kate Winslet floating on the door. Never. Let. Go.

Practice these moves with your family over the holiday weekend, and come back to work on Monday presenting with confidence!

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

We’re no stranger to an agency fashion blog. They seem to pop up fairly often, as they’re the perfect way to practice vanity and self-indulgence until Cannes. Matt Van Hoven (former Agency Spy) and his Vitro colleague Jorge Ramirez competed against one another in a playful Best Dressed Challenge with themes like, “Post Wedding Brunch Chic” and “Vintage,” while BBH NY maintained a now-defunct “Working it at Work” fashion notebook.

To add to the collection, Launchpad NYC has their “Office Outfit Challenge,” where “5 advertising darlings get creative with their closets and pull off a fashion magazine miracle.”

If I were Anna Wintour I would put my sunglasses on and promptly exit the room, but as it is I will say that this is a great exercise in hyperbolic showiness. Whether wearing the print of their choice or daring “unexpected color combinations,” these girls push no limits and make no statements. A JC Penney’s catalogue might provide a better image of innovation.

Sure, it’s all for fun. But if these darlings are representing a boundary-pushing creative agency, they should rise to greater challenges.

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.

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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.

It’s been a while since we’re covered some ad school-related stunt like this, hasn’t it? I dunno, maybe not, but we’re senile. Anyways, it seems this video’s been up for quite some time and it comes from one Mustafa Ulker, a Miami Ad School copywriting grad who’s come up with a rather ominous way to bid farewell to his institution and land a proper agency gig in the process. Ah, gone are the days when two ad school gals could just say to an agency, hire us or we’ll get married. Now, we have this, in which Ulker bought up domains that are not actually sanctioned by Miami Ad School, at least we think, but have the names and cities in which MAS is housed involved nonetheless.

Hey, according to Ulker, it seemed to have worked the first time when he bought the domain miamiadschoolistanbul.com and eventually landed a slot in the school. Can the budding copywriter, who’s now based in NYC, recapture the magic again? Well, he’s fresh out of MAS, agency world, so your move. You can read his full manifesto here.