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Last night was the launch party for Barry Diller's latest venture, Notional. You may know this young production company for their show 'Chopped' on the Food Network. The shop's lead, Ricky Van Veen, is best known for co-founding CollegeHumor.com. Ben Silverman, formerly of NBC Entertainment, will play a role as well — though what that will entail is yet to be revealed.

In an interview with PRNewser's Joe Ciarallo, Van Veen explains the platform distribution model for his company's content as well as how he hopes to market the work. "We know how to market — how to get the Web excited," said Van Veen, who is in his late 20s.

Maybe the most interesting part of the conversation came from Ciarallo's first question. Catching Van Veen somewhat off guard, Ciarallo asks the Web entrepreneur to explain his company in 10 seconds. Van Veen has said in previous interviews that if an idea can't be explained in 10 seconds or less, it won't make it on the Web. Increasingly, Web success is the overall marker for WIN, so be sure to watch and see what he said.

More: "College Humor: Exceedingly Legit"

Adland points us to a funny little audio clip on Consumerist which allegedly comes from a former Jimmy Dean customer. See, the company apparently reduced the size of its breakfast sausage without lowering the price. Sneaky!

Note: this is old. As in, two years at least. Still worth a listen.

More: "Cramer-Krasselt Takes The Sausage"

L.A./Amsterdam-based firm 72andSunny welcomed Kelly Schoeffel and Matt Murphy as strategy director and creative director, respectively. Both hail from W+K Portland, where Murphy served as senior AD on projects including Nike "MVP" that starred those chatty Kobe and LeBron puppets. Schoeffel, who boasts a PhD in Social Psych from Harvard, led the strategy team on Target while at W+K.

In a statement about her new digs, Schoeffel says, "72andSunny is a rare bird. The company creates elegant, surprising and culturally immersive work that gets the job done. I was immediately enamored with the partners--their creative passion, their respect for business, their genuine excitement about coming to work each day. Also, I need a tan."

More: "72andSunny Does Hockey Moms"

We're lumping together a couple of stories here. Long and short of it is Campbell Ewald's EVP Digital Planning and Publishing Jeremy Morris has left the building. Also, AKQA's Managing Director Jason Whiting has allegedly been replaced by David Bentley.

Campbell Ewald
We've confirmed that Jeremy Morris has left, or been asked to leave. His name's no longer in the directory and one source claims he was ousted this morning. Another source wrote to tell us "Jeremy was originally the head person of publishing. In mid 2008,[the agency] also gave him the head of digital."

He was involved in an absurd situation in which he couldn't work for CE because of a delay in the paperwork for the INS, so his groups were in this bizarre holding pattern because no one seemed to want to make a decision with him completely out of the loop."

AKQA
We're awaiting confirmation of Jason Whiting's departure. Last we'd heard he was, at another point, on the fence about staying with the agency. After getting handed the NY office (he manages both DC and New York), we hear the stress added up. At one point there were talks of him leaving the shop all together for Strawberry Frog. Anyway, British MBA David Bentley is rumored to have replaced Whiting.

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More: "AKQA's Many Bodies"

Former Digitas VP/director of marketing Evan Minskoff (looking all business above) has joined New York Times Co. division The About Group (i.e. About.com) as VP of Marketing.

Minskoff--who led cross-channel ad efforts while at Digitas and held marketing posts at Disney prior to that--will oversee all aspects of the AG's consumer and trade marketing efforts, including market research, public relations and general brand advertising initiatives.

Having finally felt the loss of GM production by way of its Prodigious unit as well as the recent loss of a small piece of Viagra biz, we can imagine that Minskoff's departure only adds to Digitas' woes.

More: "Digitas NY Picks Up Tom Tafuto to Lead Creative Team"

As an addendum to our post last week about Tony Rogers' catchy tune for the cancer-fighting cause Movember, we've received an update from his fellow Arc/Leo creative director Michael Starcevich, who shot the video for the song.

Starcevich tells us that not only is their effort garnering lots of donations for the Movember cause, but it's even enticed the normally 'stache-challenged female set to get into the mix. Arc AD Lauren Paat took the initiative by buying a horde of fake mustaches from a party store and has been donning a new one, 24/7, every day this month. Paat is blogging about it here and while you're at it, check out a high-quality, updated version of "Mustache Ride" here. Jay Chandrasekhar surely must be beaming at this point.

More: "Fallon's New Hire and His Mustache"

Yes everyone, this month is Movember, which means Mustache-vember. Dudes and unfortunate ladies everywhere can help celebrate their upper lips and lend a hand to various cancer-killing organizations. Arc Worldwide creative Tony Rogers even put this little ditty together and, I have to admit, it's catchy. Though we should really pay homage to Jay Chandrasekhar (IMDB) for famously coining the phrase Rogers uses, in part.

Chandrasekhar says, as Officer Thorny, "Who wants a mustache ride?" Ha ha he means cunnilingus. Rogers' song pays homage to the mustache ride, though I doubt ladies will swoon at the prospect of rubbing (what amounts to) a coarse brush over their down-theres. Also, Leo Furnett (I know).

More: "Fallon's New Hire And His Mustache"

Today is Veterans Day, so if you get a second to thank someone for their service, get down and give 'em twenny. Also, Vets eat free at Applebee's today. As do active duty personnel.

(Seen any better Veteran's Day ads? Send 'em to agencyspy at mediabistro dot com)

More: "Atlanta's IQ Interactive 'Restructures'"

IQ Interactive is an Atlanta based agency known for building flash and microsites. That should help explain, in part, why the 55ish person shop let go of 8-10 employees yesterday — according to a source.

The agency serves clients like UPS and New York Life. Yesterday's layoffs were attributed to a "restructuring", we're told. The last time you heard about this shop, it was in Russian.

More: "Ad Agency Layoffs: The Twitter Feed"

Barely three months after leaving Chiat LA and joining PHD West as EVP and managing director, Robert Harwood-Matthews is back in the TBWA fold, this time as president of TBWA Group UK.

Harwood-Matthews, who was only at Chiat LA for six months as global MD for the Infiniti business, replaces Tim Lindsay. In a statement posted on Brand Republic, TBWA president Europe and COO International Perry Valkenburg says, "Robert has the true TBWA spirit. He is a doer. He thinks media neutrality and is an incredibly passionate media-artist. I am delighted to work with him in his new role. Together with all our great people in the London operation, he will make TBWA even stronger than it is today."

More: "Duncan Milner Promoted to CCO at TBWA\Media Arts Lab"