No two things go hand-in-hand quite like a car and a drive-in movie theater — especially in the context of American nostalgia. The shift toward digital film, however, threatens to send the drive-in the way of the dodo. Stepping in to help keep this American icon from utter extinction is automaker Honda.

By the end of 2013, Hollywood is expected to stop distributing 35 millimeter film to all U.S. movie theaters. While most indoor theaters have already made the switch to digital projection — a move that costs roughly $75,000 per screen — hundreds of drive-in theaters will find it difficult to manage such an expenditure, given their limited ticket sales (most drive-ins close during the colder months, after all).

Part of Honda’s goal is to raise community awareness of the perilous situation in which beloved local drive-ins find themselves. The campaign’s website, projectdrivein.com, features a video (below), which visitors are encouraged to share via social media. Supporters are also asked to pledge to see one movie at their local drive-ins. Read more

What does HTC stand for, anyway? “Hold This Cat,” perhaps?  Could it be “Hipster Troll Carwash?” Or maybe, “Humongous Tinfoil Catamaran.”

These are just a few of the possibilities suggested by HTC’s new spokesman, Robert Downey Jr., in the company’s just-launched “Change” campaign, the tagline for which is: “Here’s to Change.”

See what they did there?

New ads featuring Downey Jr., who has signed a two-year contract to be HTC’s “Instigator of Change,” will debut first on YouTube on August 15th and will also appear on television and in pre-movie spots. The first few ads will be mostly dedicated to playing out some of the far-fetched interpretations of the HTC acronym (yes, “Hold This Cat” will actually be a thing), while later spots will focus on HTC products like the One smartphone and software features like BlinkFeed, Video Highlights, and BoomSound.

The “change” comes roughly six months after HTC retired its “Quietly Brilliant” tagline, and is the company’s first attempt at refreshing its brand since doing so. HTC has invested a great deal in this rebranding, and says that the accompanying social media campaign is the largest it has ever crafted. Read more

Our lives are non-stop — we hear it all the time. If we’re not in a meeting, running an errand, cooking dinner or squeezing in a workout, then we’re probably on our smartphones either planning these things, doing them virtually, or posting about them on social networks. We, as a society, have forgotten how to be still.

Enter Amstel beer and its own take on the smart vending machine trend — stand perfectly still for three straight minutes and this harbinger of serenity will reward you with a free beer. The message is pretty clear: take a break from your hectic life with an Amstel. Simple, yet perfectly on point.

If this sounds like an easy way to earn a free beer, take three minutes of your Friday and try actually remaining perfectly still (no checking Facebook, no fidgeting, no phone calls) without getting antsy — it’s harder than you’d think! But it is rewarding (even without the free beer).

Here’s the associated commercial out of Bulgaria:

GolinHarris announced the promotion of Adam Pawluk to executive creative director in its New York office. Pawluk will continue serving key clients, such as Unilever, Vivus, GSK, and Digicel. He will also play a key role in new business development and continue to lead the creator community for the office. Creators are integral in the agency’s g4 model, charged with developing bold and innovative ideas and creating effective content. Prior to joining GolinHarris in 2008, Pawluk served as vice president at Ogilvy Public Relations and Ketchum working on a number of healthcare and consumer accounts. (Release)

CP+B has welcomed three new creative directors to its Boulder office: Sesh Moodley, Matthew Elhardt and Avital Pinchevsky. Moodley arrives from AKQA, where he spent nearly a year as creative director in the agency’s San Francisco office. Prior to AKQA, Moodley has had a variety of global stints, spending several years as a senior creative at the Sydney offices of both Leo Burnett and Lowe and as a CD at Naked Communications. Elhardt, a 20-year industry vet, has freelanced as a variety of agencies ranging from TBWA\MAL to W+K but has also served as a CD proper at TBWA\Chiat\Day itself as well as Carmichael Lynch and 180LA. Finally, Pinchevsky arrives from DDB South Africa, where she spent the last 18 months or so as creative director on McDonald’s. During her career, she’s also served as an ACD at BBDO New York and as a copywriter at Y&R Tel Aviv. The new hires will all work across accounts in their roles at CP+B. (AgencySpy)

SHIFT announced that it has named Paul Ollinger as president of the company. Spending the last 15 years in executive and advisory roles, Ollinger most recently served as vice president of sales for Facebook’s west region. Ollinger has a rich background in social media marketing and technology. In 2007, Ollinger joined Facebook as one of its original 250 employees and focused on business and sales growth. As vice president of sales for Facebook’s west region, Ollinger and his team designed and implemented social marketing strategies as the space grew through its formative years and matured into a powerful opportunity for businesses of all types. Prior to joining Facebook, Ollinger worked in sales and business development roles at LAUNCH.com and Yahoo! Ollinger will continue to serve as an advisor to startup companies 8tracks and LeanKit. (Release)

The woman at left is beautiful. She’s also an engineer. And as LinkedIn recently learned the hard way, those two things are not, in fact, mutually exclusive.

Toptal, a small developer networking platform, had featured this image in its ads for engineers, which appeared on LinkedIn. After “many LinkedIn members complained” about the image, the tech giant pulled the ads, telling Toptal that the promos could be run again once the picture in question had been replaced by “different images, related to the product.”

In other words, LinkedIn assumed an inherent disconnect between the image of a beautiful woman and a tech career like engineering.

Outraged by LinkedIn’s decision, CEO of Toptal, Taso Du Val (who I am proud to call a former classmate), wrote a scathing blog post, titled: “In Defense of Female Engineers.” In the original post, Du Val wrote, in part:

“Today was a disappointing day at Toptal. We saw extreme sexism within the tech community, from an industry leader and advertising partner that we work with quite extensively: LinkedIn…Are they seriously siding with people who complained to LinkedIn that our female software engineers are offensive?…these (and others) are our real engineers that we have signed contracts with. And even if they were only stock photography, who cares? The point is, they’re perfectly fine and represent normal professional people. Our male versions are no different. They’re male engineers, smiling, some with glasses, some without; the whole idea LinkedIn had was just ridiculous.

The fact of the matter is: members of the tech community (LinkedIn users) saw it as impossible that our female engineers could actually be engineers, and a leader of the tech community (LinkedIn) agreed with them. Unfortunately we’re banned from showing anything except 100%, all male software advertisements from now on and so, that’s what you’ll be getting. I’m disappointed both on a personal and professional level. I expect better.” Read more

Generally, parents like to think their children are being taught important life lessons at summer camp, like the value of teamwork, comraderie and concern for others. But if parents who sent their kids to Florida’s Hunger Games-themed summer camp really expected their children to be doing trust falls and sitting around a campfire singing Kumbaya, they must not have read the books.

The Country Day School in Largo, Florida, inspired by the popular dystopian book series/movie franchise, recently established a week-long summer program, in which kids prepared to compete in a Hunger Games-esque tournament. The competition, set to take place at the end of the week, would be won by the child who had “killed” the most of his/her competitors by overcoming trials and taking flags from other kids (each flag collected symbolized a successful kill).

Though the rules of the game itself didn’t differ that much from other common camp games like capture the flag (the counselors repeatedly reminded the children that there was to be no actual violence or fighting to the death), it became clear rather quickly that the children were determined to more accurately reenact the violent events of the source material. “The violence the kids had expressed was off-putting,” the camp’s head counselor, Lindsey Gilette, told the Tampa Bay Times.

In order to dissuade the campers from taking the theme too literally, the rules of the tournament were tweaked mid-week to focus a bit more on team-building, and the terminology of the final game’s goal was changed from “killing” to “collecting lives.” Read more

Digital First Media announced that Jeff Bairstow, president of Digital First Media, is leaving the company to assume the role of chief financial officer at Time, Inc. Mr. Bairstow has served as president of Digital First Media since 2011 and has concurrently served as president of MediaNews Group. (Release) Digital First Media also recently announced the appointment of Diane Newman as senior vice president of National Sales. In her new role, Ms. Newman will be responsible for leading the national sales effort across all platforms for Digital First Media by leveraging the national footprint of 21st Century Media, MediaNews Group and AdTaxi Networks properties. Ms. Newman will also be integral in national strategic sales supporting Digital First Media’s national content verticals. Prior to joining Digital First Media, Ms. Newman founded Pinkwaternewman Sales Solution, a New York-based media-consulting firm. (Release)

Facebook recently named Gary Briggs as chief marketing officer. Briggs was most recently with Motorola Mobility before Google acquired the company in May of last year. Briggs will replace Eric Antonow, the current vice president of product marketing, who has headed up Facebook’s marketing focus since 2010. (AllFacebook)

Arkadium announced Jordan Fox as the company’s new chief financial officer. Fox will oversee the company’s finance, accounting, human resources and legal departments. Fox brings over ten years of financial and operational management experience to Arkadium, and joins the company from Accordion Partners, a full-spectrum boutique financial consulting firm, where he served as vice president. At Accordion, Fox served as interim CFO for a digital media company, rebooted its financial strategy and ran all FP&A and strategic finance functions. He also created new business venture models and investment materials for a record label and music publishing company. (PDF Release)

Sharing the color of your panties with the Twitterverse will make you feel liberated, independent, sassy and sexy! At least that’s what Hanes‘ new Undercover Color campaign would like you to think.

After selecting my hue from the color wheel provided on the campaign’s website, UndercoverColor.com, I am brought to a page that applauds my selection. “You’re wearing red underwear. Bold Move,” it says. “Are you brave enough to tell the world?”

I’m not so sure “brave” is the right word. It should realistically read something like: Are you vain/silly/bored enough to believe the world cares what color your panties are, and would be impressed by your oh-so-brazen and sassy over-share? Nonetheless, in the name of research, I press on.

I am then prompted to select a pre-composed tweet by clicking on tiles, each of which boasts a picture of something red, including a rose, a pair of red pumps, a melting cherry popsicle, and a tile made completely of red glitter. One of the tiles features text that reads, “Super Awkward.” Obviously, I click on that one first. It flips over to expose the corresponding pre-composed tweet, which reads, “I’ve got a scarlet secret,” which, to me, kind of sounds like the tweeter has a seriously inflamed rash. But it did say it would be awkward, so I assume the rest of the tweets must be better.

Wrong. Read more

Women’s rights group Women, Action, & The Media (WAM), one of the organizations that blew the whistle on Facebook’s failure to crack down on misogynistic content this past May, has now set its sites on Clear Channel.

Recently, the South Wind Women’s Center in Wichita, KS, which provides access to full-spectrum reproductive healthcare — including abortion care — tried to run ads for their services on several local radio stations owned by media conglomerate Clear Channel. Clear Channel, however, pulled them off the air for violating “decency standards.” But those same stations, WAM points out, run ads for the local “adult boutique,” without similar concerns about decency.

In response to Clear Channel’s decision, WAM, in partnership with the South Wind Women’s Center, launched the #changethechannel campaign in order to insist that women’s health care is never indecent, and that everyone has the right to know where they can get medical care.

Since the launch of the effort, thousands of citizens in Wichita and across the country have phoned, emailed and tweeted the Wichita Clear Channel office as well as Clear Channel’s corporate representatives, calling on the company to run the ads. Many thousands more have signed petitions to the same effect.

Amidst the uproar, the GM of Clear Channel in Wichita, Rob Burton, left his post on July 31 without public explanation. Burton had been responsible for the final call to pull the ads. A few days before his sudden departure, he had said simply, “As members of the Wichita community, KZSN has a responsibility to use our best judgment to ensure that advertising topics and content are as non-divisive as possible for our local audience.” Read more

We usually like to make you smile on Fridays, but I’m afraid the only smile this new musical Mercedes ad will bring to your face is the Oh-God-I’m-So-Uncomfortable-Please-Make-it-Stop kind.

The new Mercedes-Benz Service Song, sung from the point of view of a Mercedes car in desperate need of the sort of…um…handling that only a Mercedes repairman can provide, features lyrics like: “I like them to be strong, that they can catch me when I skid/Like them to turn me on, I thought that some of them did/But just as I needed a helping hand, so many men were ‘out of service,’ not like you … You only give your best, won’t stop until I smile.”

Oh, and in the 5-minute extended version (yeah, that exists AND we listened to the whole thing) nearly a full 30 seconds is dedicated to throaty, over-the-top “oh yeah’s.”

The atrociously cheesy, over-wrought song is accompanied by an equally terrible video, chock full of overly-Photoshopped images of heroic mechanics, smiling families and glistening sunsets. It seems the ad is trying to be nostalgic, sexy and epic all at once, and failing miserably on all counts. Read more