It’s only 15 seconds long, but the brevity of this Lucky Charms spot only seems to intensify the “Whoa, what the hell just happened?” effect.

The commercial, which mixes footage from both current and vintage ads for the “magically delicious” cereal, is an explosion of colors, shapes and sparkles, all set to the tune of the classic jingle, which has been auto-tuned almost beyond the point of recognition.

The ad aired during big TV shows this week like the season finales of American Idol and The Voice. So in the event that people were watching those programs high off their gourds, we’re confident this spot either inspired them to eat nothing but pots of gold and rainbows throughout the duration of their trips, or sent them spiraling into a really, really bad place inhabited by T-Pain-sounding leprechauns.

As fans of “The Office” prepare to say a fond farewell to their beloved Scranton-dwelling characters on tonight’s series finale, the real-life Dunder Mifflin paper company, launched in 2011 via a licensing deal between Quill.com and NBC Universal, is preparing to ramp up business with a well-placed ad.

The spot, created by PR agency Olson and crowdsourcing platform Tongal, will run tonight in five Dunder Mifflin “branch” markets (Scranton, Utica, Akron, Albany, Syracuse).

While back in 2011 some thought that the concept of reverse product placement in the form of an entire company was sure to be a failure, the real-world Dunder Mifflin has grown into a multi-million dollar brand that is now among the best-selling brands in the office-supply category. We guess having sales geniuses like Dwight in your corner can make all the difference, especially when he delivers nuggets of marketing gold like, “To me, success is simply the opposite of failure.” Indeed.

Coke has long associated its brand with happiness — even dedicating entire websites to the philosophical meaning of the word, and calling the contents of a can of cola “140 happy calories.”

Now, the company is taking advantage of a happy coincidence — the fact that part of its logo happens to look like the Danish flag — to welcome people to Denmark, recently voted the “happiest country in the world” by the United Nations.

In honor of the Danish tradition of greeting arriving visitors by waving flags, Coke’s local agency, McCann Copenhagen, created an interactive airport ad that dispenses flags. Coke says it’s purpose is to “let Coca-Cola and Denmark spread happiness together.” The below video of a case study shows people’s reactions to the machine.

Little kids and elderly people jubilantly waving flags as loved ones rush to greet them, all made possible by Coke. We’d categorize this as a highly creative branding win.

Well, we’re happy to report that our ears are working just fine today. How do we know? Because we couldn’t make it through a few seconds of the below ad without scrambling for the “mute” button.

The clever spot, created by Draftfcb Toronto for the Union Hearing Aid Centre, actually appears to be a vision test, displaying letters in ever-shrinking fonts. When viewers reach the end of the commercial, they are informed that if they can read the final tiny line of print, then their “eyesight is fine”, but that (surprise!) they may want to invest in a hearing test at Union, as a “really annoying, really loud high-frequency sound” has been playing throughout the ad; those with good hearing would have likely found the sound too intolerable to make it through to the end.

Like we said — clever. We just wouldn’t recommend playing it at full volume at work…or a dog park.

Think your mom wants a dozen roses, a box of chocolates or a hand-made card? Think again! What Mom really wants — perhaps all she’s ever wanted — is express dominion over your decisions and life trajectory — in other words: POWER.

Not sure how to wrap a ribbon and bow around control? Don’t worry; ad agency Mother New York has you covered! In its latest spot released in celebration of Mother’s Day, the holiday during which Mother New York is generally expected to be on its game, the agency introduces the “Momtract“, a (fictional) legally binding contract that allows you to bestow complete and unquestionable power over a single aspect of your life (whichever aspect you choose) upon the adoring woman who raised you.

Since you’re all grown up and she can no longer ground you or send you to your room, restore her sense of authority by giving her the power to sue the pants off you in the event that you fail to heed her loving advice. “It’s time you legally enforced your love for your mom,” says the promo. The agency’s website even walks you through the process of creating and sending the gag gift directly to Mom.

Watch the video here. Enjoy, and Happy Mother’s Day!

The ANAR Foundation, a Spanish child-advocacy organization, faced a challenge when trying to create an ad that could offer help to children suffering from abuse, without alerting potential abusers (i.e. adults) to their message. The solution came in the form of lenticular printing, a technology that allows printed images to create an illusion of depth or, in this case, the ability to change or move as the image is viewed from different angles.

The result was a simple but powerful ad that successfully sends entirely different messages to adults and children. Anyone shorter than 4-foot-3 sees a child with bruising on his face, the hotline phone number, and a message that reads, “If somebody hurts you, phone us and we’ll help you.” Meanwhile, anyone above that height simply sees the unblemished face of a child and the message, “Sometimes child abuse is only visible to the child suffering it.” A powerful metaphor made literal in a simple yet hard-to-ignore fashion.

The agency behind the ad, Grey Spain, has also released this video explaining the campaign’s intentions, and how the idea for the high-tech, dual-message poster was born.

Many comments on the video pointed out that the video’s release may have robbed the just-for-kids message of its secrecy (something that occurred to us as well). In response, Grey posted a pitch-perfect statement, explaining that their true objective was to raise awareness of child abuse, and to get the hotline phone number circulating in public:

“Many thanks for your comments, we really appreciate them. Anar Foundation counts only on few resources to raise awareness of their phone number to denounce children abuse. However, thanks to media coverage and all the comments on social networks, the campaign has achieved its main objective: Raise awareness of the Foundation and their phone number 116 111 for children and teenagers at risk. We encourage you to continue to disseminate Fundacion Anar task through your likes, shares and comments.”

Mountain Dew is pulling an ad created by the founder of hip-hop group Odd Future, Tyler Gregory Okonma (better known as Tyler, the Creator) after it elicited cries of racism. A professor at Syracuse University even called it “arguably the most racist commercial in history.”

After watching the video ourselves, all we can say is…WOW. Racial profiling and violence against women all wrapped up in one extremely bizarre and undeniably offensive package.

Not only is it the most racially insensitive spot we’ve seen in recent memory, but it promotes so many dangerous and offensive stereotypes at once that it’s hard to know what to be angry about first. The ad features a white detective (holding a Mountain Dew) urging a bandaged-up white woman to pick her assailant out of a lineup of all African American men (and one extremely threatening goat, voiced by Tyler himself).

As the woman tries to pick out her attacker (the goat), he threatens her with phrases like “You shoulda gave me some more; I’m nasty” and “You better not snitch on a playa. Snitches get stitches.” When the woman is too intimidated to continue, the detective says takes a swig of his Mountain Dew and says, “She’s just gotta dew it.” Really? That was all leading up to a pun?

PepsiCo gave the following statement to AdWeek after the uproar: “We understand how this video could be perceived by some as offensive, and we apologize to those who were offended…We have removed the video from all Mountain Dew channels and have been informed that Tyler is removing it from his channels as well.”

While pulling the ad and apologizing were probably the right moves, we found the language of the apology a bit unimpressive. They don’t take responsibility for creating and releasing an ad that was very clearly in poor taste; instead, they apologize that it “could be perceived by some as offensive.” In other words, the responsibility really rests upon the hyper-critical audience. But maybe now we’re being hyper-critical? What do you think? Let us know in the comments section.

 UPDATE (5/3/13): Perhaps we weren’t being hyper-critical about PepsiCo’s halfhearted apology. The brand released a new (more apologetic) statement yesterday afternoon, saying: “We Apologize for this video and take full responsibility. We have removed it from all Mountain Dew Channels and Tyler is removing it from his channels as well.”

We know sex sells, and we’ve seen non-profits from PETA to the American Public Health Association use provocative tactics to garner attention and raise money, but porn website Come4.org is hoping to corner the market on the idea of being bad to do a little good.

The adult website, which describes itself as “the first user-generated, nonprofit pornography site devoted to funding charitable and ethically driven projects” is being unveiled with the help of Being, the Paris office of ad agency TBWA. The agency created a 90-second promotional video called “The Lover”, which introduces the world to Come4′s first charitable initiative—helping to fund the Asta Philpot Foundation, which is committed to raising public awareness about the sexual rights of disabled people.

Come4 describes its mission and intentions this way:

“‘Sex’ is the top word searched on the Internet. With nearly billions of yearly revenues, the sex industry is one of the greatest markets online. Unfortunately, it is also one of the less ethical and transparent ones…

The prevailing model is finalized to business, and thus it systematically aims at subjugating our sexual imagination to marketing standards. As a result, instead of reflecting the natural plurality of human sexuality, much of today’s online sexual contents foster a one-dimensional perspective which is often fake, violent, macho-centered, and in many cases barely legal. We believe that we, as a self-aware community, can do better than this, and that time has come to rethink critically the relationship of online pornography and society.

With Come4 we aim to ignite a new sexual revolution, one that has at its core people instead of money, respect for diversity instead of uniformity, and solidarity instead of selfishness. Our goal is to devolve at least 1 percent of the total revenue of the online sex industry to support ethical causes aimed at defending and promoting sexual rights. Provided no one is harmed and that everything is legal, is there any reason why these revenues cannot be used for better ends?’

We never thought the mission statement of a porn website would have us wanting to cheer, but…dare we say it…Huzzah! This is some seriously well-crafted branding; the company manages to describe exactly what’s wrong with its own industry, and then explain with earnest precisely how it plans to overcome and redefine the meaning and purpose of that business. We are, despite ourselves, impressed.

What do you think, readers? Is this something you could get behind (no pun intended), or is this mission statement the equivalent of a phenomenal political speech given by another smooth-talking-but-no-different-from-the-rest candidate?

What exactly is the “ahh effect”? First, we feel we should clarify that the “AHH” in “AHH Effect” is meant as a satisfied sigh, not the exclamation that may appear in a word bubble above the head of a comic book character running around with his hair on fire. In a release announcing its new campaign, Coca-Cola described it this way:

“The AHH Effect” is that multidimensional feeling of happiness, satisfaction and delicious refreshment one experiences after drinking an ice-cold Coke. It’s been described as the sound a smile would make if smiles made sounds, and it’s the centerpiece of a new teen-focused program from Coca-Cola. Bringing to life 61 dimensions of ‘AHH’ through a range of digital experiences, from games and films to GIFs, the program showcases all of the qualities of Coke and positions the beverage as the ultimate refresher.”

That is a magical marketing mouthful if we’ve ever heard one!

Targeted to teens, the campaign kicked off last week with www.ahh.com and seventeen other sites (each including one more “H” in its URL), all of which feature “a teen-worthy moment of randomness, creativity and delight that’s best experienced from teens’ favorite gadgets – their mobile devices.” Read more

Ever feel like you’re living in The Truman Show and every ad you see is geared directly at you? While we know that this is becoming more and more true with targeted online ads, it still never fails to freak me out when I am merrily going about my business, and suddenly the promoted tweet at the top of my feed is for something I desperately need at that very moment.

As a lifelong migraine-sufferer, a recent tweet from Excedrin had me looking over my shoulder for the candid camera.

Knowing I had a headache coming on, I decided to get all of my computer-related work out of the way. When I logged into Twitter, the first thing I saw was this:

Vote for “Who Deserves Excedrin the Most?” Sweepstakes on Facebook and enter to win great prizes. Rules apply. #WDETM on.fb.me/YkP8hD

— Excedrin® (@Excedrin) April 17, 2013

“Me,” I thought, “done deal.” But then, in my migraine-induced half-conscious brain fog, I began to over-analyze Excedrin’s question. Why vote for who is most deserving? Sweet merciful heaven, is there a shortage and this is their way of rationing? Or, even worse, is this some sort of Joker-style social experiment to expose the dark underbelly of our society that would label certain people undeserving of pain relief? Fortunately, it was at this point that the rational, as-of-yet-unaffected-by-migraine part of my brain told me it was time to go to bed. 

Once I had emerged from my twelve-hour headache hibernation, I decided to check out (with a clear mind) how migraines could be made into a sweepstakes. Read more