To make matters worse, it seems that less-than-cool kids aren’t the only people who don’t “belong” in A&F clothing — when garments are damaged and/or cannot be sold, rather than donating the clothes to people who need them, the company reportedly burns them. Why? Because homeless people aren’t the sort of brand representation A&F wants. So basically, Abercrombie has sent this branding message into the universe: “Six-pack abs and chiseled jaw required. Soul optional”.

In response, Greg Karber decided to give Abercrombie a brand makeover. After sifting through the “douchebag section” of his local Goodwill thrift shop for donated A&F clothing, Karber headed to LA’s Skid Row to hand out the clothes to the homeless, who, after displaying initial reluctance to accept the clothing (which Karber attributes to a fear of looking like “narcissistic date rapists”), eventually accepted the A&F clothes, completing phase one of Karber’s mission.

However, in the video below, Karber says that he can’t “clothe the homeless or transform a brand” all by his lonesome, and urges viewers to get involved. A grassroots re-branding campaign to teach a company to grow a soul? Like we said before: we sense a Glee episode coming on…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Diehard fans waited as long as 30 minutes in lines that stretched nearly two blocks for a chance to get their own chocolate-dipped frozen bananas from the authentic-looking replica of the Bluth family’s stand.

“I am such a major fan,” 21-year-old Sharah Stanley told the New York Daily News as she waited in line. “When I found out it was going to be here, I raced up. I hope the line doesn’t take too long because I’m on my lunch break.”

Stanley is not alone in waiting on bated breath for new episodes of her beloved show. Arrested Development, which originally ran from 2003 to 2006, will be reborn with a new season scheduled to be released by Netflix on May 26.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Selling your own skin as billboard space? Crazy, right? That’s what we thought, but apparently at least forty Rapid Realty employees have already deemed the bribe worth the body art.

Stephanie Barry justified her decision with hard-to-deny simplicity, telling CBS: “I was like, why am I throwing my money away when I could give myself from $25,000 to $40,000 for the same amount of work?” And she’s not alone. Since there are no size or location restrictions, workers have gotten creative, one person getting inked stealthily behind her ear.

Not everyone is buying in, though. When CBS asked non-Rapid Realty-employees if they would do the same thing at their jobs, responses ranged from “[the reward] would have to be extraordinary” and “It’s a scar for life. I have enough of those.”

What about you, readers? Would you be a walking billboard for a hefty pay raise? Tell us in the comments section.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Today we’re happy to bring you a guest post from friend of the site Shawn Paul Wood. Shawn is a PR and copywriting professional with more than 20 years’ experience in the field, and he spent 12 of those years as an on-air host and radio news director. He currently writes for HCK2 Partners in Dallas and contributes to Talent Zoo‘s Flack Me blog; his clients range from notable corporate giants to megachurches, entrepreneurs and even a couple of entertainment bigwigs. Follow him on Twitter!

We have all heard the aphorism, “All news is good news.” One of the champions of that familiar saying is Sir Richard Branson, social media “influencer” and CEO of all things Virgin, who put the sentiment to the test when his airline expanded its routes to Scotland this week.

After appearing at the airliner door and traipsing down the stairs to the tarmac, he took his position on a literal promo platform to discuss the plane’s maiden voyage to Edinburgh. He then lifted his kilt so as to better display a new, um, marketing slogan: “Stiff Competition.”

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Now it’s Kraft‘s turn.

Food blogger Vani Hari (AKA “Food Babe“), along with with Lisa Leake of 100daysofrealfood.com, recently filed a petition asking the company to remove potentially harmful dyes yellow 5 and yellow 6 from its childhood dinner staple Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. Though the petition has already garnered over 270,000 signatures, Hari decided to take her fight to the streets (literally) in an effort to earn more attention and support for her cause.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Is it only me but I have this strong feeling thinking that Google Nose Beta is April Fool jokes

— Yahya Bin Zakaria (@YahyaImran) April 1, 2013

On the other hand, that is a little sad.

So back to our point: we kind of like Sprint‘s Sprint Specs campaign, not because it’s so incredibly clever but because it manages to make fun of a trending tech story (Google Glass) while simultaneously promoting its service’s key differentiator: unlimited data. It’s really every bit as forced as every other April Fools’ joke, but it somehow manages to be a competent promo as well.

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Riding the coattails of (rather sketchy) rumors that an Apple video game console may be in the works, IGN created this tongue-in-cheek spot for the fictional “iPlay”. The video actually starts with a voice-over from Apple’s own industrial designer, Jonathan Ive (granted, some of the words have been dubbed over, but once you hear that familiar voice, you’re clued in). Risky, but rewarding.

As many commenters have pointed out, the spot is actually quite believable…that is, until viewers learn that the only playable game on the iPlay is Angry Birds. From that point forward, the commercial dissolves into comically exaggerated camera angles and self-effacing monologues.

Given the expediency with which Apple’s legal team tends to get such spoofs taken down, we recommend taking a peak while you still can. Happy April Fools’ Day!

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The real value of this app has to be less than the selling price, especially when it faces competitors like Pulse, Flipboard and Pocket. But the move scored the company a first-page New York Times story with the headline “He Has Millions and a New Job at Yahoo. Soon, He’ll Be 18.” Compelling, no? He’s bold, he’s young and he’s a millionaire with his own Wikipedia page. He certainly doesn’t sound like the typical Yahoo user — and that’s the whole point. New York Magazine’s Kevin Roose notes that the last acquisition to get this much media hype was Facebook buying Instagram for a whole lot more money.

So it’s all part of Marissa Mayer‘s carefully planned image makeover.

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Anyway, it’s Friday so we thought we’d share our favorite little JT promo stunt via our sister site AgencySpy. It’s so simple that it’s dumb — in a brilliant way. It’s called JT All Night Long, and it’s really just a quick loop from that (old) song set to different clips of Timberlake throughout his career, from the “SexyBack” video to the ramen-hair period. Just click on it before reading ahead.

Don’t you feel like you just got “Rickrolled” by Timberlake and creative agency CP+B Miami? We do — and we don’t mind at all. Say what you will about his music, but the dude has a sense of humor.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Today AdAge reports on another high-class food brand powered by an even more ridiculous PR stunt: the “calorie-neutral” meal.

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This all started more than two years ago when Affect, a small-ish Manhattan firm, started the “New York Intern Project” because, according to president and founder Sandra Fathi, they were “having trouble attracting interns in one of the country’s most competitive markets.”

Applicants’ resumes often boasted of college gigs with brands like MTV, Def Jam and Glamour, but Affect wanted to find dedicated public relations professionals. Affect’s b2b (that’s “business to business”) services are crucial to the industry at large, but they’re also not quite as flashy as those big names–so Fathi created the intern project in order to “make [the internship] more attractive to people around the country.”

A quick look at 2011′s entries will tell you that the project worked better than expected.

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Of course, in order to receive such press mentions, businesses usually require the services of people called publicists or PR professionals who specialize in pitching the story of the scruffy startup to big name glossies, trade papers–or even lowly blogs like ours!

But for those who want to get all those press mentions on your website without actually, you know, doing the work, we present The Startup Legitimizer–a single webpage that can fill all your startup PR needs with a few simple clicks. Which publications would give your cred the biggest boost? The New York Times? TechCrunch? BuzzFeed? TED Talks?!

These famous names, divided into the “kind of legit” and “really legit” categories, even come in pre-organized bundles like “innovators” and “game changers”, which are totally different things. Just choose your favorites, copy and paste the HTML code and say goodbye to pesky PR flacks forever! Check us out!

(Just kidding. Startups absolutely should invest in PR services. And thanks to Digiday for the tip.)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

First Dove posted a download on Reddit that supposedly offered users a free tool to help retouch photographs by “enhanc[ing] skin tone” and “hiding all the imperfections”–in other words, all the things that Dove’s campaign opposed. But when users pressed the button, this “tool” reversed all the modifications to the image in question. (They could then “undo” the reversal, but the point had been made.)

This “hack” was a sneaky attempt to once again push the claim that Dove keeps things real in an industry dominated by digital tummy tucks, facelifts and tone-ups. In the video below, the company directly calls out “art directors, graphic designers and photo retouchers” for using Photoshop and other tools to promote unrealistic ideals  (never mind the fact that Dove has been accused of doing the very same thing).

Oh, and this is all part of a larger campaign which includes the hashtag #DovePositiveChange and a Facebook “Ad makeover” app which purportedly lets users revise ad spots designed to play on insecurities by promising to help women improve their appearance.

So is this another branding win for Dove, or do they need to stop pushing the same old concept?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In honor of the 140-character Twitter feed that the lucky winner will run, company reps will give applicants 140 seconds to perform what amounts to a personal “elevator pitch”, explaining exactly why they’re qualified to manage a brand with 166,000 followers and more than 10 million Facebook fans.

The chain’s PR director hopes to meet “the best and the brightest” among the thousands of media fanatics attending the festival. In explaining his team’s thinking, he says: “The time you have to tell a story, engage a customer or leave a lasting impression on someone socially has shrunk to seconds”–so he wants someone who can make his or her case in just over two minutes with nothing more than a smartphone and an acceptable ID.

Of course, hopefuls can apply for the position in more traditional ways as well, but who’d want to do that? Here’s the job description, redirected from the URL “BecauseImGreat” in case you missed the point.

So is anyone up for the challenge this Sunday at the Austin Hilton? And will there be perfume?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The spot asks viewers “What would you do if you walked in on a murder in progress?” and the movie’s hashtag is #ISawWhatYouDid, so we get the connection–but based on the range of reactions, we hope that a few people in this clip were either in on the secret or didn’t quite realize what was going on.

So was this a real experiment or did everyone have a “script”? Most importantly, does it make you more interested in seeing the movie?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.