Entries from August 2011 ↓

Attention, industrial farmers. Willie Nelson wants you to stop drugging your pigs and smashing them into compact, easily shippable pork cubes. So does Chipotle. So, the country icon and champion of family farms covered Coldplay's hit "The Scientist" for this two-minute-plus pseudo-PSA, commissioned by the sourcing-conscious burrito chain. It will start running in theaters come September. (The song is also on iTunes.) Created by animator Johnny Kelly, whose portfolio also includes work for brands like Bacardi, the spot tells the story of a farmer who, after cramming his livestock into pens and pumping them full of hormones, suffers a crisis of conscience and returns to his roots as a sustainable farmer. Hence the video's title, "Back to the Start," derived from the song's punch line. We'd love to know what Chris Martin has to say about this. If his spouse is any indication, he'll prefer heavily processed narcotics to heavily processed food.

I'm calling bullshit on this one. Or batshit, to be more precise. In an oddball effort to foster interspecies understanding, designer Chris Woebken and artist Natalie Jeremijenko claim to have developed a billboard that serves as a habitat for bats and uses "bat voice-recognition software" to transform the winged creatures' squeaks and shrieks into human speech. Puh-lease. So-called translations of bat chat include cutesy crap like, "Taking off for another insect snack." Puh-uh-lease! More likely, the flying rodents are saying, "Let's go on a killing spree and drink human blood!" Check out Woebken's website, with its unnerving soundtrack of chirps and squeals and uber-creepy video. It shows so many bats. Get 'em offa me! They're gnawing away what's left of my hair! Actually, the billboard's habitat aspect does hold some promise. While the bats are inside, they can be easily exterminated. I can just picture the translation: "Poisoned! What a world!" Seriously, though, we should save billboards for important stuff, like sending secret profane messages and showing off giant butts! Via PSFK.

When there's no room to move up, it's time to look down. At the carpet. That's where Kevin Butler, the "vp of everything" at Sony PlayStation, has decided to focus his career, according to his recent Twitter announcements. "A man can only be made VP so many times," the fictional corporate spokesman writes. "KB's off to be PRESIDENT of my uncle's new upstart company." The new employer is Economy Flooring, and president he is—president of the "Shag Division," president of wood stains, president of bamboo expansion, president of planking, and president of just about everything else, according to the various business cards in his current Twitter background. He's still making references to PlayStation 3 games, so chances are good this is just a blatant attempt by Deutsch/LA to revive the buzz for their much-loved character, just as Wieden + Kennedy recently did for the Old Spice Guy. "Thanks for all the well-wishes. Yes, as president of a flooring company I'll be hiring but please no job apps yet. Commercials? We'll see," he writes. If this puts more ammo in the Kevin Butler hilarity arsenal, we're all for it.