Drake University officially are feverishly scrambling to explain why they thought "D+" would be a great theme for a recruitment ad campaign. The D+ is meant to be shorthand for the magic that occurs when Drake plus a student get together. To many, though, it seems to position Drake as a school whose standards barely exceed total failure. However, in a note to faculty and staff this week, Drake defends the campaign as "intentionally edgy," and just right for the target market. "The D+ was not designed to stand alone or represent a grade. Instead, it was designed to be paired with prose and draw attention to the distinctive advantages of the Drake experience," reads the note. "Our experience in the survey and in the field suggests that the kind of students whom we want to attract to Drake easily understand and appreciate the irony of the D+, and that it is having the intended effect of encouraging students to find out more about what makes Drake so special." Via The Awl.

The air quality in Hong Kong is so bad that they're starting to sell fresh air in canisters, which you can strap to your face to enjoy lovely, brief periods of unpolluted respiration. Available in pleasant scents like vanilla, the beach and "horses," the canned air is "the revolutionary new product that lets you experience breathing like the rest of the world does," according to the spot below. Of course, it's a parody infomercial, nicely produced by DDB and the Hong Kong Clean Air Network (CAN), urging environmental protection. Says the line at the end: "If we do nothing about Hong Kong's air pollution today, we can look forward to this tomorrow." Via Time magazine's NewsFeed.

Honey-bee populations are mysteriously dwindling worldwide. In England, the Banrock Station winery created the "world's first ad with live bees" to call attention to the problem. They used queen-bee pheromones to attract a giant swarm of bees (as many as 100,000, according to the BBC) from a nearby honey farm to spell out an "SOS" message on a billboard. No bees were harmed and no one was stung during the stunt. The winery is also donating 5p to the honey-bee cause for every bottle sold. Clare Griffiths from Banrock Station tells the BBC: "We thought there was no better way to raise awareness of the British bee decline than get the bees to tell their story themselves. We hope the billboard has created a bit of a buzz in Devon and beyond." Via Copyranter.

The first episode of Walking Dead hasn't even aired yet, and AMC has already green-lit a second season. It's hard to blame them after watching the ass-kicking trailer below, which takes its time in slowly revealing the show's zombie-infested world. That kind of pacing is reassuring, since Walking Dead will have to find ways to engage viewers long-term through a horror sub-genre that's usually compacted into 90 minutes of plot-free gore. In this case, the pilot alone will be 90 minutes, making its debut on Oct. 31, with five more episodes to follow in the all-too-brief first season. If that leaves you hungry for more, good news: You've got about seven years' worth of monthly Walking Dead comics to catch up on.

“Don’t let hope get washed away. We are on the ground, providing aid to flood victims in Pakistan. And we need your support.”

Agency: Cossette, Montreal, Canada
Vice-président creative head: Michel De Lauw
Creative Director: Jonathan Rouxel
Art Director: Jonathan Rouxel
Copywriter: Amy Maloney
Illustrator: Mario Berthiaume

This week's little bit of manufactured controversy comes courtesy of Sony Pictures, which is it promoting its upcoming movie The Virginity Hit by putting the phrase "Still a virgin?" on outdoor boards, bus shelters and subway walls across the country. (You can see the movie's trailer below.) For a low-budget comedy with no recognizable actors, this is a pretty smart move, as illustrated by the fact that the ads are being shared via cell phone on the Facebook and Twitter feeds of almost everyone who sees them. Regardless of your V-card status, you're bound to be disappointed if you actually call the "help line" promoted in the ads. It's basically just a toll-free phone tree with options like "Press 3 if you don't know if you're a virgin or not." The movie's two main characters then dispense tips for getting action, and it's worth about what you paid for it. Photo credit: Deadline New York.

Subservient chicken + Warioland // The Expendables + John West Salmon = The Tippexperience...

The city of Toronto wants to help residents get rid of electronic waste. Naturally, to promote the effort, the city needed to create an awareness campaign. They got one from Publicis, who wisely veered away from the mundane and expected flatness of municipal advertising and headed in a different direction.

As you may have heard, Apple had a little event today where it unveiled a revamped line of iPods and a new version of AppleTV. Here are two brand-new ads from TBWA—one for the iPod nano below, and one for the iPod touch after the jump. The iPod shuffle got hosed, as usual, getting a makeover but not a new commercial. UPDATE: The featured songs are "Short Skirt, Long Jacket" by Cake and "Come Home" by Chappo.

Britain's Daily Mail got its knickers in a twist about this underwear ad from China featuring a bra-and-panty-clad Princess Diana look-alike. She's playing a cello, naturally. Yesterday was the 13th anniversary of Diana's death, and some Brits abroad apparently took umbrage with the ad's oddly timed appearance at China's Shenzen Airport. Honestly, who in the Royal Family are they supposed to use to illustrate the tagline, "Feel the romance of British royalty"? Charles and Camilla?

We're approaching the 9th anniversary of 9/11 and tensions are already high over a proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero. Yahoo! News reports on one attempt to promote more tolerance of Muslim-Americans. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released a series of advertisements today that will run on national television, clearly intended to counter some of the furor over the proposed mosque near Ground Zero. In one spot, a New York firefighter who was a first responder after the Sept. 11 attacks talks about losing a loved one before announcing that he is a Muslim.

9/11 Happened to Us All @ Yahoo! Video It's a good effort, but I'm not sure advertising is gonna break down stereotypes and prejudices. Plus, I'm not sure the people who need to be watching and listening are paying attention. And is anyone else slowly getting desensitized to this kind of stark, black and white, talk-directly-to-the-camera confessional style of commercials?

This odd, NSFW Greenpeace campaign from the Netherlands is all about keeping things natural, whether it's the world's forests or, apparently, your own personal underbrush. The message is a bit muddled, though, as the shock visuals at the end might cause some viewers to take up the cause of clear-cutting rather than oppose it. See the male version after the jump. Osocio has more on the campaign, including a QR-code element.

Back in the mid-90s, when the Internet was still the size of a tadpole and TV was still the Big Kahuna, I was working in a large advertising agency that had many big, blue-chip clients.

We were given an brief to work on, a well-known laundry detergent.

All the other teams went away and came back with ideas for big-production TV commercials. Except me.

I had this idea about using GoCards, those free advertising postcards I started seeing around in all the trendy bars at the time.

It wasn’t rocket science. For pennies on the dollar, I reckoned you could try out a lot of different ideas- dozens of them, literally- and from tallying which cards were being picked up by people and which ones weren’t, you could could easily measure which ideas were working or not. Not unlike today’s Internet, the same way you can tell which blog posts of yours are working from the number of retweets they get. Stuff we all take for granted now.

Secondly, because the client was a laundry detergent, you’d really have to push the envelope to get people’s attention inside these trendy bars. It would force you to work your ideas faster, cheaper, better and harder. It would push you, it would push the client and the brand.

If any the ideas took off, I mean, REALLY took off, then you’d have enough info to go on to scale up the campaign into bigger media- TV, large magazines and whatnot.

Unlike most ad campaigns out there at the time, you’d would already have enough information to know that the campaign- the idea- was WAS ALREADY WORKING BEFORE your dear client had spent any real money.

It was cheap, it was disruptive, and… it was accountable.

The suits didn’t like the idea. My boss didn’t like it, either. Even my art director was a bit grumbly and doubtful. The idea never left the building. The client never saw it. The idea was killed in the first round.

The agency’s perspective was, they didn’t earn its money from “little” ideas. The agency earned its money for “BIG” ideas…. ones that cost lots of money and needed “a cast of thousands” etc. Superbowl ads and whatnot.

They had forgotten that all big ideas start life out as small ideas.

Make of this what you will.

It's one of the most impressive automotive features out there: the ability to save a man's life after he falls 39 stories from a Manhattan high rise. And currently, only the Dodge Charger offers it! According to the New York Post, a distraught young actor leaped to certain death from a Manhattan rooftop on Tuesday—only to survive when he landed on a 2008 red Dodge Charger. He suffered a broken leg, shattered ankle and collapsed lung, but was actually conscious when the paramedics arrived. It's going to be tricky for Wieden + Kennedy to work this product attribute into the advertising, but they surely have to try—if only because, remarkably enough, the current Charger tagline is, "Get in. Get reborn." UPDATE: Dodge rep Jiyan Cadiz tells the New York Post that the Charger's "high-strength steel structure" helped absorb the blow. "We are glad that Mr. Magill survived the 40-story free-fall and that our Dodge Charger was able to cushion his landing," Cadiz says. "We hope that Mr. Magill gets well."

After spending millions on the industry's best naming experts, Conan O'Brien finally has a snappy name for his TBS show (which premieres Nov. 8, not Dec. 8). Compare this to the garbage NBC put out announcing Jay Leno's return to The Tonight Show last winter. Via AgencySpy. 

[via Adfreak]

MINI agency BSUR Amsterdam, director Brian Beletic and Sway Studios of Los Angeles set out to creatively demonstrate the Countryman's dexterity -- a car that can both navigate urban environments and allow the imagination of the getaway seeker free reign. So what do you think? Is your imagination primed and your heart set on a weekend in the country?

Today, the abandon rate of the :15 pre-roll has more than tripled.

Agency: DDB, San Francisco
ACD: Kelly Colchin
AB: Issy Penaflor
Photographer: Zachary Scott
Artist Rep: Sharpe + Associate

Agency: DDB, San Francisco ACD: Kelly Colchin AB: Issy Penaflor Photographer: Zachary Scott Artist Rep: Sharpe + Associate