The Canadian agency Leo Burnett Toronto created a series of very cute ads for the Toronto Human Society, which slogan is "adopt a new life". The campaign goal, as you can guess, is motivate and increase the number of adoptions.

According to the site of THS is an independent not-for-profit organization, which mission is To promote the humane care and protection of all animals and to prevent cruelty and suffering. Just in case you think about adopt a pet (and I may say adopt, don't buy), they have many animals to adoption, from dogs and cats, to reptiles and birds. You can also help making a donation.

Continue reading "Toronto Humane Society Ads" »

Posted by Bibi on October 1, 2007 11:35 PM in Animals, Media ||

The last PETA campaign PETA's ABC Campaign points to the importance of spay or neuter. The ABC (Animal Birth Control) tackles the issue of companion animal overpopulation and urges people to do their part by taking simple steps to help end this crisis.

To spread the mesage, the burlesque dancer, model and actress Dita Von Teese joined to launch PETA's new ABC campaign. There is no doubt about Dita Von Teese's Sexy ABC Ad (picture above), being sexy and catching our attention.

Dita knows her ABCs and just how important animal birth control is. Every year, nearly 4 million dogs and cats are put to death in the U.S. because there are not enough good homes for them. Until we all do our part to put an end to this cycle, euthanasia will remain a tragic necessity.

In her ad, Dita urges fans to "bone up" on their ABCs and, if they are considering adding a dog or a cat to the family, to adopt from a local animal shelter and be sure to get their new family member spayed or neutered.

I'm supporting this campaign, because I believe on its importance. All my (three) cats are neutered (and spayed) and never had any problems with that. They are healthy and happy. My youngest furry guy, Truffaut, was found meowing in the garage of my building sick and starved. I don't believe in buying animals when there are thousands of those poor animals living on the streets of São Paulo. And if I can help, even with small actions like those, I will. I hope you do the same.

Bellow, a behind-the-scenes footage from Dita's photo shoot and her exclusive interview with PETA.

Posted by Bibi on September 26, 2007 05:53 PM in Animals, Media, Pin-ups ||

The Whiskas® product line Oh so... was released with a brilliant campaign created by the agency TBWA London. The print ads for Oh so... products are beautifuly clean, composed by coloured infinite backgrounds and origamis of each variety of food: beef, lamb, pork, chicken and fish.

Maybe I'm wrong, since we don't have those new products here, but the TV ads for them don't follow the same line: there are no origamis. Check the TV commercials for Whiskas 'Oh So Fishy', Whiskas 'Oh So Meaty' and the Australian ads for them on the Australian Whiskas site. You will notice that even not using origamis like images of animals, the ads
still been cute, because that's the real strategy to sell cat products to their "owners". You know we aren't the real owners, don't you?

Posted by Bibi on September 12, 2007 04:23 AM in Animals, Cats, Media, Video ||

To release the album Dylan: His Greatest Hits, a brilliant marketing idea was created: making a site with a Dylan message generator. You can go to the site and create a video message in up to "ten cards" to share with anyone you want. Designed by Ten4 Design, the generator uses the classic Bob Dylan video clip for the song "Subterranean Homesick Blues", in which one he appears holding up cue cards for the audience, with selected words and phrases from the lyrics. The video is available to watch on the site too. (via Yahoo! Picks)

Update: there is now a Facebook app. I tested it on my Facebook profile and it works fine.

Posted by Bibi on September 11, 2007 07:28 PM in Media, Music, Tools, Video ||

Do you have time, I mean do you really have free time now? If you don't, reserve some hours of your weekend to explore the site of Epica Awards - Europe's premier creative awards. It's a wonderful place to spend hours taking a look at the winner and the finalists of this contest, with delightful, well done and funny graphic ads and commercials.

While I was having a good time (and wasting a lot of it) there, I selected some fabulous ads with animation, probably very known of you. Take a look at:

- Aides AIDS Awareness "Vibrators": one of the best campaigns of prevention of the last years. It's a touching 3D animation which slogan is "Live long enough to find the right one." Music "Baby Baby" of the group The Vibrators. Not so safe for work.

- Camelot Lottery, "Bag of Smiles": the prettiest and most cheerful lottery commercial I ever seen. The beautiful animation is directed by Paul Brazier.

- Coca-Cola commercial "Happiness Factory" is the first Coca-Cola Global campaign since 1996. It was launched in June 2006 and used in 199 countries to illustrate the brand’s new pitch, "The Coke Side Of Life". And even if you don't like coca-cola you have to agree they make remarkable commercials.

- Doctors Without Borders, "Human Ball": a dark animation for AIDS treatment campaign in Africa.

- Evian Mineral Water "Waterboy": a cute drop of water keep walking, with a personality of its own climbs out of a glass. To Evian's signature remix of the Queen song “We Will Rock You”, the watery sprite enjoys a series of adventures: quenching a fire, being divided by a colander, skiing down the side of Evian's mountain logo – even meeting a “water girl” and raising a family.

- Honda “Grrr”: “Grrr” introduces the premise that hate can be a good thing. Throughout the film Garrison Keillor sings along to a strumming guitar about the joys of hate. And so it goes, “hate something, change something, make something better..” BTW, Honda makes great commercials - remember the Cog commercial. Check the other Honda commercials there.

PS.: Just in case you don't want to click in all those links, I made a playlist with them.

Posted by Bibi on January 23, 2007 01:33 PM in Animation, Media, Video ||

The French humoristic magazine Le Rire was published from October 1894 through the 1950s.

Founded in Paris by Felix Juven during the Belle Époque, Le Rire appeared as typical Parisians began to achieve more education, income and leisure time. Interest in the arts, culture and politics intensified during the Gay Nineties and publications such as this helped satisfy such curiosity.

The Dreyfus Affair occurred in 1894 and Le Rire was one of many publications to tap anti-Republican sentiment in wake of that scandal. It was a time in which French governance was frequently characterized by corruption and mismanagement. Government ministers and military officials became frequent targets.

Some editions from 1894 to 1924 are available at Le Rire. Could it much better if the links to the editions pages were working.

Posted by Bibi on January 23, 2007 03:41 AM in Illustration, Media, Vintage ||

Not a Kubrick's fan, but a huge fan of David Lynch. I love the remarkable photography of his films, the use of colours, the hyper-realism, the ends with no answers, the perturbed characters and all the symbols presented in his films. For me, Lynch is magical.

The first contact with his work came through Twin Peaks, the series. I was fascinated by the disturbing characters, the peculiar sense of humour, the whimsical situations and the fact the almost everybody in it had a dark side. In each episode the characters were deconstructed gracefully. What a great time I had watching the episodes! And to celebrate this nostalgia, A Guide to Twin Peaks, with reviews of each episode.

More posts about Lynch: Lynch links, Which Twin Peaks character are you? and Resenha sobre "Cidade dos Sonhos" (review of Mulholland Drive in Portuguese).

Posted by Bibi on January 12, 2007 04:29 PM in Media, Video ||

PopSci's All-Time Favorite On-Screen Nerds: a homage slideshow from Popular Science Blog, with many characters of 80's films and TV series, and seriously nostalgia-inducing technology. From Janice Lazarotto in Head of the Class to Doc, in Back to the Future, this list with 20 "nerds" on-screen made me remind of amusing films, like WarGames, The Breakfast Club, Ghostbusters and The Goonies.

Posted by Bibi on January 9, 2007 04:25 PM in Cinema, Geek, Media ||

Nowadays, as a clear result of the huge competition among the companies and products, most of the commercials are made to sell ideas, a style of life. They made a commercial to sell not only a a pretty mobile with a pretty design, MP3 support and camera; they made it to you because the cool people, with an innovative style have it, and if you want to be like them you buy it. Maybe you are not the kind of people which is easy manipulated by the media, however you know that's how it works.

But the things were a bit different in the beginning. The commercials were made to show how good is that product, to show it works and how it's going to solve your problem - yes, this keeps happening in the ads. Many of them were a kind of manual to show a new product works - and this keep happening. They were much longer than the current ones, I mean really longer for us now.

And some strategies didn't change: the idea of create an empathy between the person or character that announced the product and the consumer was there since the beginning, but not so much glamorized as it happens now. The way that makes you memory a name by repetition or using a song was there. And specially a happy end: buy that product will make you happy or happier. And long life to capitalism! That's how it works.

All this was just an introduction to a selection of vintage television commercials available at Archive.org. This is just a small selection of all the material available there. I chose them to post some time ago, but the Official Google Video Blog was faster. Among the videos you are going to find vintage ads of Band-Aid, Chevrolet, cereals, Gillette, Coca-Cola, deodorant, Alka-Seltzer, cars, creams, tea and beer. One more reason to watch them: many of them are animations. Enjoy!

- Classic Television Commercials (Part I): Band-Aid, Gillette Blue Blades, Remington Electric Shaver, Gillette Super-Speed Razors, Mum Creme Deodorant, Pepsodent and Dodge. download - watch it

- Classic Television Commercials (Part II): Chevrolet Trucks, Renalt Dauphine, Chevrolet and Delco Dry Charge Battery. download - watch it

- Classic Television Commercials (Part III): Speedway "79" Power Fuel, Esso Extra Gasoline, Bank of America, Lucky Strike, Muriel cigars, Kool "snow fresh filter" menthol cigarettes, Marlboro cigarettes, Robert Burns cigars, Winston cigarettes and Ajax. download - watch it

- Classic Television Commercials (Part IV): S.O.S. cleaning pads, Raid Bug Killer, Tide laundry detergent, Instant Maxwell House Coffee, Tea - Tea Council, Inc., Hamm's - The Beer Refreshing, Carling Black Label Beer and Rheingold Extra Dry Lager Beer. download - watch it

- Classic Television Commercials (Part V): Budweiser, Ballantine's Brewer's Gold, Gallo Grenache Rose, Lipton Soup, Ritz crackers and Skippy Peanut Butter. download - watch it

- Classic Television Commercials (Part VI): E-Z POP Popcorn, JELL-O New Instant Pudding, Kroger Fresh Eggs, PET Evaporated Milk, Maypo Oat Cereal, Andersen Split Pea, Beef Burger, Cream of Chicken and Old Fashioned Bean Soups, JELL-O Gelatin Dessert. download - watch it

- Classic Television Commercials (Part VIII): Country Corn Flakes, Alka-Seltzer, Dristan, American - certified lead-free gasoline, two ads of Lustre-creme shampoo, National Association of Broadcasters, Goodyear, two Coca-Cola ads, two ads of Colt 45 Malt Liquor, Volkswagen, a black and white and a coloured version of fashion ad, Bactine medicated skin cream, Alka-Seltzer, Bactine medicated skin cream, Alka-Seltzer, Noxzema medicated instant shave, Marlboro, The 1967 American Motors, Heinz Pickles, Shearson Hammill, Oil Heat. download - watch it (this is probably the number VII of this series, just with the wrong number)

- Television Commercials (1950s-1960s): Country Corn Flakes, Alka-Seltzer, Dristan, American - certified lead-free gasoline, Lustre-creme shampoo, National Association of Broadcasters, Goodyear, Coca-Cola, Colt 45 Malt Liquor, Volkswagen, Bactine medicated skin cream, Alka-Seltzer, Noxzema medicated instant shave, Marlboro, The 1967 American Motors, Heinz Pickles, Shearson Hammill and Oil Heat. download - watch it

Updated: watch all the videos in just one page, at Videos with Bibi post.

Posted by Bibi on August 17, 2006 11:11 PM in Animation, Media, Video ||

The Digital Deli is a site about the Golden Age of Radio, radio history, nostalgia and social changes surrounding the enduring popularity of the period of the 1930's through the 1970's. Videos, images, a huge resource archive, a Spotlights section with technology, advertising, networks, golden age and personality areas. On advertising area don't miss the Coca Cola section with the history, sponsoring radio, advertising, Coca Cola calendar girls, the bottles, processing and delivery, with nice vintage advertising images from the beginning of 1900's, holidays, wartime, international and even a this sexy ad.

Posted by Bibi on January 1, 2006 02:49 PM in Culture, Media, Vintage ||

Television Obscurities - Keeping Obscure TV From Fading Away Forever.

Television Obscurities began with only six features and only a few minutes of streaming media. Now, over a two years later, we have more than fifty features, encompassing nearly seventy pages, with over 250 media clips, totaling over three full hours of rare audio and video from television's past.

Posted by Bibi on November 17, 2005 01:54 PM in Culture, Media, Video ||

Now I'm officially back, or something like that. The Mostra was very good, but I have to say that wasn't so good as the last years, or maybe I'm getting more demanding with all the films. If you like cinema I suggest some of the films that I saw there: Manderlay, Caché, Good Night, And Good Luck. Film Site, A History of Violence, Broken Flowers, Luna de Avellaneda, Free Zone, Moolaadé, Brokeback Mountain, Первые на луне (First people on the moon), Me And You And Everyone We Know, Dealer, Kong que, L'enfant and any film of Victor Sjöström. Those are some of the films that I remember the name, but among 70 and something films, that I saw, there are more good thing.

These days I also made a search about courses of languages and found some interesting things, specially in podcasts. I didn't care about them, the podcasts, till finding those podcasts with languages classes. Most of my podcast subscriptions are about languages: English tips, new words, classes about Italian, French, Chinese. But there are some about cinema and culture. Here are some suggestions:

- Cartoon Radio Network is wonderful if you like cartoons: cartoon music from the new and old cartoons, openings, short audio dialogues and more fun. Dr. Don accepts suggestions of something special that you want to hear if you send a nice email. Don't lost the episode #24, Halloween special with "It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown".

- Incipit Blog it's a audioblog with lectures of books or extracts of them. It's a French blog, and the audioblog too, but there are lectures of non-French classics too. If you don't want to sign the podcast try the normal subscription or take a look there to download or listen some of the good options available. Suggestions: Roland Barthes - Mythologies, Le vin et le lait, Le bifteck et les frites, Patrick Süskind - Le Parfum, Histoire d’un meurtrier, Edgar Allan Poe - Le corbeau and Franz Kafka - La métamorphose, but there are much more to check out.

- Radio Memories Network has many channels with great audio files, but my favourites are Tales of HorrorPodcast and Scifi Friday. Don't miss Scifi & Horror Episode 1 with original readings of "The Telltale Heart" and "The Raven".

- RetroCRUSH: The World's Greatest Pop Culture Site. The site has a podcast with a bit of everything: retro commercials, bad TV theme songs, interviews, reviews, soundtracks, etc. The site has many curious sessions, 100 Greatest Horror Movie Performances, The 100 scariest movies scenes of all time, a gallery with Retro Babes, Bad girl movie posters and much more cool things on The retroCRUSH Archives. The episode #29 is an one hour Interview with George Romero.

- The French PodClass is what it says, French podcast classes. A French guy called Sebastien is one of those lovely souls that "wastes" his time providing audio classes, texts of classes, exercises, bilingual texts with vocabulary, videos, and tips of songs, books and tools to everyone that speaks English and wants to learn French.

BTW, I'm using iTunes to listen the podcasts, but I'm searching for tools to create one, a recorder, something like that. All suggestions are welcome.

Posted by Bibi on November 6, 2005 08:38 PM in Audio, Blogs, Books, Cinema, Language, Media ||

American Society of Magazine Editors Unveils Top 40 Magazine Covers of the Last 40 Years. I liked the choice of the winner, but not so much the other covers chosen. Here are the first 10:

1. Rolling Stone – Jan. 22, 1981 – John Lennon and Yoko Ono laying in bed
2. Vanity Fair – Aug. 1991 – Nude pregnant Demi Moore
3. Esquire – April 1968 – “The Passion of Muhammad Ali”: Ali with arrows in his body
4. The New Yorker – March 29, 1976 – Drawing of New York from Hudson River and rest of the country to Pacific Ocean
5. Esquire – May 1969 – Andy Warhol drowning in Campbell’s soup can – “The decline and collapse of American avant-garde”
6. The New Yorker – Sept. 24, 2001 – 9/11 – Twin towers drawing in all black against a gray skyline
7. National Lampoon – January 1973 – “If you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll kill this dog” – Man pointing gun at terrified dog
8. Esquire – October 1966 – “Oh my God – we hit a little girl.”
9. Harper’s Bazaar – Sept. 1992 – Linda Evangelista holding up the letter ‘A’ in magazine’s title: “Enter the Era of Elegance”
10. National Geographic – June 1985 – Afghan girl – “Haunted eyes of an Afghan refugee’s fears”

(via TV5)

Update: the other link didn't work, so I replaced it.

Posted by Bibi on October 18, 2005 04:56 PM in Culture, Design, Media, News ||

Lifehacker's guide to weblog comments: twelve useful tips that everyone who reads blogs should read. Good blog commenters add to the discussion and are known as knowledgeable, informative, friendly and engaged.

The Wired article Tips for the Crusading Blogger has the same subject as this CNN article: Reporters Without Borders' Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents. The handbook is available on Reporters sans frontières as online version or PDF document, with two versions, in English, Chinese, French, Arabic and Persian. One of goals of the manual is help bloggers to spread the word where the media is under censorship and bloggers are often the only real journalists. There are good tips, from "what's a blog" to "Internet-censor world championship". (via /.)

A cognitive analysis of tagging - not directly related with blogging, but I liked the article and it talks about the cognitive process behind categorization too. Almost obligatory for everybody that loves the tag system. And it wasn't a coincidence to find this link via del.icio.us.

Related posts: Blog depression, Articles about blogging, guide for bloggers and more, Blogging news and articles and A Bloggers' Code of Ethics.

Posted by Bibi on October 3, 2005 09:31 PM in Blogging, Folksonomy, Internet, Media ||

Radio Memories Podcast has five radio episodes for fans of horror in MP3 format. Do you prefer suspense? Ok, they have suspense episodes too and much more interesting radio episodes, just take a look there. Visit also Radio Memories Network.

Posted by Bibi on September 26, 2005 08:37 AM in Audio, Blogs, Media ||

Good news from The Crime in your Coffee: the Film session of UbuWeb is back! Super! So don't waste more time and start downloading / watch some classics from surrealism, among other cool films. I will start with my favourites: the silent films directed by Joris Ivens, René Clair, Luis Buñuel, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Fernand Léger and Dziga Vertov.

PS.: the first version of Le Chien Andalou, the 322.9 mb (AVI) version, has the film Las Hurdes included.

Posted by Bibi on September 21, 2005 11:53 PM in Cinema, Media, Video ||

Super! Great news: Ubuweb is back! They expanded bandwidth and storage space and added more media. Ubuweb is one of those incredible sites to find great videos, audio, texts and other kind of media archives. Some time ago I posted with some tips of cool things to check out and seems that just link to films are not working. Unfortunately they had some masterpieces of the silent period of surrealism, like Un Chien Andalou that isn't available anymore on Internet Archive and I didn't download it. Nonist, where I found the good news, have some more suggestions of interesting sounds.

Posted by Bibi on September 15, 2005 02:37 AM in Audio, Media, Video ||

The MovieWavs Page - movie, TV shows and cartoons sounds in both WAV and MP3 format. 13,092 wav files and 13,092 mp3 files as of 7/16/2005 (over 3 GB) located on MovieWavs.com all Free to download! Really cool, but the Cartoon session have only 11 different cartoons available. (via Nothing Important)

Posted by Bibi on July 20, 2005 12:08 PM in Audio, Cinema, Media ||

BBC is wonderful and here is one more proof of it (do you need more?): BBC Four has a fabulous archive of radio interviews with different artists from Paul Abbott to William Butler Yeats! Spend some time there to listen them.

Wired for books: uncut, behind-the-scenes author interviews by Don Swaim on his CBS Radio Show. Listen to the voices of many of the best writers of the English language. (via PCL LinkDump)

Posted by Bibi on June 16, 2005 05:33 PM in Audio, Literature, Media ||

del.icio.us now has special support for media. Bookmarked items in del.icio.us that end in one of a number of filetypes will now automatically get some system tags added. Support for audio, video, documents, RSS, podcasting and images. To know how it works read the casting the net wider del.icio.us post.

Posted by Bibi on June 14, 2005 03:52 AM in Folksonomy, Internet, Media, Tools ||