Mad About Mad Men

If you haven't been watching the last two season's of Mad Men, you should. It is, in my opinion, one of the best shows on television right now and it has a very devoted following.

Enter the Banana Republic & Mad Men casting call for a walk on role in the series and you have a hit. Even though this contest has a decent number of hoops to jump through before you actually get entered, the prize is coveted enough for people to jump through them. First, you have to physically visit a Banana Republic store to get a Mad About Style Guide to get a code to enter and only while supplies last. You can't get the code online. Once you have the code you have to photograph yourself in 'Mad Men Style' and submit it to online voting. The top 10 male and top 10 female scorers then go on to get judged by Mad Men's executive producer, Matthew Weiner, to select the final winner. Phew! That's a lot of steps for a contest! But hey, it's Mad Men so they can get away with a higher cost of entry, but I am surprised at the crazy number of entries so far considering how many steps one needs to take.

The funny thing I see though, is if you page through the photos entered, most of them don't have a Mad Men look about them. I don't know if these are Banana Republic shoppers who aren't that familiar with the show, but think it would be cool to be on TV, or people who seriously want a Mad Men role. There are a number of attractive head shot looking photos, maybe of actors looking for a break, but they still have no Mad Men styling. They might do okay in the public voting, but if you're going to all that trouble to win a contest, read the fine print! Matthew Weiner is very controlling of the styling on Mad Men, which is one of the reasons it's so unbelievably good. If you don't fit what he wants, he won't choose you. Plus he's judging based on 60% Mad Men Styling and 40% originality. I guess that just makes the contest that much easier for those that really want it enough to read up on the rules.

Heck, I'm thinking of swinging by Banana Republic on my way home now... The new season starts August 16th!

**Did I mention there's also an application out there to Mad Men Yourself? Check it out!**

New Font Driven By Toyota

Two font designers took the Toyota iQ (Toyota's version of the Smart Car) and made the above font out of the car's tracks. It's not the most legible or versatile font, but the concept behind its creation is quite cool. Essentially the font designers gave each wheel it's own identity and tracked the movements of the lines they made as a race car driver drove the iQ around making different letterforms. They digitally tracked the movements from above and turned the recordings in the font. Check out the video below to view the whole process and go here to download the font for yourself.

[via Gizmodo]

Magical Tweets

I'll admit it, I'm a Harry Potter fan. I read the books, saw the movies, bought the movies and then reread some of the books again. I love the stories and even as over-commercialized as the franchise has become, I still love it all.

Even if you're not as enamored with all things Harry Potter as I am, you have to give them credit for their recent Twitter application to promote the latest movie. Marketers everywhere are trying to figure out the best way to use social media to promote, but since Twitter and social media are driven by the consumer, it's a tricky beast. This current Harry Potter Twitter application, however, is a great blend of entertaining and promotional.

Essentially, you visit HarryPotterTweet.com and select one of four spells featured in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince to direct message (DM) to your twitter friends. If they click on the link in the DM, they'll see a fake version of their Twitter homepage followed by an animation of the spell being cast and a message from you. Unfortunately the messages are pre-written, but they have a variety of amusing and appropriate messages. Check out the thumbnails on the left to see the spell cast on me last week.

The only glitches with this clever application, are the inability to customize your DM and making the default "Check this out, it's simply magical. [URL]" so vague it's a little too close to spam. The application's been a bit slow to load at times too, causing spell victims to leave the page before the spell's animation has occured. Beyond those issues though, the idea and execution of this Twitter application is fantastic—the marketer's ideal blend of promotional and fun.

AT&T GPS Is the New Bread Crumb

This little Hansel and Gretel ad for AT&T's GPS feature is adorable. No, it's not mind blowing creative, but it's simple, clear and memorable. Very cute!

The Periodic Table of Typefaces

A month or two ago, a coworker sent me a link to a designer Camdon Wilde's Periodic Table of Typefaces. It was a little project he just did on the side and posted on the Behance Network to get some feedback. Well his feedback was overwhelming.

Unfortunately, the original image was small and there was no link or capability to purchase a larger print or file. I emailed the design, apparently along with many other designers, and he has now posted a large jpg, a link to Squidspot where you can order a poster of it. In true collaborative style, Wilde has also made the working file available for others to refine and tweak if you email him.

All I can say is I love it! I absolutely love it. :)

Sharpie Art

Sharpie has a new social media campaign site, Sharpie Uncapped, encouraging people to use their Sharpies to create art all over the place, from shoes to soccer balls to Barbies. It seems to be a permanent extension of Sharpie's Write Out Loud campaign from earlier this year. The big idea is great, but I don't think it's really working yet.

For one thing the home page is a little confusing. It seems to be mostly an aggregator for everything referencing Sharpie on YouTube or Flickr. If you venture over to the Uncapped Gallery area of the site, it invites you to submit your Sharpie art and promises the possibility of being featured in the gallery. It took me much longer than it should have to figure out that would be in the gallery's Sharpie Showcase, mostly because 80% of the gallery page is more aggregators like we saw on the home page, just organized slightly differently. If you click on these you get a Flickr page key word searching 'Sharpie' or their YouTube channel.

The Sharpie Communities page really just reiterates what the Sharpie Gallery showed, but tagged a Facebook fan page and Twitter account in there for good measure. This page makes sense. What doesn't is why it's confusingly repeated in the gallery section.

The Sharpie How To section is abysmal. If you're going to even have a how to section and I'm going to take time to watch one of those how to videos, I do expect them to have some information that goes beyond a fourth grade art class. I realize we're dealing with markers here, but come on, Sharpies must do something slightly cooler than just draw on book covers and t-shirts, which I could probably figure out how to do without a video.

The site does have a few merits though. The look and feel of the site is great. It's clean with bold color accents, hand lettered headings and fun Sharpie doodles throughout and it works well. The banner ad inviting you to play around with the Sharpie twin tip marker—which really just translates to a fun little drawing widget—is fun and engaging. On another site, this banner ad would have me hooked—on this site, I really thought it needed it's own page to play and have fun with. And why don't you give me the option to draw on some shoes or other objects while we're at it?

Overall, the idea has some merit. Uploading your Sharpie Art will get Sharpie lovers involved, but for a simple four page website, the organization and user experience is not very good. Sharpie is a great, well-known brand and is such a widely used product it will naturally have a presence on social media sites like YouTube and Flickr, but this site isn't yet working to bring them together. What do you think? Did you get as lost as I did trying to navigate through the site?

Truth in Advertising #11

Sometimes ad photoshoots are glamorous and include celebrities and sushi buffets. Other times they're not so glamorous and require trudging around in the rain, ankle deep in cow crap.

Weezer + Snuggie=Wuggie?

Apparently Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo is a big fan of the Snuggie, the imfamous infomercial blanket with sleeves, and he's partnered with the company to create a special Weezer Snuggie that they're calling the Wuggie, the difference being the Wuggie has Weezer's name on it. That, and it apparently comes in rockstar leopard...

I'm still never going to buy one, but if you're into Snuggies, it's the perfect attire for your next Snuggie Pub Crawl.

Coca-Cola Cans Summer

Coca-Cola has some great limited edition cans coming out for the summer. See larger photos at The Dieline.

PSA Brings Brings War Home

I'm loving this clever and poignant Public Service Announcement from Big Ant International. I've only included one of a few different executions of the concept that you can see here. It's so simple and brilliant it's no wonder it picked up a Gold Pencil for Public Service Campaign at the One Show last week.

(via The Inspiration Room)