Daniel Harmon

This ad aired during the NCAA National Championship Game—just one of a slew of great ads during the event. My buddy said he was actually more impressed with the NCAA’s commercials than this year’s Super Bowl offerings

What makes this ad so funny is the performance by the out-of-touch business exec that wants to “go viral” and “get on the Net” to “blog it out.”

Interestingly, Directv depicts the guy who cares about the blogosphere as a total self-centered dingbat. For a company trying to show off their technologically-advanced prowess, it’s ironic that they’re also subtlety poking fun at the new media—apparently “tweens” are the only ones that care about blogs—that now makes and brakes products and brands. However, considering the fact that I’m writing about their ad and posting it on my blog (free advertising for them), they probably know exactly what they’re doing. Still, they don’t have this posted on YouTube yet. So they’re not totally with it.

There’s a few more ads to this campaign here—though not as funny as this one, in my opinion.

I found this poster series on the Communication Arts website.  In collaboration with the Arbor Day Foundation, the in-house design team at Nebraska Book Company made these to promote the purchase of used text books.

I love the balance of color, the paradoxical concept, and the way the illustrations use negative space, allowing your eye to instinctively complete the image forms. And notice the clever use of the inverted recycle logo to create the v in save—a nice little touch of visual wit.

Ironically, the tag line, “Buy a Book, Build a Forest,” reminds me of an anything-but-politically-correct bumper sticker I saw as a teenager in Idaho. Its message aimed to achieve the same end, just through different means. It read, “Save a Tree, Eat a Beaver.”

Skittles has put out some pretty wacky commercials lately. This one’s no exception.

The piñata man is funny and memorable; however, will it sell? As entertaining as this concept is, I also found it rather unappetizing—not exactly the emotion you want to elicit when convincing people to buy candy. On top of that, the thought of Skittles combined with chocolate wigs me out. Sounds like a bunch of small, over-hardened Tootsie Rolls. But then again, I’ve never met a Skittle I didn’t like.

Hillary Clinton gave us a nice little one-liner the other day. “It is time for a president who is ready on day one to be commander in chief of our economy,” she proclaimed. Good one, Hill. Sounds like she snatched the term from one of Ron Paul’s responses in the final debate (go about 5:00 into the YouTube) and tried to twist it into a “positive” thing.

As Paul points out in the video, Article II. Section 2 of the Constitution clearly states that “the President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States.” However, it doesn’t say anything about the President commanding the economy. That’s what dictators try—and eventually fail—to do.

As any good economist will tell you, in a truly free society, only the market commands the economy, with the principles of competition, supply and demand, self reliance and innovation and as the chief underpinnings.

Hillary went on to say that “sometimes the phone rings at 3 a.m. at the White House and it’s an economic crisis and we need a president who is ready, willing and able to answer that call.”

Hate to break it to you, Hill, but I’m afraid that phone’s been ringing off the hook for years. The “crisis” is the ongoing abandonment of sound money (a Constitutional gold standard) and free markets. Yet almost no one in Washington has been willing to heed the call (except for Ron Paul, of course).

Since Hillary already wants to extend her “commander in chief” power to the economy, if elected, where would she stop? Commander in chief of health care? (Actually, we already know she’s going for that one.) Commander in chief of education? (How I cringe at the thought.) How about commander in chief of energy? Or of agriculture? Or maybe even the environment? And while we’re at it, let’s just top it off with transportation, recreation, communication and the arts—then throw in a scepter and a tiara and call it a day.