The Consumerist reported about an Absolut ad that’s running in Mexico. And because of it, not too surprisingly, a few Gringos have their panties in a knot. For clarification, this ad is referring to what was once the US-Mexico border prior to 1848. It doesn’t astonish me at all that some Americans find this distasteful, but I find swipe pretty hilarious. With all this American Mexico-bashing and these grotesque exhibits of xenophobia, I think it’s pretty called for. Regardless, the ad really doesn’t matter north of the border. It’s a Mexican ad for a Mexican target audience, and I imagine the Johnson family in their gated community were rightly left out of the discussion when this was getting brainstormed.

Reminds me of this ad that ran in Oregon:

Speak to your target audience, and learn to take a joke.

It just keeps getting better and better. “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” is turning into not just a great ad campaign, but a timeless one as well. Chiat’s ideas seem to never end, as demonstrated by this truly unique banner ad on the New York Times site. If you can’t quite see, the copy above reads, “Leopard is better and faster than Vista” – The Wall Street Journal. Of course John Hodgman, in the adjacent ad below, decides to weigh in. Brilliantly done. I do find it odd, however, that The Wall Street Journal sneaked onto NYT.com. I’m sure Mossberg is simply grinning. Over on WSJ.com you won’t find any of Pogue’s “Vista sucks” comments. Hmm.

So, tell me, exactly why has my Apple stock dropped a gazillion points ($17-ish, actually) in the past few days? That’s what I want to know.

According to today’s Jack Myers MediaBizBuzz.com report, it appears as though Facebook is giving in to the overwhelming demand to turn “Beacon” into a true opt in program. If you’ve not been caught up in this frenzy, here’s a quick breakdown of what’s afoot and what it means to Facebookers.

Mark Zuckerberg’s social networking site, the darling child of new media, has been coming up with new ways to rake in ad dollars. One such method, called “Beacon”, was to sell advertisers the opportunity to post a user’s recent purchases on their news feed. Say you buy a book from Amazon, that purchase would appear to all your friends in Facebook…unless you opted out during checkout. You would have to opt out, of course, every time you made a purchase on any participating web site.

As you can imagine, this ruffled a few feathers in the Facebook community. There have been interesting anecdotal stories in the media about boyfriends finding out early what their girlfriends had purchased for them for Christmas. One couple broke up because the guy’s Fandango movie tickets showed up online. The girlfriend met him at the theater assuming the second ticket was for her, only to find that it was, in fact, not. All sorts of fun stuff.

MoveOn entered the fight early on by starting a Facebook group to protest the privacy invasion. Interestingly enough, it is Facebook itself which has served as the most effective protesters tool. Social networking happens to be a great way to rabble rouse – and without much effort. As of right now, the Moveon group has over 65,000 members.

So, if the Jack Myers report is indeed correct, this will be the second time that Facebook users have forced the website to give in and change their policy. At a time when consumer complaints tend to fall on deaf ears, it’s at least nice to know that Facebook eventually has to listen.

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It’s not often that I am so smitten by a campaign for a company I dislike so much, but Goodby is really pulling out all the stops. I know the sound is out of what here, but it’s the only online copy I could find. The gist is there, though. Enjoy!

I just had to post this. I love it.

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I can not at all believe this aired. It simply boggles my mind. If it’s too subtle, watch it again.

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Funny? Maybe. I dunno.

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I’m turning this into a Simpsons blog starting now. Thought I’d post this great ad I saw. Hmm, don’t know who created this…but kudos to them.

Since you are reading this, I can assume you have an inordinate amount of free time on your hands. As that is undoubtedly the case, here’s the perfect thing to fill that free time hole for ya. Over at simpsonizeme.com, you can quite literally Simpsonize yourself. And by “Simpsonize,” I mean that you give the site a photo of your dome and you get back a cartoon of said dome in the style of Matt Groening.

This is, naturally, to get you pumped about the movie premiere, to alleviate the burden on your tired AIM buddy icon, and to relax the part of your brain that is still fixated on the arbitrary Springfield, VT decision.

Simpsonization will change your life.

Here’s what I love about advertising: you get cool stuff. Like, the Willamette Week sent all the way out to Florida for me. We had a client in there, and now we’re on their subscriber list. And this Portland kid is on cloud nine. I’d write more loving words about Stumptown’s preeminent example of investigative journalism, quirky culture, and concert listings, but I have some reading to do.

Set your TiVo, the cavemen are coming. It was announced during ABC’s upfront presentation that the show is indeed going to make it into the fall lineup. I’ve not yet seen any previews, but this is bound to be a real test.

The Geico ads’ characters were apparently too captivating to pass up on, and ABC is ready to run ahead full steam with the show. According to them, the program will serve as a comedic vehicle to talk about prejudice and stereotypes while removing the possibility of offending any particular group.

This is one of the rare moments when advertising bleeds into content, as opposed to the other way around. The real test is to see if you can take a couple of icons who have done a good job at creating short-form entertainment to sell a message and give them a true story line. The only parallels that come to mind that might serve as an example are the several instances where SNL sketches turned into movies. And, every once in a blue moon, such a production works. But, more often than not (Superstar, Ladies Man, Stuart Saves his Family) they don’t.

So, will Cavemen be a Wayne’s World or a Coneheads? We’ll find out this fall.