the Agency’s alternative marketing Blog

Today is World AIDS Day, and in the days previous we’ve seen a lot of lead-ups prepping us for the advertising melodrama that comes with.

Not all French protests come packin’ a Molotov cocktail. To protest a law that permits police to fine burqa wearers on France’s streets, which passed last month, two mystery girls who call themselves the Niqabitches found a different way to share their discontent.

Street art is in many ways a muse of advertising, particularly since the canvases these more covert artists use are often ads themselves. (Consider the East London Decapitator.) The genre also shares certain characteristics with ad land: – The compulsion to spread a message – A high profile medium (think what you want, the street [...]

Apparently the RIAA isn’t the only organisation that knows how to act ass-backwards and anti-consumer as technology aids and eases user inclinations in unexpected ways. We give you… “Super HADOPI versus Super Crapule!” Explanation below. “Super Crapule” is French for “Super Crook,” and basically the cartoon is about how Super HADOPI, a slick refugee Marvel [...]

It isn’t just the Democrats and Republicans that are taking their drama to the ‘net. In response to the PS’ (Socialist Party’s) tongue-in-cheek appropriation of Google’s Parisian Love ad, the UMP – France’s right-wing Union for a Popular Movement – fights back with an infantile (yet deliciously playable!) Facebook game. MicroHero is a wry spin [...]

“To the 44% of Californians who think homosexuals should not be allowed to marry. Why would you support Prop 8 and spare them from a long, unforgiving lifetime of wedded torment?” That’s the premise of MakeHomosexualsMarry.org, which is encouraging people to let gays marry so they can experience marital bliss the way it really … [...]

As oil continues to gush fancy-free out of the BP spigot, biologists and toxicologists are beginning to speculate what the long-term effects may be on marine life and on ourselves. You can probably already imagine the long-term potential for toxic chemicals to build up in fish, the animals that eat them and us, but according [...]

The other day, Gaël Clouzard of Influencia.net emailed us this picture under the following header: “It’s awful and you know why? …because it’s beautiful.” There might be something to seeing something artistic, even tragically provocative, about the ongoing BP crisis in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s not as if it’s getting any better. Scientists now [...]

Among the hottest and most controversial pieces of creative circling The Internets™ right now is the nine-odd minute music video for M.I.A’s “Born Free.” Directed by Romain Gavras and produced by elnino.tv, it illustrates a sinister America in which ginger-headed boys are rounded up, humiliated and slowly but surely exterminated. It’s a deceptively simple premise [...]

For those still wondering what merit Foursquare’s popularity has for The World At Large, beyond feeding a pathological fetish for badges, this will come as happy news. Foursquare’s sealed a deal with The History Channel to promote 12-hour TV miniseries America, The Story of Us, labeled as an “event that tells the extraordinary story of [...]

Here’s the story: outerwear brand Weatherproof found an AP photo of Obama sporting one of its coats, and used that picture to post a huge billboard in the middle of Times Square. The photo is of Obama foregrounding the Great Wall during his last trip to China. To his left is the brand, WEATHERPROOF, and [...]

In yet another well-meaning effort to keep regulators at bay, the ad industry has developed a small symbol to appear on online ads which use demographics and behavioral data to target users. The symbol is a small white “i” with a circle around it, flanked by an unthreatening shade of blue. People will be able [...]

Lady Gaga taps into both her style and her influence by releasing a self-designed T-shirt in support of Haiti. Set in the colours of the Haitian flag, a pop image of the singer is bordered by the words “HAITI LADY GAGA HAITI” on all sides. Buy one for between $25 and $27 on the Lady [...]

Little has changed between drug PSAs past and present besides the means and the magic with which organizations broadcast the same scary refrain: your life will be ruined in a manner most nightmarish. And if you’re buddies with a drug user? Worse still: there’s blood on your hands. This particular dose of dire, all gritty [...]

As of a few days ago, you can admire the CO2 Cube in Copenhagen, a cube installed downtown that diffuses global warming themed videos on all 4 of its sides. Everyone can participate in the animation of the cube. All you have to do is post your questions on global warming in video format on [...]