Someone once pointed out to me that rap music was never truly embraced by the recording industry until Run DMC started selling sneakers. Run DMC’s relationship with Adidas is well known. Their repeated lyrical references (My Adidas) and shell top centric style eventually led MTV to start blurring out product logos. MTV’s alleged concern was that companies could exploit artists by providing them with free products in exchange for what was essentially free advertising. Of course, giving celebrities gifts to promote your product is an extremely common practice. Perhaps MTVs concern had more to do with being used as an ad platform without getting paid.

Brands and products, appearing in rap lyrics since the days of RunDMC, have become increasingly prevalent. The idea that these references are simply a reflection of rappers’ immersion in an ad-obsessed culture, however, is somewhat naive. A liquor industry insider who spoke on the condition of anonymity, (actually, I met him at a party and I can’t remember his name) insisted that his company didn’t pay rappers to mention their oft touted brand. However, he was certain that Courvoisier had essentially contracted Busta Rhymes and P. Diddy to make the song “Pass the Courvoisier“.

It may sound inconceivable to some that an artist would shill for a product in this way. What I find inconceivable is this notion that so many otherwise business savvy rappers and entertainers would do it for free. I would speculate that most rap artists are engaging in product placement. If they aren’t, then maybe they should be.

About The Author - My name is Stirling McLaughlin. I am married. I am an Art Director, Designer and Illustrator. I work at Atmosphere BBDO. I have lots of ideas. I have a baby girl named Nika Bean. I live in New York City. When I was in college, they put me on TV because I wore a mask and yelled at people. I have a reality show that I wil be starting… any day now. - See My Portfolio

Misplaced Planet has been enjoying a little e-fame since their video “Brains!” showed up on the main page over at Myspace a couple of weeks back.

I could go on and on about what I think about the movie, but it would be easier to just quote the filmmakers themselves…

Despite a running time of less than three minutes, Brains!!! is perhaps the most horrifying film of all time. It is a thousand times more frightening than most pop songs twice its length.

Enjoy!

About The Author - My name is Stirling McLaughlin. I am married. I am an Art Director, Designer and Illustrator. I work at Atmosphere BBDO. I have lots of ideas. I have a baby girl named Nika Bean. I live in New York City. When I was in college, they put me on TV because I wore a mask and yelled at people. I have a reality show that I wil be starting… any day now. - See My Portfolio

The general consensus, at least among people who spend far too much time online, is that traditional advertising is broken. With an ever expanding number of TV channels, its a lot tougher to break through the clutter and get your message across. Plus people can fast forward through the commercials anyway. And when was the last time someone saw that newspaper ad? My guess is it was around the same time when people actually read the newspaper.

Companies are starting to catch on. Increasingly we are seeing more ad dollars being spent online. The problem we are now facing is that our tactics have remained fundamentally unchanged. Banner ads are the new print ads. Plus, as technologies like flash get better, websites are becoming more and more like TV spots. That’s not a good thing!

If it broke the first time, why aren’t we making more of a concerted effort to change the model and keep it from breaking again. The world has changed. We haven’t.

In the meantime Google has used AdSense to turn the Internet into an extremely powerful direct marketing tool. Why should companies pay for conceptual, engaging advertising when they can just grab a bunch of key words? Why should websites run traditional banner ads when they can get better results and more money from AdSense? It’s one thing when little blogs like mine use AdSense, but have you looked at CNN.com recently? Scared yet?

I am.

About The Author - My name is Stirling McLaughlin. I am married. I am an Art Director, Designer and Illustrator. I work at Atmosphere BBDO. I have lots of ideas. I have a baby girl named Nika Bean. I live in New York City. When I was in college, they put me on TV because I wore a mask and yelled at people. I have a reality show that I wil be starting… any day now. - See My Portfolio

From Misplaced Planet comes another short featuring music by yours truly. I think you will notice a considerable improvement over my music for Just Us League.

This video is currently up against tons of other videos in a head to head competition over at Ourstage. Can Misplaced Planet sweep the competition two months in a row? All signs point to maybe!

About The Author - My name is Stirling McLaughlin. I am married. I am an Art Director, Designer and Illustrator. I work at Atmosphere BBDO. I have lots of ideas. I have a baby girl named Nika Bean. I live in New York City. When I was in college, they put me on TV because I wore a mask and yelled at people. I have a reality show that I wil be starting… any day now. - See My Portfolio

I stayed home this morning to catch up on some needed father/daughter time. Man, am I glad I did!  It appears that while I was picking wet baby food out of the carpet, Mother nature decided to have a full scale temper-tantrum.

According to this article on nytimes.com,  flooding wiped out or disrupted service on almost every subway line in the city this morning. Hopefully it will clear up soon. Good luck getting to work!

About The Author - My name is Stirling McLaughlin. I am married. I am an Art Director, Designer and Illustrator. I work at Atmosphere BBDO. I have lots of ideas. I have a baby girl named Nika Bean. I live in New York City. When I was in college, they put me on TV because I wore a mask and yelled at people. I have a reality show that I wil be starting… any day now. - See My Portfolio

Inspired by the Flux’s 3 word movie reviews, I decided to try the far wordier, albeit far less ambitious, 5 word movie review. Originally I set out to review every movie I had ever seen. This proved to be, quite frankly, impossible. I’ve got 50 so far. Many of these where originally posted on my old wordpress.com blog, but I thought they’d be worth revisiting here. Enjoy.

Citizen Kane (1941)
Alright. I could do better.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
Didn’t see it. Sounds Awesome!

Chinatown (1974)
Roman Polanski: Genius, Child F***er

Jaws (1975)
Family man fights shark, wins.

Mad Max (1979)
Rockatansky? Sounds Jewish to me…

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Archeologist fights the Nazis, wins.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Alien fights family man, wins.

Blade Runner (1982)
I dream of electric sheep… :-0

Yentl (1983)
Guessing Mel didn’t see it.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
Archeologist fights Kali devotees, wins.

Splash (1984)
Hannah as manatee. Comic gold.

Volunteers (1985)
Move over “the River Kwai”!

The Man with One Red Shoe (1985)
Greatest spy film ever made?

Pretty in Pink (1986)
Andie’s black. Think about it.

Above the Law (1988)
Good Seagal. Only happened once.

Big (1988)
Captures my imagination every time

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Archeologist fights Nazis again, wins.

The ‘burbs (1989)
“Satan is your pal.” priceless

Joe Versus the Volcano (1990)
Better than half this crap.

The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
Could’ve been worse… Just kidding…

Hook (1991)
Peter Pan fights Hook, wins.

A League of Their Own (1992)
Women playing baseball? What’s Next??

Jurassic Park (1993)
palaeontologist fights modern dinosaurs, wins

Philadelphia (1993)
Flawless. Need… four… more… words…

Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
Ian’s favorite movie. OOOH BURN!

Harrison Ford is The Fugitive (1993)
Best movie ever! No, seriously

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
FRESH FISH! FRESH FISH! Yikes.

Forrest Gump (1994)
Creates new genre: “Lovable ‘tards”

Braveheart (1995)
Wasn’t William Wallace a jew?

Toy Story (1995)
Pixar’s greatest film? Maybe Tom’s?

Apollo 13 (1995)
Too serious. I blame Philadelphia.

Breaking the Waves (1996)
“Golden Heart” trilogy causes vomiting

Titanic (1997)
Birthed “synthespians”. Drowned them all.

Conspiracy Theory (1997)
Amazingly, not about the jews!

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
chaotitian fights modern dinosaurs, wins

Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Extreme Makeover: Greatest Generation Edition

You’ve Got Mail (1998)
Didn’t I just see this?

The Green Mile (1999)
Save time. Read six volumes…

Cast Away (2000)
Joe minus Volcano. Wilson dominates.

Dancer in the Dark (2000)
Breaking the Waves: The Musical

American Psycho (2000)
I can relate… Just kidding…

Minority Report (2002)
Man fights his destiny, wins

Catch Me If You Can (2002)
Tom brilliant as charming putz.

Ghost Ship (2002)
Ghosts on Ship. Zanyness ensues

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
Face It. Michael was right.

The Passion of the Christ (2004)
I know he was jewish.

The Ladykillers (2004)
Yeah Tom! Stick with funny!

The Terminal (2004)
No Tom. I said funny.

War of the Worlds (2005)
Family man fights aliens, wins.

Derailed (2005)
Tell Hafstrom “Rape’s not cool”!!

Check out The Flux to see their three word reviews.

About The Author - My name is Stirling McLaughlin. I am married. I am an Art Director, Designer and Illustrator. I work at Atmosphere BBDO. I have lots of ideas. I have a baby girl named Nika Bean. I live in New York City. When I was in college, they put me on TV because I wore a mask and yelled at people. I have a reality show that I wil be starting… any day now. - See My Portfolio

I realize the title of this post is a little cheap, but in truth, this kind of cheap tactic is exactly what I want to talk about…

Toto was counting on this ploy grabbing attention when it launched it’s website, and the accompanying ad campaign, for the Washlet. As you might have guessed from the picture above, naked butts, and pictures of them, factor heavily in the advertising. This may be fitting considering the Washlet is, well, a sort of… booty irrigation system. Still, is this the best way to sell a fancy toilet? There is a reason why adult diaper commercials always show people playing tennis…

What I find more agrevating than this kind of cheap ad, is the public outcry surrounding it. Recently, Toto agreed to place a large white bar across the backsides on their Times Square billboard after a local church filled a lawsuit. What is perhaps the saddest part of all of this, as my friend Wilder has pointed out, is that when you censor these ads, you’re not just censoring bottoms.

Your censoring happiness.

About The Author - My name is Stirling McLaughlin. I am married. I am an Art Director, Designer and Illustrator. I work at Atmosphere BBDO. I have lots of ideas. I have a baby girl named Nika Bean. I live in New York City. When I was in college, they put me on TV because I wore a mask and yelled at people. I have a reality show that I wil be starting… any day now. - See My Portfolio

According to Quantcast, www.stirlingmclaughlin.com is the web’s 1,886,167th most popular site. Thats not bad when you consider that’s out of the 20,264,124 sites listed. Also, I think their traffic estimates are a tad on the low side.

Hey, I’m in the top 10%!

I would like to thank all of my visitors for this honor, especially the hundreds of people everyday who find my youth aids poster while they’re looking for naughty pictures on google…

This award is for you.

Edit: Thanks to Seth Godin for pointing me in the right direction.

About The Author - My name is Stirling McLaughlin. I am married. I am an Art Director, Designer and Illustrator. I work at Atmosphere BBDO. I have lots of ideas. I have a baby girl named Nika Bean. I live in New York City. When I was in college, they put me on TV because I wore a mask and yelled at people. I have a reality show that I wil be starting… any day now. - See My Portfolio

If you want a TV commercial for your business or product, you don’t need to buy a TV station. You just need to make a TV commercial. Everyone knows that. Well, I’ll let you in on a secret. The same thing is true online.

Let’s say you’re a big company. When you see a site like Youtube or Myspace, you get really excited. You should! This is exciting stuff! Then, in your excitement, you call up your ad agency, or your web developer, and you say “Hey, we need to make a site like that!”

Ok… Stop a second.

The truth is, somebody already made Youtube. If you don’t believe me, here is a link. Myspace too. You can go there right now. Your customers are already there!

Now, If you want those customers to notice you, maybe then you need to give your ad agency or your web guys a call. Both are experts at making the kind of stuff people will notice.

The best part? You don’t need to make a new kind of TV station. Somebody already did that. You just need to make the ads.

About The Author - My name is Stirling McLaughlin. I am married. I am an Art Director, Designer and Illustrator. I work at Atmosphere BBDO. I have lots of ideas. I have a baby girl named Nika Bean. I live in New York City. When I was in college, they put me on TV because I wore a mask and yelled at people. I have a reality show that I wil be starting… any day now. - See My Portfolio

I eat a mostly (mostly) vegan diet, so its rare to hear me sing the virtues of a dairy product. However, since our trip to Iceland in 2004, I’ve been seriously craving skyr.

Skyr is a thick Icelandic yogurt. In Iceland, you can buy skyr at movie theatres, gas stations and pretty much anywhere else. Skyr is to Iceland what Guiness is to Ireland. Unlike Ireland, however, Iceland has never been that successful at spreading it’s culture overseas (ha! a yogurt joke!)

I’ve gone to great length to try and track down skyr in the states, but to no avail. I once even tried to have a case shipped in. I had almost given up on my quest for Skyr. Then, today, when I came home from work, I opened the fridge and…

I found skyr.

Dawn, my wife, had been shopping at the local market and spotted a bunch of Siggi’sSkyr on the shelves. This is not only skyr, but locally produced, vegetarian, and partially organic skyr! It’s been slightly tarted up for us Americans but it’s hard to imagine the country that produced both Sigur Ros and Bjork as being all that offended with a little creative tampering. (Flavors include Orange & Ginger and Pear Mint.)

If you’re interested in giving skyr a try, check out http://www.skyr.com/
for a list of local merchants. Be sure and hurry. Once people discover this stuff, its going to be hard to keep on the shelves.

About The Author - My name is Stirling McLaughlin. I am married. I am an Art Director, Designer and Illustrator. I work at Atmosphere BBDO. I have lots of ideas. I have a baby girl named Nika Bean. I live in New York City. When I was in college, they put me on TV because I wore a mask and yelled at people. I have a reality show that I wil be starting… any day now. - See My Portfolio