Sensory Entertainment

From Australia: streaming service Binge wants to enhance its customers’ viewing experience with box sets of scented candles that are matched to individual scenes from select shows. 

To quote from the promotion video:

To elevate the experience of watching a Binge original, Scene:Scents have been carefully engineered, layer by layer, to complement the action on screen. For Colin From Accounts, The Twelve, and Strife, each box set features scented candles crafted to match the scenes of each show. The layered candles are delicately constructed with a range of scents, and timed to release as you watch.

To quote from the explanation to the concept demonstration video:

The limited edition Colin From Accounts candles for Season 1, have been designed to help embed viewers into Ashley and Gordon’s world (for better or worse), with scent notes of Aussie Suburbia, Eucalyptus, The Vet’s Office, A Bachelor’s Apartment, The Back Room Of A Brewery and even Dog Pee as you progress through the episodes.

Balls Upgrade

In its latest series of commercials, men’s underwear brand Saxx compares its balls-comforting design to enjoying the trappings of an upper-crust lifestyle.

Spot 1: First Class
Spot 2: Ballroom
Spot 3: Underclassmen

Rudy Coffee

Are you bold? Do you like bold coffee? This coffee is dedicated to the most respected lawyer and prosecutor of the twentieth and twenty-first century.

That rather unusual dedication is from the product description of one of three variants of coffee being peddled by Rudy Giuliani under his name, with his image adorning the label. Thus, it begs the question: Is Mr. Giuliani actually dedicating it to himself and, if so, why?

While the idea of dedicating a coffee to oneself does seem bizarre, I wouldn’t put it past Mr. Giuliani.  But like so many things about him, I wouldn’t bother to look for an explanation.  For reasons that are also not clear, the image of his on the label of this particular variant is from around forty years ago, and it is accompanied by smaller, much more older mugshots of three gentleman whom I cannot identify. 

Banking on feelings

A new spot for online bank Monzo paints a vivid picture of how it sees itself transforming the money experiences of its customers.

Link to video

So Many Dicks

A new campaign from cosmetics brand e.l.f. Beauty aims to encourage diversity in American boardrooms by highlighting the prevalence of ‘Dicks’. Some of the statistics that it uses to makes its case (drawn from 4000+ listed companies):

• There were 566 men named Richard, Rick, or Dick (Dicks) serving on these public company boards.
• Black women and Asian women barely outnumber men named Dick, with only 806 Black Women, 774 Asian Women.
• There were only 283 Hispanic Women on these same boards, only half the number of “Dicks.”
• There are 19x more men named Dick than the 29 women of Middle Eastern descent on these boards.

Sneakers to match your waffles

I’ll let this press release from waffles brand Eggo explain:

In a tribute to the historic waffle-sneaker connection and its influence on waffle-grid-patterned shoe soles, the brand is teaming up with sneakerhead legend and custom creator Dominic "The Surgeon" Ciambrone and SRGN to create the first-of-its-kind Eggo Fully Loaded Kicks. Just like a delicious breakfast, teens and sneakerheads alike are always hungry for the latest looks and now, fans can get their hands on both with this protein-packed collab sure to fill stomachs and turn heads.

Handcrafted in Los Angeles, these 100% custom waffle-grid-bottomed sneakers are infused with delicious details throughout. From a syrup drip to a syrup pouch, these Fully Loaded kicks were inspired by the two new flavors: bright pink Strawberry Delight and rich brown Chocolate Chip Brownie. The sneakers feature premium suede waffled leather in shades of chocolate brown or a tan caramel with pops of pink, and fillings inspired by each new flavor dripping down the midsole. For extra comfort, the collar includes added cushion to showcase the fluffiness of the waffles. These kicks even have a hidden zip stash pocket for a syrup packet on the go!

RIP Roger Corman

An incredible list of accomplishments — producing and/or directing an estimated 400+ movies, shaping the marketing and distribution of foreign-language arthouse films in the seventies, giving early career breaks to A-listers including Robert De Niro, Ellen Burstyn, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard, and Peter Bogdanovich, and much more.

My favourite bit of Corman trivia (per The New York Times):

Among the others Mr. Corman nurtured was Jack Nicholson, who was 21 when Mr. Corman gave him his first movie role, the lead in “The Cry Baby Killer” (1958), and 23 when he had a small part as a masochistic dental patient in “The Little Shop of Horrors.” Before he went on to stardom, Mr. Nicholson acted in eight Corman movies and wrote three of them, including “The Trip,” an uncautionary tale about LSD.

More beef than Kendrick and Drake

From Australia: food delivery platform Menulog has turned the feud between the hip-hop superstars to its advantage.

^SOURCE

VPN Marketing… with a Transparent Loo

Surfshark VPN has hit the streets of London with what it calls “a provocative guerrilla marketing experiment” — a transparent truck with a man sitting on a toilet inside.   As explained on a blog post:

In today’s digital era, people tend to share every moment of their lives on social media despite the understanding that these seemingly trivial details can unveil the most sensitive information about them. Strangely, while society upholds certain aspects, such as using the toilet, as private, the same level of discretion isn’t extended to sharing personal data.

If you don’t get that sushi is woke…

From New Zealand: After associate education minister David Seymour announced changes to what is served in the school lunches programme, he was asked about food items like sushi for lunches, to which this is what he was quoted as saying:

If you don't get that sushi's woke, then I don’t know how to wake you up…

Bald-Thru

From Brazil: Burger King is offering a free Whopper to customers who have a specific pattern of hair loss that resembles the layout of its Drive-Thrus.

Link to video

Dog Perspective

Excerpts from an opinion piece on the Kristi Noem ‘dog killing’ episode, by talk show host Mark Davis on the Newsweek website:

Say what you will about the Bidens, but when their dog Commander went on a White House biting spree, they didn't walk him out to the South Lawn for a summary execution.

There are differences one can find between Commander, a German Shepherd sent to live in a less stressful environment, and Cricket, a 14-month-old female wirehair pointer who took a bullet from South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem—a story the governor shares with baffling enthusiasm in an upcoming book.

Pause for a moment and consider not only that she did it, but that she is so proud of it that she touts it two decades later in a book clearly designed to boost her chances at the vice presidency, if not an even higher office. Then consider that a collection of editors and the governor's own advisers thought this would be a great thing to share in the thick of a fateful political year.

It takes a special blindness to miss the obvious revulsion this story would provoke across political and cultural lines.

Bank to the Future

From France: BoursoBank spins a time-travelling yarn to pitch itself as a bank to ‘recommend’ to yourself.

Link to video

Candour about Commencement Speech

To quote from a news report:

The person selected to speak at Ohio State University’s commencement ceremony for its spring graduates hasn’t minced details on how he made the controversial script.

Days before the Sunday ceremony, OSU’s chosen speaker Chris Pan announced on LinkedIn that he had taken the psychedelic drug ayahuasca to write his first drafts.

“Got some help from AI (Ayahuasca Intelligence) this week to write my commencement speech for 60,000 grads and family members at Ohio State University next Sunday,” Pan wrote. “Tried ChatGPT but wasn’t that good.”

Unhinged Attraction

Two spots for a new range of fragrances from Lynx.

   -Robbery
   -Funeral

‘Iced Tea For Trucks’

An expletive-laced bonkers pitch from Liquid Death.

Link to video

100 years of Meisterstück

A treat for Wes Anderson fans.  The filmmaker brings his signature style and humour to a new spot for Montblanc which he co-directs and also stars in, along with Jason Schwartzman and Rupert Friend.

Link to video

Prolific Complainant about Aircraft Noise

To quote from a news report out of Australia:

A single Perth resident is said to have complained more than 21,000 times about noise from overflying aircraft last year, accounting for nearly half of all complaints in Australia.

Ricky Gervais- Rich and Happy

The actor promotes his co-owned brand of vodka.

Thoughts on a $34 Billion Tax Bill

A Pennsylvania man is in the news after he received a $34 billion tax bill.  This is what one news report quoted him as saying:

“The first thought was, ‘I wish I made enough money to even owe thirty billion in taxes,’ then I was thinking, ‘I’m going to need to drink a lot of coffee in order to work three full time jobs’ and then I’m thinking, ‘Wesley Snipes doesn't have anything on me,’ and finally I was thinking, ‘don't they have a computer algorithm to spot an error like this and if a human looked at this why do they still have a job.’”