Happy Hollydays, Internet Friends!

Please enjoy this X-ray of a Christmas tree and its gifts.

The Best QR Code Action I've Seen in Awhile

Look how useful and not pointless it is! Look how good it makes people feel, how it provides value (giving to the less fortunate) while compounding that with a captivating experience (animation)! I even almost forgot this was eBay.

We should be thinking more about intuitive integrations between the real world and digital. And, because you can't say that kind of thing without an associated buzzword, industry people are calling this golden solution "SoLoMo" -- a contraction of social, local and mobile. This combo has great natural implications for tourism and hospitality, but also consider how intuitive executions can change our everyday experiences, too.

Like this eBay thing. This time of year, everyone's susceptible to holiday altruism and the spreading of cheer, qualities which extend themselves nicely to social sharing. Make it as easy as possible for users to cash in on emotional investments they're already looking to make, all day long as they traverse those chilly streets, clutching their peppermint lattés and passing fleeting smiles of hope at small children and the grizzled homeless.

Viiiiiiiia.

AdVerve Episode 60: The Cold Eggnog Holiday Edition

Play the show now.

We actually recorded this show early last week but time didn't permit us to post it. Consider this a retreat back to winter break.

(For a proper year-end wrapup, GET YOU SOME BEANCAST! Bob's two-hour special features John Wall, Ken Wheaton and us truly.)

We do a quick run-through of holiday likes and gripes, including agency cards, holiday traditions, films, ads and music. There's also a brief but beefy manifesto on why we hate flashmobs more than anything else made by man.

Humor me ››

Head-to-Head Holiday Spirit Quantifier.

In all the festivities I damn-near missed this Hot or Not-style holiday spirit quantifier. Burn a couple of minutes easily deciding which is more holiday spirit-y, between options like "sleigh" and "partridge in pear tree." (I admit my head overheated when it asked me to choose between Jersey Shore and David Bowie.*)

Work for and by Heat/SF with grateful nod to Brandtags.net's "Battle mode."

Just one wee way of extending the holiday happy a little bit longer, if only with a moment's procrastination.

Humor me ››

Believe!

Brought to you by Austin Walsh Photography. And, because I can't say it better, here's Jetpacks' tidy take:

Dolls with messed up eyes are the stuff of nightmares, but obsessed old men from the suburbs of KC who believe in Santa Claus are the stuff of Disney. And it's nice to see a studio/collective/agency just telling a story instead of putting antlers on the office dog and acting cute.

I guess I'm into this because for me a great story has both the dark and the beautiful mixed in. That's the kind of stuff that captivates you as a kid, long before your head's all washed out with industrial sized Fight Club-looking soap. Isn't that basically the business we're in? To captivate, to make that inner kid feel at ease poking his head out again?

Well, maybe not for nose clippers or Chia pets.

A Whirled Christmas Story + a Premature Toast

I've become a big fan of Whirled since yonder days of Every Cigarette Smoked in Mad Men. Their holiday greeting is light fare but it will still make you crack the wee-est of wee little smiles.

Today is Christmas Eve. It's around this time that I get sentimental for things past and anxious about what happens after the 31st. I measure my life in these links to a new year.

Whatever you celebrate, I think our thoughts are moving in the same general direction: toward trepidation and hope, an eagerness to not waste time or people. They're hand in hand, drifting toward the ether.

Here's to this strange and wonderful period of exponentially-improving technology and the memes that bookmark our mastery of them. Here's to us and what we'll make.

Beancast 2010 Wrap + 2 Agency Holiday 'Cards' for the Road

'Tis the season for year-end wraps and agency holiday greetings. Though my hands are currently tied eating my weight through California, I wanted to pop in to point you in the direction of some cool it-shay.

Luckie & Co needs help deciding where to donate $6K. Help 'em out by casting your vote for puppies, children or creatives. Luckie's done a solid job of demonstrating its talent for sparking engagement and real American enthusiasm for old-school brands like Little Debbie; this effort feels no less authentic and in-right-place-hearted.

If you're a holiday hater, no worries, there's room for you too. Celebrate the 12 days of grouchmas with Traction, who's fueling your fire with an explosions-laced video every day for 12 days. Expect copious helpings of a creepy The King-reminiscent Santa figure who effortlessly gives us childhood trauma:

For an exhaustive wrap-up of 2010, listen to No More Rockstars, The Beancast's two-hour year end special. It features Ken Wheaton (his blog is the excellence!), John Wall, Bill Green, and me. This show is a tribute to Bob's organisation, tenacity and tireless effort to keep opinionated people on-track. Plus there's an unmissable awkward joke or two. (Three? Four...?)

Eggnog at the ready. AdVerve listeners out there, never fear: our holiday special's coming to town next week. Miss it at your peril.

AdVerve Episode 55: Tryptophan! Santabration! ...and Airport Frisks.

That yearly bacchanalia of peace on earth and goodwill to men.

Play the show now.

We get you in the holiday spirit with the curious origins of Thanksgiving and some pre-Christmas foreplay. Also, Bill manages to squeeze in a full-sized rant about the new TSA body scans while I try desperately to reel the conversation back to tinseltown and the roots of the Christmas stocking. (Not what you learned in school! But probably even less true.)

We sorta do never quite do get around to making that “thankful” list. (Although Santa knows we tried.)

Also in the confession booth: the worst Christmas presents we ever got. Email us yours!

Humor me ››

The Long, Gritty Holiday Decompression

Yeah, I know we still have New Years ahead of us, but might as well start grinding on some brainfood early so Jan 4 doesn't get you all depressed and looking for candles and razors and Enya.

AdVerve partner in crime (and blogga from anotha motha!) Bill Green sent me the above greeting. I think it is nice.

Anyway, as the season winds down and we recover from the funnel-fest of food, I imagine a lot of you are using your downtime to scope out Twitter, see what's hot or at least peruse-worthy. To help, as we traverse that short road back to the mills, here are some links that I promised myself I would read sometime today or tomorrow(ish):

• Top 10 Branded iPhone Apps of 2009 (AdAge)
• Twitter is Profitable. Your Argument is Invalid.
• 5 Ways Slideshare Can Help Your Business (Rohit Bhargava, who I find quite neat)
• 10 of the Biggest Lies in History (includes some faux Vermeer action, and my favourite: the Trojan Horse)
• US vs British Healthcare (for sounding smart and well-rounded when the moment is nigh)

A coupla links in French, for those of you that read it or want to make the best of Google Translate:

• Retour sur la gestion de crise Eurostar (Sandrine Plasseraud, who is loveleh and who thinks)
• Les Français décomplexés du porno. How porn is penetrating the mainstream -- couples watching it together, people being able to say they watch it without looking like sick sad potential pedos, etc.

And some fun shit:

• I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S NOT BUTTER. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
• La Main Perrier (I'll write more on this later)
• Strindberg and Helium! If you liked Salad Fingers, you will quite enjoy this. (Thanks, Beeg.)
• Domino Day!
  
• Stefano Ferroni Photography -- generically Vogue on the surface, but pretty and a little stark. The Exhibition section also has some neat things:

• Gonna wrap this up with Violet Blue's Top 10 Sexy Geeks 2010, not just because Google can now index (and immortalize) evidence of my goddesslike countenance for time immemorial, but because... no, that's pretty much the only reason.
  

Mother London Breeds a Fresh Crop of Gullibles for Next Year.

Nodding to all the estranged princesses and Nigerian CEOs that overrun your email with promises of untold fortune, Mother London decided to write its own such letter and give the entirety of the Christmas budget to the first guy to answer.

Turns out that out of hundreds of emails sent, demanding a full name and bank details, only one guy was dumb enough sufficiently compelled by the belief in Christmas miracles to respond.

So they pay him a visit. With a suitcase full of cash. Which the winner in turn decides to......

...well, you just have to watch it. This definitely wins the race for best agency holiday greeting though.* Guess the rest of you slackers can just hang out and colour until January.

---

*Actually this one by kirshenbaum bond senecal + partners was kind of all right. No, not really. What's ad land's fixation with self-aware body hair?

Kris Kringle's Team iPhone, Apparently

Mrs. Claus knows exactly how to whip someone into codependence: get honey the device that does all the organizational management for you. For Christmas this year, interactive shop Modea gives us Santa's Lost iPhone.

Futz with apps and buttons, just the way you would a normal iPhone. The Calendar items are cute. Watch out, though; if you hang around too long, Mrs. Claus starts blowing it up in search of her hubby.

A Pulpy Happy Holidays from Crush/Toronto.

Crush's '09 holiday comic, A Very Jolly Holiday, is now available to read (beware: extended scrolling ahead) and to download (for all you creative packrats out thar).

The 8-page oeuvre sports something for everybody: social media douchebaggery, self-effacing Facebook groupage, a venison charcuterie (don't ask) and even some cutback crisis action. GET YOU SOME. Or look at more action-packed clips below.

For those that don't know who Crush is or what it's done, aw, aren't you special. This is the agency that does the cool social media/audiovisual promotional shit for Douglas Coupland's trippy tech-meet-man novels. See the post-post-modern videos they did for Coupland's Generation A, as well as the still-gripping, if less existential, stuff for The Gum Thief.

Humor me ››

Elf Yourself Dancing Flashmob.

Yeah, they went there.

This marks year 4 that Office Max has whipped out its suite of festive dancing bodies, waiting for heads. Elf Yourself. And while the general idea of flashmobs makes me cringe, the memory of disco elves -- one of last year's indulgences -- does worse things in the general sphincter area.

Credit for the Elf Yourself movement goes to EVB.