Razors on the Doorstep.

Here's a video* for Dollar Shave Club, which takes the hassle of dealing with newfangled razor styles at the supermarket by delivering perfectly good fucking great razors to your doorstep for $1 a pop. In the future, they'll even let you crowdsource your shaving cream!

Quotable: "Your handsome-ass grandfather had one blade. And polio."

It merits noting, for noting's sake, that a European startup called Raz*War does the same thing, with the same DISRUPTIVE! convictions, and has been in business for the last several years. Minus the charismatic video and crowdsourced shaving cream fomula -- although they do punt pretty balms and oils with clean apothecary-style labels. (Just sayin'.)

Via.

---


*Is anyone else getting tired of this irreverent style?

35MM: The Message, The Medium, The Message

The speed with which awesome stuff is being created, published and shared today is whiplash-inducing, exponential.

35mm from Pascal Monaco on Vimeo.

I can hardly keep up. And I have trouble imagining a time or place when true creative work was rare and had to be passed, intact but tattered, from hand to hand, or only recounted: a treasure whose survival relied on the willingness of a living vessel to carry and spread it with fidelity. Now our art stands alone and often runs, with little motivation on the part of the creator.

So much of the beauty we're making now is just mash-ups and homages, like this (or like this!). These are great to watch because you can see how a message manifests itself to another person, how we can never, none of us, see exactly the same thing behind our eyes, and how the seed of that ingested mass communication grows and mutates into other messages we can't control.

And yet somehow there remains an underlying known aesthetic, a cue or value that we can recognise...

The Mini Rocketman Concept

This mixed-media video combines live action with 2d/3d animation, motion graphics, stock footage and visual effects - all in a way that serves the story and builds something inside of you: the seed that makes you a lover of Mini, from one breathtaking sight to the next. It's elegant work.

By director Mischa Rozema for agency BSUR and production firm PostPanic. The shoot went down in Amsterdam and Munich, taking four weeks.

Via.

Google Zeitgeist’s 2010 in Review

At the end of every year, Google Zeitgeist releases an intuitive report about how the world searched over its course. The lists are impressive data sheets of golden calves ("world cup," "chatroulette," "swine flu," "slum dog millionaire") dearly departed: a tribute to how quickly time moves, and we with it.

This year they gave that information an extra touch: a video illustration that manages to promote the existence of Zeitgeist, serve Google's Search On manifesto, and strike the nostalgia key pitch-perfectly. (A thin tightrope, artfully walked.) We give you the world's collectively shared 2010, neatly packaged in less than three minutes:



The video's remained within the top five of the Viral Video Charts for the last handful of days. It also got a tributory tweet from @ericschmidt hisself - that can't hurt. But more importantly, it left us with the sense of having witnessed and shared an important blip in time with millions of others. Was 2010 really that epic? Are all years like that?

Brought to you by Whirled, the mashup madmen behind Rockmelt's demo vid, Every Cigarette Smoked in Mad Men and - curiously - this random zombie speeding ticket effort. Damn, those people give us rainbow face.

The Foosball Red Team Wins 56% of the Time...?

The cool thing about "This is Dare. Are you?" is that it's rare to find an agency recruitment video that doesn't feel like flagrant audiovisual masturbation. And rarer still for an agency recruitment video to make Vimeo's Staff Picks list. Or any list outside the ad blogosphere (if it even makes those), actually.

That's not even all the reasons why it's cool. If you're a potential client, you'll want your depth of interesting and curious information unearthed and treated this way: wittily presented and connected to the present. And if you're a creative, you might just want to leap into Dare's lap. (Of which 57% wear checked shirts and 54% occasionally wear Converse shoes, making the likelihood of encountering one thus-clad Dare-ployee higher than finding a penguin in South Africa.)

You'll Always Find Them in the Kitchen at Parties.

IKEA's in the entertainment business now. Last week, YouTube account thekitchenbyikea published "Jona Lewie Presents Man Like Me - You'll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties," a catchy, dangerously mod three-minute music video about two guys with crappy luck in love, with music (and a cameo) by English singer/songwriter Lewie.

The interesting thing about visiting an IKEA is its modular quality: each individual kitchen, bedroom and living room environment is meticulously put together, simulating a home setting. But in the end it's still just a showroom, crammed with people that take up strange roles while strolling its lanes: those of actors playing house, or voyeurs.

This is something that agency Mother London started playing with: the idea that the environment is familiar, but not at all real. In some ways, I think that's what its previous cats execution was all about.

This video plays with that modular quality, the exquisite surreal poorly disguised as a banal setting. Two guys go to a party. The theme is that they go to a lot of parties and are always hanging out in the kitchen. So the house they enter is a modular space filled with different kitchen environments. Cut open in front like a dollhouse, you can see the kitchens in full glory. Each also represents a different party, and the guys meander through, followed by a camera that doesn't neglect to pan over the full array of IKEA home setting products.

It's a great way to see a lot of items in a lot of different contexts at once, while playing with the strange modular ambiance of IKEA stores (which, curiously, forces you to walk through it in a determined path - much like the guys in this video.) Crucially, the work is also fun to watch. It's entertainment - the crux of any or most good viral work. (Though that's never guaranteed. The piece has a respectable, but hardly epic, 19,680 YouTube views as of this writing.)

Here's the 1:00 TV ad (10,852 views):



Same idea, outfitted with a nice closing tagline for the audience on the couch: "Kitchens for every party. Planned, delivered, installed." Clean and relevant.

Full YouTube stats on The Kitchen by IKEA:



Via Influencia.

Could We All Be Gulliver...?

Animalcolm's Malcolm Sutherland directed "Umbra" (above), a hand-drawn animated piece neatly described thus:

An explorer adventures into an unknown world, yet it seems that he has been there before.

I like it because it is beautiful, slightly existential and infused with wonderful music that massages your brain. (That part's brought to you by Ben Grossman and Alison Melville.)

Via Tintin Américain, where you can find all kinds of cool stuff, mostly music although he occasionally veers into RANDOM DRIVE-BY AWESOMENESS territory. Also, I have almost all his playlists.

Niqabitches Battle Anti-Burqa Law ... in Hot Pants

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.

Sporting niqabs, stilettos and short shorts, the girls - both students, one Muslim - approached the doors of the Ministry of Immigration and National Identity, hoping to run into someone important. In the video, a cop tells them to get lost; but another (female) cop thinks the get-ups are awesome. She asks them if she can take a photo - even though, soon enough, these same officers will be forced to fine actual niqab wearers.

"We were not looking to attack or degrade the image of Muslim fundamentalists – each to their own – but rather to question politicians who voted for this law that we consider clearly unconstitutional," they were quoted as saying.

The video was uploaded onto YouTube on October 2nd. It's since enjoyed 28,274 views. The vimeo upload, parked on the 'net September 17, has seen over 249,000.

Follow @niqabitch for developments. It's not clear whether they want to fling themselves further into the headlights of French politics, but the story's raising eyebrows and, at the very least, generating more constructive discussion about the topic. Just seeing the sardonic pleasure of those who encountered the Niqabitches on the street was heartening. It hits you then: the anti-burqa law may have passed, but there are plenty of French citizens who don't want this.

While discussion about the burqa ban seemed like a delicate - even suicidal - topic of conversation before, the subject of two girls in a niqab and hot pants takes the edge off and perhaps puts people at enough ease that they can say what they think without sounding like wooden puppets, measuring syllables. That ain't bad poison - although you don't have to look far to find raging debate, either. (The YouTube and vimeo comments are a treasure trove.)

Elsewhere in Paris, an incognito graffiti artist who calls herself Princess Hijab is defacing métro ads by painting hijabs onto models with an enormous black marker. For her part, she says the cause isn't religious; she just likes the way hijabs isolate and accentuate a person who seeks obscurity, not magnification, in the Western world.

Lest we forget, German lingerie firm Liaison Dangereuse also released an ad suggesting worldly, sexy women can be hidden under burqas, too.

Diesel Sneaks: Not for Running

Rather than position itself as just another running shoe, Diesel took a slightly different approach to punting its sneakers. They're not made for traversing the nearest asphalt path on a quest for futile glory; they're made for kickin' ass (and, by implication, takin' names).

The :60 web video that propagates this ideal depicts a Diesel sneaker in demonstration mode. Witness while the asses of dentists, evil neighbours, mimes and Third World dictators are judiciously kicked. As a bonus, you get gratuitous slow-mo of their facial responses.

Humor me ››

Neither Ad, Nor Sense, in GOOG Mobile's Latest

Whatever you think of Google's ad efforts in general, you'll probably agree they're usually more coherent - more relatable? - than this bad-boy.

The first minute of this piece is all you needed to get a sense of what they were pushing. After that it's basically just, "Pizza. Pizza. Pizza." Right, you're understated and yet self-effacing. We get it. All ten minutes of it.

Will people hang around to backpat watch? (I didn't.)

If that weren't bad enough, the tagline is "Where you are is what you search." I think I get what they were trying to do, but I just don't see how "pizza" can be a general location, unless they mean that if pizza is what you want, then wherever you are, it's the only void that matters right then. At least where your search engine of choice is concerned. There has to have been a less existential mindfuck of a way to say that, though. (How 'bout "What you want, where you are"?)

Lots more where that came from!

V + V.

Electrolux's Vac from the Sea

For its most current campaign, Electrolux takes it upon itself to boat out to the middle of various seas - where yonder lay islands of discarded plastic! - to recuperate goodies for making new vacuum cleaners.

We give you Vac from the Sea.



Nice way to take a small but role-modelesque stab at a growing problem. (While scraping some brand cream off the top. Although curiously, it hasn't enjoyed much buzz since its June launch.)

Now, whose job is it to be promoting this bad-boy?

Une nuit Parisienne

My friend Compulsive Tog sent me this, and it gave me warm-fuzzies. C'est là où je vis quoi !

Ladies and Gents: AdVerve xtranormal!

AdVerve episode 47, Edward Boches Deconstructs the Universe, was late this week due to scheduling issues and other fun and games. We discussed that newfangled Diaspora thing, dystopic love stories set in the very probable future, Mashable's unwitting promotion of social media slavery and why you're not getting your Foursquare Player Badge if a group of Gen-Y chicks have anything to say about it.

But don't take my word for it, play the show. In fact, @fairuse calls it a two-time listen and @ChrisHavranek said it was a gem, and that's cool because how often does a podcast get to be a precious stone? NOT THAT OFTEN. Unless it's Aladdin's. (Okay, that was reaching. I'm sorry.)

Also, AdVerve homie and quotations extraordinaire Howie of Sky Pulse Media took the time out of his life day to do something objectively insane: with help from xtranormal, he made a wee AdVerve video and drew dialogue from previous shows. (Mostly the invective-ridden things, like that time I called SEO tweeters spambots with blood, and the time Bill said PR treats him "like a FACKING fax machine.")

Seriously, guys. This is going to be awesome. And also, our faces really do look like that.

Cockedey's Time Lapse of Tokyo

This stunning time lapse of Tokyo, worth watching just because it pulsates with strange visions, gives the city alternate tints of dreamscape, well-oiled machine and great animal. There were moments when it was like a forest, with the lights of planes blinking haphazardly in the dark, and when the enormous body of a train would interrupt the flow of smaller, faster things, like a snake reposing on sand.

By time-lapse photog Samuel Cockedey. The music is Woob's Paradigm Flux (Tokyo Cut). Read making-of interview.

BP Spills Coffee

An environmental disaster from which the table may never recover. (Thanks, Maël!)

Let's Hear It for New Dorks.*

Geeks now have an anthem ... and it's not that embarrassing. Unless it pisses you off that hipsters have appropriated the public façade of the geek, in which case, hey, be glad that geek's chic and accept that the hipster invasion -- which is temporary -- is part of the price you pay for the opportunity to get atrociously, flagrantly wealthy in a public space while being associated with some of the best thinkers of our time. Before dying!

Or something to that effect.

---

*I don't like it when people call me a "dork" because it actually means "whale penis." I just don't think anybody has the kind of ... vigor? girth? ... necessary to merit the comparison.

300 Kids, an Auditorium and Ingenuity.

That's what it took for a passel of business school students to create this nifty stop-motion video for ESCP Europe. There's even a little retro gaming action.

(v.)

How Poor Creative Destroys Great Product.

Today I found out about Knocking Live Video, an app that enables users to "knock" on other phones with the app and share live video in real-time. The first 50,000 downloads are free, so I snapped that bad-boy up before Pointy Heads could impose a payment wall.

How I discovered it: via Twitter and in the news. The message behind the Tweets and articles I saw were "See what I see." The functionality sounds cool; I don't even mind having to wait for other iPhone 3Gs users to get it before I actually try it out.

Humor me ››

If We Were Taught Chem This Way...

...the way we were taught the elaborate mechanics of freaks, geeks, queen bees and Asian Pride™, I might have actually learned something.

Jack Debunks Myths About McDonald's Japan.

I think the only time I ever used sign language was to sign "Climb Every Mountain" on Parent Night in fifth-grade. So I have no idea what this guy is saying.

But even when there's no hope of communicative cohesion, you still find yourself leaning in, trying to isolate the data being conveyed, with your eyes -- and, to some extent, your ears.

When the video ended I was left teetering over the brink of understanding, stretched so far outside myself that it took a few minutes of quiet to reel me back into the present. Kind of amazing where we can go, without going much of anywhere.