I don't claim to be an expert on hair, or sexiness, but I'd be willing to wager that far fewer people have heard of "Sexy Hair Concepts LLC" than have heard of Victoria's Secret. Nevertheless, Sexy Hair Concepts somehow managed to persuade a Trademark Board that "consumers were likely to confuse the lingerie giant's 'So Sexy' trademark for haircare items with Sexy Hair Concepts' various trademarks using the word 'sexy' for its coiffure line." Consumers will be wandering around in a sheer sexiness daze! Victoria's Secret's response to the ruling: you trademark people must be crazy:

Monkeys, sea monkeys, X-Ray specs-strange, unnatural powers! All these could be yours for just a few bucks and some proofs-of-purchase via the ad pages of your favorite comic. Some classics after the jump.

This campaign for Philips' new electric razor also had a bizarre online component: by email you set the police on a friend who escapes because the fembot's shave makes him look movie-star good, and unrecognizable. Or something like that.

A day represented by the brands used, starting with 6:35 AM: "Casio. Casio. Casio." [Dear Jane Sample]

An Ecuadorian business called Xiomara Coronado Beauty Center is running this ad campaign, with a tagline that (according to Copyranter) translates to "Nobody will look younger than you." I guess the message here is, if you don't want to look like a sun-scarred celebutante, Xiomara Coronado Beauty Center is a place that you should consider patronizing. Or maybe they just like to show off their photo retouching skills. Either way: funny, yucky. Ecuador must have some very loose laws about fair use of celebrity images. After the jump, an equally horrible transmogrified version of Angelina Jolie:

Click to viewMoral of this story: if you're digging yourself into a hole, stop digging. Yesterday, we got a tip about a self-described "Mr. Right" on NYC's Craigslist, who posted a personal ad with 30 pictures of himself, several of which feature him waving a stack of $20 bills. We put up a few of his photos and chuckled. But he was upset! So he called up the Gawker offices to voice his grievances. He charged us with fraud. He threatened to "punch the fucking guy whoever did this" and "fuck him up." And he warned us, "I'm ten times smarter than these people, cause I"m gonna record it right now." So are we! You have to hear it to believe it. Remember, kids: Craigslist is a public place. Click to listen to the highlights. (To refresh your memory, three of his moneymaking personal ad photos are below):

Here's the recipe for Mcdonald's new Southern Chicken Sandwich: "a breaded chicken breast garnished with two pickles." Why hasn't anyone thought of this breakthrough item before? They have! This same sandwich has been Chik-fil-A's signature for years. But McD's is all like, "Uh, what? We totally don't know what you're talking about." Whatever, sandwich thieves!

This flier has reportedly been circulating throughout Puerto Rico, which holds its primaries on June 1. As you can see, it features a poorly Photoshopped version of Barack Obama dressed up as dreaded Dominican. There's no indication the Hillary Clinton campaign is actually connected to this flier. And really, why would she go to the trouble? The lesson: West Virginians and Puerto Ricans have more in common than they think. Click to enlarge. [via Ad Age] [UPDATE: A tipster points out that this flier is a spoof! It comes from the all-day-jokers at 23/6. There are some anti-Hillary ones too, so let's just say everyone everywhere is racist and sexist and leave it at that.]

San Francisco-based blog network Sugar Publishing has bought StarBrand Media, a company that works with television producers to highlight and sell clothing and furnishings that appear in popular shows such as Gossip Girl, making every moment in every show an opportunity to place a product. One network it doesn't work with yet is NBC, which just happens to have invested in Sugar Publishing.

The "A-frame" shot—between the legs, with something framed in the middle—is called the "most frequently copied trope ever used" in the design world. PRINT Magazine pulls together a great collection of novels, movie and theater posters, ads, comic books, magazines, and album covers that all use the device, in a cacophony of legs that quickly goes from edgy to uniform. The best from five different mediums, after the jump:

The advertising industry's annual self-congratulation festival, the Clio Awards, just wrapped up in Miami. The superbrilliant "Grand Clio" award for integrated campaigns went to a series of ads for Shreddies, a cereal in Canada. The grand idea? They turned the square Shreddies 45 degrees, called them "Diamond Shreddies," then filmed focus groups of people ranking the "new" product. Heh. I can dig it! If you're going to try to sell the same old cereal, at least acknowledge that the entire affair is a big farce. Below, two clips from the campaign. And a rant from one clever YouTube user (of many) who picked up on a scandal: Diamond Shreddies are the same as regular Shreddies!!!

Energetic American Apparel CEO Dov Charney was named "Retailer of the Year" last week, and the anonymous American Apparel ad spoofer jumped right on it. Copyranter found this new poster of Dov holding up what should have been his award: a dildo. Way to stay tied in to the news cycle, spoofer. Larger picture after the jump.

Donny Deutsch: chairman of the huge ad agency Deutsch Inc., host of the rarely-viewed show The Big Idea on CNBC, permanently hyper talker. The press has always had a love/ hate relationship with the man. He's a dynamic, quotable guy, which is why he gets an inordinate amount of coverage in the first place. But then again, he's a confirmed insufferable egomaniac. Some people love his style; but we've found that people driven by a burning need to hear others talking about them are almost invariably well qualified for the Douchebag Award. As is Deutsch. Five good reasons why:

In an Ad Age blog column entitled "Guess What, America? There Is A Black Middle Class," marketing exec Moses Foster puts forth the message: There is a black middle class. So stop talking to us like we're all gangsters! When Foster and a friend went to an ad conference a couple weeks ago, they had a conversation that went like this: "I expect that you two like white women." Why? "Because you talk white. You're so articulate." That's so racist! Everyone knows that white people aren't articulate. The funniest part of the story, though, is the comment section, which is split between minorities relating their own stories of discrimination, and sympathetic white people scrambling to fulfill every I-have-a-black-friend stereotype there is:

Taco Bell's Value Menu slogan is "Why Pay More?" But if a rapper were to say it, they would say, "Why Pay Mo'?" Because black people can't talk right, ha! Cannily tapping into urban culture, the fast food chain is running a "Why Pay Mo'?"online promotion, complete with a Rap Name Generator (mine is Super Fly H. Nach!). Taco Bell's beef tastes like dog food, and their ad agency is making them look like a bunch of tone-deaf racists. But I can almost forgive them for all that, because their site's "Why Pay Mo' Rhyme Generator" allowed me to create a hip hop supergroup featuring evil columnist Andrea Peyser, Spitzer hooker Ashley Alexandra Dupre, drunk Post editor Col Allan, and author of the year Keith Gessen, all kicking rhymes about the fat value menu. Action photos below!:

The UK government body that regulates advertising passed new rules this month banning TV commercials that are too loud. That's right; ads shouldn't be "excessively noisy or strident." Nor should they be excessively blaring, deafening, roaring, or stentorian, if the thesaurus has anything to say about it. The ostensible reason for the rule is to prevent your neighbors from hearing commercials on your television. "This might sound straightforward," says the New York Times. Um, no it doesn't. Has the British government come up with a magic volume button-disabling law?

The outline on the model at left is not a bathing suit; that would be a tan line. The woman is completely naked. The ad for Cabana Cachaça was accepted not only at Playboy but also at Details, Men's Vogue, Esquire and GQ. Yes, this says something about eroding publication standards and the financial desperation of magazines amid the current advertising downturn. But more critically, it says that Cabana Cachaça is probably some really, really crappy liquor. Larger shot of the ad, marginally NSFW, after the jump.

What do you mean by misled?

Is Tumblr now fertile ground for stealing ideas? Sierra Mist has a new ad—a cross promotion with The Office on NBC—showing a bunch of office workers flying toy helicopters around their workspace as Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" plays in the background. "Is your office this much fun?" the voice-over asks. The Sierra Mist spot is amazingly similar to a promo video that the young blog wizards at Tumblr released seven months ago. The same helicopters buzzing around the office; the same background music. Tumblr founder David Karp tells us he came up with the idea on a lark, to show off life in the office of the young company, and that the musical idea was "the result of being raised by a composer with an appreciation for theme music." He also tells us he wasn't contacted by Sierra Mist's ad agency before their ad went up. Scandal? We've emailed PepsiCo. for a response. It could be an uncredited rip off—or just a case of both being inspired by Apocalypse Now. Click to watch the clip above juxtaposing the two ads, and decide for yourself. [Full original Tumblr spot here. Full Sierra Mist ad here.]

What does it take to get a job in this tough economy? A crazy website demonstrating that you are an insane person! Back in March we reported on Josh Millrod, a maniacal young man with a Bachelor of Music in Trumpet Performance and Certificate in Journalism from Indiana University who built a seizure-inducing site full of consciously exaggerated braggadocio about his entry-level marketing skills. And it worked! Josh writes in today to report that he has in fact landed a job in marketing, and we wish him the best of luck. This tactic also worked for ad copywriter Yutaka Tsujino, whose website proclaiming how much he sucks got him a prime job earlier this month. Professionalism was always overrated. [Earlier]