Having a brain fart day? Fresh outta ideas? Let the Wheel of Concept do the thinking for you.

Barbie held accountable by Greenpeace

Nice piece that highlights a very specific cause, namely Mattels packaging and the negative impact it has on the environment. While this could be a said of many companies, the focus on one definitely has resulted in a fantastic piece of communication.

Digital Goodies

Recently I have been inspired to start working on my own digital project. In a collaboration with a couple of super talented people, we intend of exploring ideas surrounding Diaspora within the digital space. Because of this we're been looking at some great work that's being undertaken at the moment.

The first project is by Jonathon Harris entitled We Feel Fine. The site has been up for about 2 years now, but if you haven't explored in a while or ever, it's well worth spending some time with. We Feel Fine takes tweets, posts, updates from social media channels and groups them by emotion. What's particularly interesting about this project is how it taps into the guilty human pleasure of voyeurism. Peeking into someone's life on an emotional level such as this, or on a surface level such as looking through someone's facebook photo's is, as much as we mightn't like to admit it, one of the attractions of social media.

Another wonderful digital artist is Golan Levin, who for the past 15 years has explores the links between nonverbal communication and interaction play in a series of works that are innovative and encourage engagement.

The second project by two artists Theo Watson and Kyle McDonaldand captures positive human emotions to the Internet. Happy Things is an opensource program that uses the webcam on your computer to analyze your face when you're browsing and posts your screenshot every time it detects you smiling, along with the web page that you found amusing.

This project is more about measuring the personal emotion of happiness rather than the collective emotions of We feel Fine. What it gives you is something akin to personal online happiness analytics: a way of understanding what it is about the Internet that makes you happy.

It's impossible to look at this without smiling. Go on try it, I defy you.

Hand from Above from Chris O'Shea on Vimeo.

Images and info curiosity of Collectively More Creative and Welcome to Optimism, the WK blog.

I suck...

I cracked. I’m weak and I’m useless.

In fairness though, who could argue with something that created advertisements as beautiful as these.

Not that failing to quit is any sort of achievement but I have cut down from about 15 a week to 5.

Proper Chrimbo Selecta

Oh Christmas, that time of year when ad agencies can knock it out of the park and show us all just how ninja they really are. So here’s a round-up of some really nice Christmas work that I've seen hanging about.

Honda Naughty and Nice List

Honda’s NaughtyOrNice-a-tron, is a Facebook application that scans your Facebook page for all your actions made within the last year. The results of its scan will then determine whether you’re going to be on Santa’s naughty or nice list this Christmas season. The app analyses the user's Facebook activity, including status updates, comments and likes, focusing on language usage and key behaviors, to determine if he or she has been naughty or nice.

The Santa Brand Book

Created by Quiteroom, these brand guidelines detail how to remain on brand while communicating the essence of Santa. Details include such gems as this –

Our brand essence is like a sack on a sleigh of belief. At the emotional heart of our brand sack is profit. Profit is foundationed in deceit, which is emulsifiedin tricks. Tricks are quasi-authenticated through illusion, and further end-gamed via magic. Enveloping this magic is the belief of our customers. The sack then hangs within a metaspace of gullibility.

Mother London : Lappi Leaks

Following Julian Assange’s suit - Mother London have released some scandalous revelations straight from the reindeer’s mouth on their twitter page. Found under the #LappiLeaks hash tag, highlight's include Donor's ongoing fight with Ketamine addiction, Tiger Wood's expulsion from Santa's Good List until he starts “banging chicks and winning cups again” and that the 2009 Santa's Apprentice winner lost his job after the exposure of his reindeer porn ring. Follow LappiLeaks here.

The Monster Holiday Harmonizer : BBDO New York

Created for their client Monster, BBDO New York's Holiday Harmonizer let's you send Christmas greetings in an odd, auto-tuned, harmonized computer voice. You can write a simple email, type a message and make the Harmonizer sing, or go all out and record your very own song / message and listen to it back in all it's harmonized glory. Try it out here.

Moleskine Mini Planner

Must buy new diary for new year.

MINI PLANNERS from Moleskine ® on Vimeo.

Virtual Christmas

This will be my first Christmas away from home so I'll be skyping home on the 25th. Won't be as hella cool as this though...

Virtual Holiday Dinner from virtual holidaydinner on Vimeo.

Flights booked. Notices handed.

I am jack’s inflamed tear duct.

After giving notice several days ago word has spread that I am leaving. In a matter of weeks my posterior will longer grace my uncomfortable swivel chair, bound instead for an equally uncomfortable Canadian one. Fingers and toes crossed that is. Having never been in a job where I’ve quite liked the people and work so much I am all covered in smidgens of sadness. I am also all covered in dollops of doubt, as the unemployed vultures that I graduated with circle, waiting to swoop in and take my job, I can't help but wonder am I making a very stupid mistake.

I once worked on a campaign for a gambling company where the strategy was based around the idea that fortune favours the brave. If it does I sincerely hope it has a little favour left for the stupid so that I’ll shortly be rolling in it.

If Diesel‘s most recent outdoor and Canne Grand Prix winning campaign is to be believed stupidity is to be encouraged.

Which I am totally down with.

The New Cadbury' s Flake Spot

Below is the latest television spot from Cadbury's Flake. Having had to shelve the original million quid ad, which witnessed the seduction of a glamorous woman by a Beelzebub type character, due to research deeming it too raunchy, Fallon created this beautifully shot, beautiful chick in a beautiful dress ad. Which is really all it is. Of course being of the female variety and a dedicated follower of fashion (ish) I couldn't but admire the intricate ebbing folds in this Antony Price flock.

Except it was a beautiful dress that had already been on someone else's beautiful back which had been beautifully art directed in almost the exact same fashion.

Four years ago Kate Moss swirled and twirled in an identical manner in Alexander McQueen's renowned hologram image.

The spot was devised by l'enfant terrible and Baillie Walsh, who coincidently enough directed the Flake advertisement.

So it seems just like Lindsay Lohan, the debate on creativity in the age of youtube, is doomed to keep raising its uglyass head again and again. The question being can you call you a creative when you're actually not being that creative? Perhaps mother bird would be more suitable as a career title when there is so much regurgitation involved. It seems as though it's a pandemic that has infected those at the top of their career ladder and those on the first rung. A perfect example being this entry for the Cannes Junior Lions competition.

Remind you of anything?

So, and this is something as a junior I am going to try and keep as my mantra.

Turn the off the computer and pick up a sharpey because browsing our imagination is the best reference point we have.

So you have got to let me know

Several legends have arisen as to what Mick Jones meant when he sung should I stay or should I go in 1981. Was it his rocky relationship with singer Ellen Foley or perhaps the constant squabbles that would lead to Jones being out on his ear just two years later? Whatever the intended meaning was is not so much the issue here, what matters is that Jones' London twang has been twirling around my brain for months. Risk leaving a difficult to-come-by copywriting job I love, in which I may never be made permanent at, to travel and possibly get a better one in Canada. Or spend a year ODing on maple syrup and practicing my plate stacking skills, only to come back to find yet another vulture sitting at my desk. After more changes of heart than a world renowned transplant surgeon,the decision has been made...

Canada here I come. Ahem... eh.