Do you remember what life was like in Manhattan in 1993? The rats, the graffiti, the parties, the drugs, the … pay phones. Fear not. The East Village-based ad agency Droga5 and the New Museum have teamed up to give you a glimpse back in time—using that suddenly resurgent old communications device in the process.

Agency and client have launched "Recalling 1993," offering a raw, unfiltered listen to what was going on around New York City 20 years ago. The campaign turns pay phones into geo-located time capsules—dial (855) FOR-1993 from any pay phone in Manhattan, and you will hear a personal account of what was going down in that particular area in 1993, a pivotal year in the city's history. The recordings offer memories of everything from the World Trade Center bombing in the Financial District to the club culture at Limelight in Chelsea to the opening of Angels in America in Midtown.

The effort promotes a new exhibit at the museum, "NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star," which is running through May 26. There are more than 4.5 hours of content in total—over 150 recorded oral histories from real New Yorkers—so hopefully you have some extra time on your hands. See more in the video below, and listen to a sampling of the stories at the link above. Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: New Museum
Campaign: "Recalling 1993"
Agency: Droga5, New York
Creative Chairman: David Droga
Executive Creative Directors: Ted Royer, Nik Studzinski
Associate Creative Directors: Ray Del Savio, Jerry Hoak
Copywriters: Colin Lord, Bryan Wolff
Art Directors: Jen Lu, Daniel Sumarna
Head of Integrated Production: Sally-Ann Dale
Executive Producer: Scott Chinn
Executive Interactive Producer: Lindsey Slaby
Producer: Jennifer McKenzie
Production Assistant: Goldie Robbens
Technical Director: David Justus
Creative Technology Lead: Fran Devinney
User Experience Director: Kathrin Hoffman
User Experience Designer: Eileen Tang
Associate Digital Producer: Ian Graetzer
Senior Print Producer: Jeannie O'Toole
Print Production Assistant: Annick Thomas
Brand Strategist: Matthew Gardner
Strategy Intern: P.J. Mongell
Researchers: Amelia Barry, Sarah Gancher, Bo Jacober
Group Account Director: Olivia Legere
Account Director: Caitlin Chandler
Account Manager: Louisa Cronan

I'm sure some folks will enjoy Cossette's Instagram campaign promoting the Toronto Silent Film Festival, but I think it works better in theory than in practice. The flipbook-style fusion of old and new technologies is a cool concept (check out the trailers here,here and here), but scrolling quickly on my phone in slideshow view to achieve the effect of animating a few seconds of old-timey still images wasn't particularly compelling. Some guy pushes a car! A different guy rides a horse! A man and woman dance! (And it's in black and white. C'mon, at least colorize it!) Boy, films really sucked in 1925, and I for one am glad we live in a glorious cinematic age where creative visionaries like Michael Bay blow up stuff in dazzling HD and obscenities fly off the screen at deafening volume. Now that's entertainment worth $11.50 a ticket! Heck, I'd pay $11.75!

CREDITS
Client: Toronto Silent Film Festival
Project: Instagram Trailers
Agency: Cossette
Co-CCOs, Creative Directors: Matthew Litzinger, David Daga
Copywriter: Sebastian Lyman
Art Director: Pepe Bratanov
Account Team: Jason Melhuish

This Brazilian ad by Ogilvy & Mather for Dove's Men + Care shampoo line puts the tropes of women's shampoo commercials in a new, and weird, context. Apparently, using women's shampoo makes your hair move in slow motion all the time, and also makes it grow about a foot in the time between showering and getting to work. You'd think the afflicted man would have noticed this before his co-worker pointed it out. All that neck strain would have killed me. Directed by Hungry Man's Carlão Busato.

On its website, creative agency mOcean in Los Angeles lists advertising, marketing, branding and production as its four areas of expertise. But I think you will agree: The single thing at which the mOcean guys are ludicrously skilled is shooting baskets at the mini hoop that hangs in their office. The agency claims that absolutely no special effects were used in the making of the video below, which stars agency writers Burke Campbell, Jon Wiley and Bryan Dobrik (made with the as-yet-unrealized hope of having it appear on Tosh.0). Rather, it simply required a whole lot of takes. Lots of agencies can promise great ad work in L.A. Perhaps only one can make a no-look double-bank shot from 20 feet away. A few more credits after the jump.

CREDITS
Julie Pittman - for her help in writing nicknames and overall support
Andrew Wright – for letting the guys use the Go Pro
Cassie Tregellas – for shooting the intros
Wesley Nisbett – obviously for cutting the hell outta the damn thing
Katie Onuma  – for making awesome graphics
Sanaz Lavaedian – for helping the boys find and then license the music

SunTrust has released an interesting new ad from Agency D7 about parents who are planning retirement for three, including their live-at-home autistic son. It's notable because the actor playing the son actually has autism, and isn't just playing the role of an autistic person. His name is Patrick Storey, and he's a student at Performing Arts Studio West in Los Angeles. In a behind-the-scenes video (posted below, along with the 30-second spot), Patrick's father Jim says: "I think that using a person who's autistic to play a person who's autistic, as opposed to asking somebody else to come in and pretend to be autistic, is terrific. To me, that's the most important thing of all." (In the ad, Patrick's parents are played by other actors.) SunTrust consumer marketing director Emmet Burns says it's an example of the company "concentrating on the real-life circumstances, the real challenges that clients face." Knowing the background, it's certainly an affecting spot. There's an element of self-congratulation in the companion video, but that's to be expected—and doesn't feel overly cynical. People with disabilities have been making inroads into all kinds of marketing work recently—including severalmodels with Down syndrome who've gotten high-profile modeling work.

Tiger Woods is a golf nerd, right? Right. But in fantasy video-game land, he destroys you and all your hoodlum friends, fake kung-fu style, because you're trying to steal his trophies. His charming geezer of a sidekick, Arnold Palmer, meanwhile, manages to seem much more badass, rocking his tournament hardware inside his blazer like he's fencing gold watches. Because while Woods is busy being all "intense," ice-cold Palmer clearly just couldn't, you know, care less. For EA Sports's new Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14. Agency: Heat.

As thousands of consumers changed their Facebook profile pictures to equals signs Tuesday in support of marriage equality—a topic the Supreme Court is considering this week—two vodka brands led the brand charge in that regard. Smirnoff posted an image of three different drink pairings with the headline, "Every pairing is perfect." And Absolut, which has been gay-friendly for decades, pledged "Absolut Support" in its own Facebook photo. Which other brands have you seen making gay-marriage statements today?

Now that Tiger Woods has regained the top ranking on the pro golf tour, Nike is celebrating its star endorser's comeback with an online ad emblazoned with one of Woods's favorite soundbites, "Winning takes care of everything," along with the word "Victory" next to the company's swoosh logo. The ad has stoked the flames of controversy in social media, with some claiming it sends a bad message in light of Woods's marital infidelities that surfaced a few years back, costing him some endorsement deals, tarnishing his image and threatening to derail his career—not to mention crushing the marriage in question.

There are hundreds of press reports about the ad and countless tweets and comments, all manner of Internet chatter, folks expressing opinions pro and con. Much of the coverage has focused on what impact the ad will have on Nike's brand. That's a fair question, but as anyone who's followed marketing for more than 10 minutes should realize, it's answered almost as soon as it's asked. This is a blip that quickly stirs passions but has no lasting effect. By next week it will be all but forgotten. Nike and Tiger will carry on. (They been here before, of course, when Nike released that rather peculiar Tiger ad following the scandal.)

In a larger and more intriguing sense, the story is a microcosm of the state and price of fame in the digital media landscape. If you start winning in the public eye and achieve some notoriety, you'd better take care and be on your guard about everything, because legions are eagerly watching and waiting and we'll pounce at the slightest provocation. This says a lot less about Woods, Lance Armstrong or other tarnished icons than it does about the rest of us, who live vicariously to varying degrees through such "heroes and villains." Most of us will never experience the life-changing thrill ride of winning and losing on a grand scale, because for whatever reason, we can't commit our whole beings to daunting tasks, athletic or otherwise, and fight through the pain, injury and public pressure to victory. Hell, most of us will never truly win or lose at anything.

So, we cheer on Woods, Armstrong and the rest when they triumph, and weep at their defeats. We damn them when they fall from grace and welcome them back with accolades and big-bucks sponsorships when they've reformed enough for our liking.

In this way, such imbalanced relationships become symbiotic and reciprocal. Tiger and Lance play out high-def dramas with, at times, their careers and livelihoods on the line. We play along on our sofas, remotes in hand, flipping among our thousand channels. Social media intensifies and personalizes the experience. We become actors in their story—mostly in our own minds, of course, but in increasingly more palpable ways than ever before—as commentators and commenters, bloggers, tweeters and pinners. Our input flickers across PC desktops and smartphone screens, shared in real time with thousands, maybe millions, all eager to feel more deeply and understand—if only briefly, and through the exploits of others—what words like winning and everything really mean.

Twitter is a brilliant place for brands to connect with consumers. It's also a brilliant place—unparalleled, perhaps—for brands to absolutely humiliate themselves with idiotic posts. The infographic below collects 16 of the most notorious Twitter brand fails. You'll recognize many of them, but there are a few gems that have largely gone unnoticed. Who knew, for example, that Vodafone U.K. was, at one point, "fed up of dirty homo's and is going after beaver"? You can't make this stuff up. There are a few stupidly quirky tweets—as opposed to blatantly offensive ones—thrown in for good measure. ("If bleach could talk, what would it say?" Clorox asks dumbly, for example.) Others are more obscure. (The Tesco tweet caused a stir because of the horsemeat scandal that ensnared the British supermarket chain. And the NRA tweet went out hours after the movie-theater shooting in Colorado last summer.) There's no other lesson here than don't be stupid, but apparently it's a lesson that bears repeating. Via Social Commerce Today.

We've mentioned before—notably in last summer's Panera case—how random acts of kindness in customer service can snowball into massively positive PR when the customer involved relates the story poignantly through social media. The latest example comes from Midvale, Utah, where a server and manager at a Chili's restaurant thoughtfully helped out with a mini crisis involving a woman and her 7-year-old sister who has autism. The short story is: The sister refused to eat her burger, which had been cut in half, because she thought it was "broken." The server, in a remarkably compassionate way, offered to made her a new one—and the girl then kissed the new burger repeatedly when it arrived. It's a simple story, but one that the woman, Anna Kaye MacLean, tells evocatively in her post on Chili's Facebook wall. (See the full text below.) Now, Anna's accompanying photo of her sister kissing the burger has gone viral, with three-quarters of a million likes and more than 40,000 comments. Brands can't manufacture or even really plan for this stuff—that's what makes it so sharable—but it's always a joy when it happens. Via Mashable.

I want to share the experience that my husband, 7 year old autistic sister and I had today at the Chili's location in Midvale, UT. Arianna, my little sister, didn't waste any time when our waitress, Lauren, greeted us at our table. Arianna promptly ordered her cheeseburger with pickles, french fries, and chocolate milk before Lauren could even take our drink order. Lauren smiled and told Arianna, "Okay! I'll be right back with your chocolate milk!". When we got our food I was wondering why Arianna wouldn't touch her cheeseburger, but was going to town on her french fries. I asked her, "Arianna are you going to eat your cheeseburger?" She calmly said, "No, I don't want it." Cheeseburgers, or 'Krabby Patties' as we sometimes call them, are her FAVORITE! So this behavior was VERY strange. So I asked her, "Why don't you want it?". She replied, "It's broken. I need another one thats fixed." Then it dawned on me why she wasn't eating it. It's because it was cut in half. Being a child with autism, she has to have certain things in a particular order at all times. One slight change in her routine can change the course of the day instantly. When Lauren came back to check on us, I asked if we could order another cheeseburger and just add it to our check. She had a concerned look on her face so I explained that Arianna has autism, and that in her mind, because the cheeseburger was cut in half, she thinks its broken and can't eat it. I told Lauren I knew it sounded silly, but if we could just order an additional one we will gladly pay for it because there was nothing wrong with the one that was originally brought out. Lauren was so sweet and just smiled and went along with Arianna, telling her "I brought you a broken cheeseburger?! You know what, I'll have them cook you a new one!" I loved this because rather than just taking it from the table, she actually TOLD Arianna what she was doing. While this seems insignificant, by her telling Arianna what she was doing, we avoided a melt down. The manager, Bradley Cottermole, then came to our table, kneeled down, and said to Arianna, "I heard we gave you a broken cheeseburger! I am so sorry about that! We are making you a brand new one that isn't broken, with pickles! I'll bring you some french fries to munch on while you're waiting, ok?" A couple of minutes later, Lauren arrived back at our table with cheeseburger #2. Arianna said, "OH FANK YOU! You fixded my cheeseburger!" When Lauren walked away, Arianna just sat there for a second and looked at her new burger. She looked like so deep in thought....just staring at it....then she let out a big "OH I missed you!!" and started kissing the burger over and over again. I showed Lauren this picture and said, "I think we glorified the cheeseburger too much!" She busted up laughing, and asked if she could go show her manager. She came back a minute later and said she showed everyone in the back kitchen area too, and that it made them all laugh and smile. I was so touched by this experience. Especially since I know people who have been asked to leave restaurants when their child with autism is being disruptive. I expected a few different things with this scenario based on past experiences, but I did NOT expect such kind and compassionate mannerisms from Lauren and Bradley. Everyone, from the hostess to the chef, played a role in what most people would think isn't a big deal. But this entirely shaped how the rest of our day would go. I know...a cheeseburger cut in half literally could make or break our day. In this case thanks to the professionalism of the crew in Midvale, it made our day. And I'm sure Arianna brightened up at least one of the employees days with her silly little personality. Thank you.

If you haven't seen it, see it. It's the jaw-dropping homemade ad—one of the craziest and funniest you'll ever see—that Nate Walsh posted to Craigslist in an attempt to sell his 1999 Toyota Camry. Words cannot describe the ad's awesomeness, but they can describe the process of its creation. In the Q&A below, Walsh—who it turns out is indeed an advertising copywriter—tells us all about his masterpiece, why he went with a collage, whether he's sold the car, and why he is now essentially fearing for his life.

How long did it take you to make this? Did you have help?
This was all a solo labor of love. It took an hour or so to write, and probably around 20 to put together, painstakingly cutting and pasting things by hand. Sometimes it takes way more work to make things look charmingly amateurish.

If I were to take the time I spent on this ad and apply my freelance rate, I'm pretty sure I'd make around $300 on the deal, so, you know, another well-planned financial decision.

You're funnier than 90 percent of copywriters. Do you work in advertising?
I do work in advertising, as a writer. I'll be using the weird virality of this piece the next time a client tries to disagree with my recommendations. "Did you SEE how many repins I got with my shit?"

Actually, the main reason I have to tear myself away from such a sweet ride is that I'm about to leave St. Louis, where I've been working for the past five years, and move out to San Francisco. Right now I'm mostly going to be doing freelance for startups and working on some of my own dumb projects, but … hmm … what is a classy way to say "SO TELL YA FRIENDS" to any agencies that might be looking for a writer? Help me out here, Emily Post.

As far as that other part, well, obviously most funny people use humor to mask deep-seated neuroses and self-esteem problems, so of course I read that question as, "How could you let 10 percent of ad writers be funnier than you?" Then I cried a bit.

What's your favorite part of the ad?
Well, despite the fact that I'm a writer, I'm actually kind of a fan of the look of the thing. I know just enough Photoshop to be dangerous, but when I started laying out content digitally, it just didn't have the right vibe for the tone I was going for. So I asked myself, "What would a drunken, profane second grader do?" And the answer came to me in a flash: COLLAGES.

I think they make every joke a little funnier than it actually is, because you have to imagine some lunatic with a glue stick cackling to himself at 2 in the morning as he pieces his weird little ransom note together.

Have you sold the car yet?
Not yet, but I do have a fair amount of offers. The problem is, despite all the amazing feedback and compliments I've received (Someone sent me a topless photo?), most of the actual offers have come from humorless people with names like "Randy." I'm trying to find the Tanry a loving owner who will appreciate its oddities like I did, but I'm also comically poor, so we'll see how long my scruples hold out.

Are you bummed it's been flagged for removal on Craigslist?
I was at the time, but it's taken on such a weird life of its own at this point—I've seen it on Pinterest, Jezebel, Jalopnik and Reddit, among other places—that I'm not really fussed at this point. I'm just glad people are enjoying it. The Internet can be a pretty snarky place (to put it lightly), but everyone has been amazingly positive and complimentary, which is a miracle in itself.

I am slightly worried, though, that the person who flagged the ad may have been one of the exes from the chart included in the ad, in which case she has to be blowing a gasket about the amount of attention it's managed to get since. So, you know, no darkened alleys for me for a while.

"You're going to need an abacus to keep track of all the ass you'll be getting in this thing!" That's one of dozens of stellar lines in the homemade ad below—a truly astonishing collage posted to Craigslist by one Nate Walsh, who may be a scrapbooking fanatic (he hasn't replied to our email yet) but is certainly one of the most inventively twisted human beings in the greater southern Illinois area. Each section is more hilarious than the last, as Walsh pitches what's clearly a piece of crap not just with humor but with panache. It ends up reading like the most amusing infomerical script you've ever read—complete with the stunning price reveal at the end, and the car framed by Wieden-esque images of fighter jets, explosions and fireworks. Seriously, you couldn't do better than this. (It makes that earlier homemade Pontiac ad look like it was made by a preschooler.) Because people are stupid, it's already been flagged for removal from Craigslist. Via Happy Place.

UPDATE: Walsh got back to us. In this amusing Q&A, he tells us all about his masterpiece, why he went with a collage, whether he's sold the car, and why he is now essentially fearing for his life.

Here's a fun toy for obsessive baseball geeks: the new "Mission Control" installation at MLB's "Fan Cave" space in downtown NYC. There, each year, a selection of the sport's most diehard fans are paid to watch every game and crank out social-media content about the experience, part of a Lord-of-the-Flies-esque competition to get to the World Series. This year, the space also features a custom multi-screen computer rig, built by Breakfast NY, that's designed to pull in and display a wide range of data about the upcoming baseball season. The smaller screens on the left and right include video feeds of stadiums from American League and National League teams (even when the games aren't in progress). The toggles on the bottom calls up information like weather conditions and wind speeds at each location, as well as relevantly tagged Instagram and Twitter posts about the ballparks and their home teams. The dashboard meters measure stats like total games played and total number of hits for the season. The central monitor connects to a camera that can be used to record and broadcast video clips of the sports stars and other celebrities who stop by for concerts and other events, and of the "Fan Cave" marketing program's less famous participants. Why? Because all you've ever wanted since you were a little kid was to be a professional baseball commentator and astronaut at the same time. If that doesn't ring true, you're probably not invited.

I've had way worse airline seatmates than the annoying, anthropomorphized, Jinx-playing serving of meat and mashed potatoes depicted in Energy BBDO's new commercial for Orbit gum. Beats getting stuck with ad-sales types ranting about CPMs, or bloggers with their sweaty palms and sad eyes. A second spot, set at a race track, features an outsized, whiny helping of nachos that would've been great as a '70s Dr. Who villain, intent on conquering the world by giving mankind indigestion. These latest helpings in the "Don't let food hang around" campaign are amusing—the costumes and makeup are, as always, fantastic—but they don't quite match the inspired culinary absurdity of that earlier spot in which a giant pita sandwich answers its cellphone "Falafel!" and ends the call with a deadpan, "Love you too." Classic! The challenge moving forward is to keep the campaign fresh, lest the talking-food joke repeats on you and spoils the fun. Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Orbit gum (Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company)

Agency: Energy BBDO
Chief Creative Officer: Dan Fietsam
EVP, Head of Int. Production: Rowley Samuel
Senior VP and GCD: Leon Wilson
Creative Director, Copywriter: Miller Jones
Creative Director, Art Director: Aaron Pendleton
Senior Producer: Kevin James
VP, Senior Account Director: Pete Ruest
Account Supervisor: Brian Sisson
Senior Account Executive: Niki Shah
Print Producer: Liz Miller-Gershfield

Production Company: Recommended Media
Director: Chris Woods
Executive Producer: Phillip Detchmendy
Founder/CEO: Stephen Dickstein
Line Producer: Darrin Ball
Director of Photography: Neil Shapiro
Production Designer: Alison Sadler

Visual Effects: Legacy EFX
FX Supervisor: Alan Scott
FX Supervisor: Vance Hartwell
FX Assistant: Lyn-Del Pederson

Editing: White House Post
Editor: Carlos Lowenstein
Assistant Editor: Kenan Legg
Producer: JoJo Scheerer

Visual Effects: The Mill
Executive Producer: Jared Yeater
VFX Supervisor: Phil Crowe
VFX Supervisor: Iwan Zwarts
Flame Artist: Melissa Graff
Flame Artist: Randy McEntee

Automobile test drives have been getting a bit more interesting lately. On the heels of the hugely popular Jeff Gordon video for Pepsi MAX comes this new campaign from Britain for the Renault Clio, in which unsuspecting drivers (guys in one spot, girls in another) get a sudden, unexpected dose of France when, prompted by the salesman, they push a "Va Va Voom" button on the dash. The interlude starts off romantic—a wheeled-in backdrop of the Eiffel Tower, lovers smooching, violins playing, roses and baguettes all around—but soon gets more salacious, as the drivers are treated to scantily clad hotties of the opposite sex gyrating around the car. Surprising everyday people during their mundane lives is all the rage in ads lately. This one certainly attempts to check all the boxes for virality. Scorch London and Unruly produced it. More credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Renault
Media Agency: Manning Gottlieb OMD
Media Planners: Laura Quy, Lauren Fisher
Production Company: Scorch London
Video Distribution: Unruly

Does winning take care of everything? Perhaps for Tiger Woods. Probably not for other some other athletes who've been on Nike's payroll. Here are some nicely done spoofs of the much-discussed new Tiger ad that put the sports marketer's controversial headline in less comfortable contexts. Two more after the jump—with Michael Vick and (though he was not a Nike endorser) O.J. Simpson. Via.

So, there's this British just-barely-science-fiction series called Black Mirror, created by a mad genius named Charlie Brooker (good interview with him here; he's also ripped into advertising fairly regularly), in which all of the worst and strangest things that are possible with contemporary or soon-to-come technology happen over the course of its (thus far) six episodes. It's gotten a lot of attention in the U.K., where it airs on Channel 4. One of the reasons people like it so much is that it's very well directed (which is not always the norm for British sci-fi, as anyone who watched the first couple of beautifully acted and largely well-written seasons of Doctor Who can attest).

Anyway, you can't watch it in the U.S.—like, at all, because no network airs it, it's not on streaming, and there's no Region 1 DVD release. But you can see the incredi-weird promos on YouTube. And let me tell you, they are worth watching. How good are they? Consider that I feel duty bound to say the following to our extremely savvy readership: If a pre-roll ad pops up, make sure it's actually a pre-roll ad. "A future you deserve," indeed.

Trailer for the current season:

Trailer for the first season:

Promo for a recent episode:

How many times have you busted out a well-known advertising slogan because it seemed to be the wittiest thing to say in a conversation? Never? Fine, wordsmith, but the rest of us are guilty of falling back on at least a few marketing clichés. A new indie flick, called And Now a Word From Our Sponsor, takes this lazy practice to extremes. The befuddled hero, an "ad genius" played by Bruce Greenwood, reappears after a mysterious absence spouting only fast-food, shampoo, cereal and seatbelt-safety taglines. His dialogue in the trailer alone spans several decades of commercials, piling up more brand references than even most TV babies could quickly identify. Having the script mostly crafted by Madison Avenue must have saved the writers a lot of time. The movie, which could double as a drinking game or trivia contest, also stars Parker Posey and Callum Blue. It premieres May 6 on VOD and May 10 in theaters. Check it out if you feel like you deserve a break today.

After a bevy of requests from fans, Screen Junkies has finally released an Honest Trailer for Les Misérables, and it … sucks. Well, it doesn't quite suck, but it definitely runs afoul of imitation fallacy. Singing the whole review dragged it out way longer than necessary, especially since they don't add any fresh insights to the discussion (Russell Crowe's voice is bad! Zing!). I'll stick with Orange Cassidy's movie reviews, thanks.

The medicinal benefits of tacos are explained in this parody of antidepressant medication ads, which is a pretty clever piece of work (although trust me, beef sweats are no laughing matter). I can't support the use of fake swear words like "friggin" or "frickin" by adults, though. What, was the writer's mom looking over his shoulder when he wrote this?