He was a lover of women—women like "Crazy Pam" and "Big Tittie Wanda." He "hated vegetables and hypocrites." He was "great at growing fruit trees, grilling chicken and ribs, popping wheelies on his Harley at 50 mph, making everyone feel appreciated and hitting Coke bottles at thirty yards with his 45." He "loved deep fried Southern food smothered in Cane Syrup, fishing at Santee Cooper Lake, Little Debbie Cakes, Two and a Half Men, beautiful women, Reeses Cups and Jim Beam. Not necessarily in that order." He didn't always drink beer, but when he did … well, you know.

He was William Freddie McCullough of Bloomingdale, Ga., and according to his obituary, he was one of the most interesting men in the world. Since being posted last Saturday, three days after his death at age 61, McCullough's obituary has quickly become an online sensation. Written by his eldest son, the tribute is rich in questionably accurate anecdotes, even noting that McCullough died "when he rushed into a burning orphanage to save a group of adorable children. Or maybe not. We all know how he liked to tell stories."

The obituary lists several of McCullough's ladyfriends by nickname and describes his three failed attempts at married life. "Freddie adored the ladies. And they adored him," the piece notes. "There isn't enough space here to list all of the women from Freddie's past. There isn't enough space in the Bloomingdale phone book."

The son, Mark McCullough, tells the Savannah Morning News (where the obit appeared) that he read dozens of other obituaries and found them too bland and formulaic for his father. "Our dad was a unique and special guy," Mark says. "I wanted to do things differently to honor him with an obit that fit him."

Starring in this risky spot for Volvo Trucks might give Roland Svensson a big head. Luckily, the engineer's head measured only 10 inches high when he was buried up to his neck in the sand and let a Volvo FMX truck, which has 12 inches of space between the ground and its undercarriage, drive over him. (Volvo swears the stunt is real, but did tell the Huffington Post that some "Hollywood editing" was employed for visual enhancement.)

I prefer this brand of stuntvertising to the more mean-spirited, pseudo-reality pranks. The enthusiastic participation of the Volvo employees is more compelling than just surprising and upsetting unsuspecting people on the street or in offices. Plus, this latest stunt, while outlandish, does illustrate an actual design feature of the truck—its high-clearance suspension system, which the spot's star helped to develop. Conversely, most prankvertising campaigns serve up shocks and little else.

This particular bit of automotive daredevilry makes Svensson's boss, Volvo Trucks president Claes Nilsson—who delivered a sales pitch while standing on an FMX suspended high above a harbor—look like a spineless wimp by comparison. Man up, Claes—take some real risks!

Meanwhile, in a different video, also posted below, Charlie the hamster demonstrates the easy handling of Volvo's truck by actually steering one of the vehicles on a dangerously twisty Spanish quarry road. The little guy's understandably a bit fuzzy on the concept, so he's guided by a driver who dangles a carrot into his specially designed hamster wheel, which is attached to the truck's steering wheel.

Suck it, Kia hamsters!

Remember the "Chimpanzee Riding on a Segway" song from way back in 2010? How about the theme song from Buffy the Vampire Slayer from the 1990s? Parry Gripp was the songwriter behind the simian parody, and the frontman of onetime geek-rock band Nerf Herder, which created the intro music for the supernatural TV show. Now, he's expanding his offbeat oeuvre into anti-asthma PSAs with a series of songs performed by a group of puppets named The Breathe Easies.

Created with agency The Barbarian Group for the Ad Council, the spots, running on radio and online in English and Spanish, feature titles like "Clean Up the Mold" and "Don't Smoke in the House." The lyrics include gems like, "Don't break my heart with your second-hand smoke"—an Auto-Tuned solo, of course. The bright pastels and tongue-in-cheek presentation—Pee-wee's Playhouse meets Sesame Street—succeed at making sad and gross subject matter less off-putting. And it's hard to blame them for playing the unapologetically cheesy jingle angle, given that the cause would be all but invisible otherwise.

And who doesn't want to spend the rest of the day humming to themselves about vacuuming the floor—especially if the alternative is singing about a cookie or a pickup truck?

Smartphones are lovely, but they're also wasteful—not worth repairing when they break, quickly obsolete in a hyper-competitive market. But what if there were a different model, one where a phone's pieces could be easily removed, repaired, customized and upgraded? That's the idea behind the Phoneblok. It is (or would be—it hasn't been made yet) a smartphone made of detachable "bloks" connected to a base that locks everything together into a solid phone. If a blok breaks, you can replace it; if a blok gets old, you upgrade it. At the "Blokstore"—a kind of app store for hardware—you buy bloks, sell bloks, buy a pre-assembled phone or assemble your own by selecting the bloks made by brands you want to support. The idea, from Dutch designer Dave Hakkens, is pretty fascinating—even if critics say it's impractical and/or technologically infeasible. Phoneblok has undertaken a Thunderclap campaign to raise awareness, and is promising big things for Oct. 29. Meantime, check out phonebloks.com for more, and watch the video below. There's a reason it's gotten more than 12 million views in a week.

Say what you will about the iPhone 5C—the ads for it are gorgeous and bubbly. Apple this afternoon released the second 5C spot in the space of three days, this one a 55-second jaunt through another candyland. It's not quite as chocolatey as the first, but then, this spot focuses a bit more on what's inside the thing—not just on the edible polycarbonate exterior.

Terrie Hall, who starred in Arnold's brutal national anti-smoking campaign for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, died this week in North Carolina. The image of Hall hiding the ravages of smoking-induced cancer with a wig, false teeth and a scarf is pretty harrowing, and the same can be said for her artificial voicebox. Those get used a lot in anti-smoking ads, but there's always something heartbreaking about them. I often wonder if people like Terrie are being exploited, if their real suffering should be harvested for a marketing effort, even one that's relevant to their condition. But the CDC says the campaign, called "Tips From Former Smokers," prompted 100,000 people to quit."She was a public health hero," CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden said of Hall. "She may well have saved more lives than most doctors do." Hall was 53.

Adobe just passed the 1 million subscriber mark for its Adobe Creative Cloud and is celebrating with this eye-catching spot from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners—a salute to "the new creatives" in art and advertising.

"Creatives today do a little bit of everything, from illustration to filmmaking to Web design," says GSP associate creative director Will Elliott. "We wanted the spot to celebrate how all these different disciplines are coming together."

The spot features a series of artists whose work is projected across their faces. The artists include Joshua Davis,Dylan Roscover,Anita Fontaine,Jeremy Fish and Alejandro Chavetta. Additional artwork was crowdsourced from Behance.

The soundtrack is "Default" by Django Django. Full credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Adobe
Spot: "I Am the New Creative"
Campaign: "The New Creatives"
Agency: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

Creative
Co-Chairman, Creative Director: Rich Silverstein
Associate Creative Director: Will Elliott
Senior Art Director: Patrick Knowlton
Art Director: Sam Luchini
Copywriter: Roger Baran

Production
Director of Broadcast Production: Cindy Fluitt
Executive Producer: Cat Reynolds
Director of Graphic Services: Jim King

Account
Associate Director, Account Management: Todd Grantham
Account Director: Joel Giullian
Account Manager: Varoon "V.J." Jain
Assistant Account Manager: Laura Black

Strategy
Group Brand Strategy Director: John Thorpe
Brand Strategy Director: Brendan Robertson

Media
Group Communication Strategy Director: Dong Kim
Senior Communication Strategist: Nicole Richards

Production Company: eLevel Films
Director: Brady Baltezore
Executive Producers: P.J. Koll, James Horner
Producer: Chris Whitney
Director of Photography: Juli Lopez
Stills Camera: Claude Shade

Postproduction: eLevel
Post Producer: Katharine O'Hara
Visual Effects Supervisor: Nathan Shipley
Animation: Jessica Gibson
Editor: Erik Johnson
Assistant Editor: Quinn Moticka

Most of the brand talk around 9/11 this year was about marketers doing it wrong. But DDB New York and the New York City Ballet quietly did it right with a wonderful tribute called "New Beginnings," intended as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and a tribute to the future of the city.

The video shows NYCB principal dancers Maria Kowroski and Ask la Cour performing on the 57th-floor terrace of Four World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. The backdrop, of course, is One World Trade Center. The dancers perform an excerpt from choreographer Christopher Wheeldon's poignant "After the Rain" pas de deux—signifying new beginnings in New York City. 

The film, directed by Davi Russo and produced by Radical Media, was posted at sunrise (6:34 a.m. EST) on Sept. 12 to NYCB's social channels, with the hashtag #NewBeginnings. "Our hope is that 9/12 can now be rebranded as a day of optimism and new beginnings," says Matt Eastwood, chief creative officer of DDB N.Y.

Check out the film, and full credits, below.

CREDITS
Client: New York City Ballet
Project: "New Beginnings"

Agency: DDB, New York
Chief Creative Officer: Matt Eastwood
Executive Creative Directors: Menno Kluin, Andrew McKechnie
Art Director: Joao Unzer
Copywriter: Rodrigo de Castro
Management Supervisor: Lauren Neuman
Account Executive: Cindy Nguyen
Head of Production: Ed Zazzera
Executive Producer: Teri Altman
Producers: Nina Horowitz, Zamile Vilakazi
Teaser Editor: Alec Helm
Head of Design: Juan Carlos Pagan
Designers: Brian Gartside, Aaron Stephenson
Illustrator: Steven Wilson

New York City Ballet
Ballet Master in Chief: Peter Martins
Executive Director: Katherine Brown
Choreographer (After the Rain): Christopher Wheeldon
Principal Dancers: Maria Kowroski, Ask la Cour
Managing Director, Communications and Special Projects: Robert Daniels
Senior Director, Marketing and Media: Karen Girty
Director, Media Projects: Ellen Bar

Production Company: Radical Media
Director: Davi Russo
Editor: Tim Zeigler
Executive Producers: Gregg Carlesimo, Maya Brewster
Producer: Logan Luchsinger

You know you have an advertising hit when the parodies start rolling in. Here is Funny or Die's take on the grand new Chipotle "Scarecrow" ad. The parody is just a joke, but it's not the first time the video has been labeled dishonest.

Are you a fan of jorts? No matter. You will be wearing them daily after you move to Cleveland and start working at Brokaw.

Two weeks ago, the 54-person agency rolled out geo-targeted banner ads on Mediabistro, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter encouraging ad people in the larger markets to come and be a big fish in little old Cleveland. Among the perks promised in the ads: that your salary will get you a mansion, and that you'll look "slightly more attractive" than you looked in that bigger town with all those beautiful people. The ads link to brokaw.com/recruitment, where you can actually try to make this Cleveland dream happen.

Brokaw says it's gotten more than 200 résumés from creative, strategic, media, and digital people at agencies like Mullen, Crispin Porter + Boguksy, Draftfab, Young & Rubicam, Taxi, Leo Burnett and Ogilvy & Mather. This is "proof the best culture can attract the best talent," the agency tells us. "Even to a city that still thinks 'jorts' are cool."

More ads below.

The idea? Play off Canada's bilingualism by jumbling English and French words on bottle caps of Vitaminwater. The result? The phrase "You Retard" appeared on the lid of a young woman's drink. Even worse (if that's possible), the girl has a half-sister with cerebral palsy.

The snafu came to light this week after Edmonton photographer Blake Loates found the message on her Vitaminwater lid while eating at a restaurant. She sent a photo to her father, Doug Loates, who fired off a lengthy (and tremendously poignant) letter to Coca-Cola demanding an explanation. He described how "the R-word is considered a swear word in our family," primarily because it's a slur that some might use against his 11-year-old daughter, Fiona, whose cerebral palsy has caused cognitive delays and requires that she use a feeding tube.

"What would YOU do if you opened up your bottle of Vitamin Water and on the bottom of the lid it read, 'YOU RETARD?' " he wrote to Coke's board of directors. "I bet you'd be pissed if you had a Fiona in your life!"

Coca-Cola Canada spokeswoman Shannon Denny tells the Metro newspaper that the words used in the promotion were reviewed only from the perspective of French speakers, for whom "retard" means "late." "We did not mean to offend at all. We are certainly very apologetic for this oversight," she says. The remaining lids were reportedly destroyed, and as of Thursday, Coke was drafting a formal apology to the Loates family.

Read Doug Loates's full letter letter to Coke below.

OK, Alan Varner, you probably think it's real cute that you broke through the "fourth wall" in this Little Caesars radio ad from Barton F. Graf 9000, inviting listeners who visit the restaurant to "tell 'em Alan Varner sent you. They won't know who that is, but as a voice actor, I'm always trying to get my name out there."

Oh, I imagine you fancy yourself "clever" and "innovative" for lines like, "Check me out at AlanDoesVoices.com. That's A-L-A-N-does-voices.com. But first, get the new Deep! Deep! Dish Pizza. It's hot and ready every day from 4 to 8 p.m. for just eight bucks." This isn't about you, Varner! This is about selling pizza … pizza so deep that the word "deep" gets repeated with exclamation points.

Do I insinuate myself into my AdFreak posts, Varner? I'd never sully this blog's reputation with shameless self-promotion, because I'm not even completely sure what the word "sully" means. I'm providing this link to my work and giving out my Twitter handle, @davegian, as a service to our readers, nothing more.

We've written about Google's upcoming Android KitKat operating system. But check out the KitKat website, itself upgraded to tie into the tech theme—it's a scrolling compendium of factoids proving KitKat to be the most high-tech candy bar around. So, while Google and Apple are being more candy-like, KitKat wants to be more Google- and Apple-like. Also, if you missed it, check out KitKat's great "Future of Confectionary" video below, posted earlier this month. Via Adverblog.

Spend a broiling hot summer on the streets of South Central L.A., a time grimly known to locals as "the killing season," to document some former gang bangers who now try to make peace? That's the idea behind LTO: License to Operate, a documentary from Culver City-based ad and marketing agency Omelet and production partner Foundation Content. The project, now in Kickstarter mode to raise money for post-production and music, started when Omelet, Foundation and director James Lipetzky shot a promotional video for non-profit group A Better LA. Deciding there was a larger story to tell about former gang leaders working to stop violence and rebuild communities, Omelet and private investors ponied up money to get a full-length film off the ground. Omelet, an indie agency whose clients include blue-chippers like AT&T, Microsoft and Sony, wanted to shed light on inner-city gang crime and the dent that can be made when former gang members turn into peace ambassadors. They plan to finish the movie by October, with distribution still to be determined and the $50,000 Kickstarter goal still to be reached.

CREDITS
Omelet Credits
Producers and Omelet Creative Leads:
Steven Amato, President and Chief Content Officer
Mike Wallen, EVP Content and Development
Executive Producer:
Don Kurz, Chairman and CEO

Foundation Content Credits
Executive Producer from Foundation Content: Samantha Hart
Director: James Lipetzky
Associate Producers: Stacy Paris and Matthew Goodhue

Here's a pretty clever new chapter in Samsung's long-running mockery of Apple line-waiters. For the launch of the Galaxy S4, New Zealand agency Colenso BBDO created a "Smart Phone Line"—a digital queue that fans could join and then move up in line by posting in social media about the phone. A large screen in Auckland actually showed the avatars waiting in line, sharing tweets in real time and skipping ahead. (The fan who worked his or her way to the very front of the line by launch got a free S4.) As a subtle jab to Apple fanboys notoriously willing to endure anything for a new iPhone, Samsung's virtual line-waiters curled up into sleeping bags at night and put up umbrellas when it rained. Watch the case study below to see how it worked and hear the results. Via Ads of the World.

Oh, a wise guy, eh?

Just in time for Advertising Week, BBDO and Campbell Soup introduce a new brand mascot, "The Wisest Kid in the Whole World"—basically a little boy with a really long beard who sits atop a pile of rocks, guru-style, and dispenses soup-related advice for parents. Most of what he says—"When the mouth slurps the belly smiles," "More ways to dunk than can be thunk" and "Mealtime is no paradox"—reminds me of the stuff I read on lists of crappy brand tweets.

In one especially awful commercial, Mom wants to be more fun, so she dances in an especially irritating and unfunny way. In another spot, not nearly as awful but still kind of pointless, the Wisest Kid unfurls an impossibly long "Scroll of Infinite Deliciousness" down a suburban neighborhood and into a family's kitchen. The young actor, who resembles Macaulay Culkin at his Home Alone peak, is quite good, but every other element in this campaign is about as sharp as a wet noodle.

"The campaign was inspired by the wise things that kids say, when you really listen to them," says Ed Carolan, president for U.S. retail at Campbell. "Who knows what makes kids happy but other kids? So we might as well ask the Wisest Kid in the Whole World."

Puh-lease, Mr. Soup Man, stop spoon-feeding us nonsense. What we're dealing with here is soulless, derivative, über-corporate advertising that plays like a mishmash of ingredients someone forgot to heat up.

M'm! M'm! Bad! (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!)

Dog goes woof. Cat goes meow. But what do the shirtless Abercrombie & Fitch models say? They're so good looking, who cares?!

Behold A&F's hunks, stripped to the waist and pleasingly pumped, preening in the woods for a parody of "The Fox," the viral novelty track by Ylvis, which, without any hyperbole, has amassed 900 mega-billion views since its early-September debut. Actually, the count is about 52 million, and the A&F parody is approaching 600,000 after just five days. The spoof is even more Fellini-esque than the absurdist original, owing to the black-and-white photography and denim-clad, half-nude studs high-steppin' with gorgeous gals clad in furry animal costumes.

I guess only two things are left to say. First, A&F's elitist brand attitude still sucks. And second, Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow! Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow! Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!

Apple's iOS 7 was announced with so much feature-glorifying fanfare that the pranksters at 4chan decided to sneak in an "upgrade" of their own and see if iPhone users would fall for it.

"Update to iOS 7 and become waterproof," claims a fake landing page designed to look like an official Apple announcement. "In an emergency, a smart-switch will shut off the phone's power supply and corresponding components to prevent any damage to your iPhone's delicate circuitry."

While it's doubtful that more than a handful of gullible gadget owners have tried it out (the most widely circulated "example" is from Sept. 13—see below—and most others are clearly just playing along with the gag), the prank has definitely gotten some attention, with the Telegraph,Sky News and the Independent all reporting it as an issue of actual concern (despite a lack of any real evidence beyond the aforementioned Sept. 13 tweet).

Whoever said iOS 7 is Waterproof your phone.... Fuck You

— Ricardo Tamayo (@Pretty_Ricky33) September 19, 2013

Plus, we already know that if you want a waterproof iPhone, you just have to pick up a can of NeverWet. I've heard that if you spray it on your shoes, you can walk on water. Try it today, and tell your friends!

Full iOS 7 parody ad below.

Nothing gets people riled up quite like a Guinness World Record involving mayonnaise, and so Hellmann's on Tuesday celebrated its 100th birthday by building the world's longest picnic table in New York City. Chefs Mario Batali, Tim Love and Aaron Sanchez were joined by special guests Katie Holmes and Andy Cohen on Pier 84 for a picnic lunch, whipped up by Batali and served on the new world-record-setting 320-foot table.

The event was held just blocks from where German immigrant Richard Hellmann opened his delicatessen on Columbus Avenue in 1905. (He began mass producing Hellmann's mayonnaise the following decade.) As part of its 100th birthday celebration, the brand is providing 1 million meals to the Feeding America effort to fight hunger nationwide.

Check out footage from today's event below.

Those jokers at Saatchi & Saatchi and Tui Brewery have a viral hit on their hands, notching more than 5 million views in about a week for various versions of a video that shows some New Zealand dudes pranking a pal by rigging the plumbing in his house so that every tap dispensed beer. An integrated campaign will follow.

Russ, the good-sport prankee, seems understandably surprised, though not especially upset, when intoxicating brown brew starts flowing from his kitchen and bathroom spigots. (The tap water in my apartment looks like that, and I get kinda woozy when I drink it, but I'm pretty sure it's not beer.)

Tui's technicians and a master plumber painstakingly hooked up kegs to the pipes supplying Russ' house. "It went without a hitch," says Saatchi creative director Guy Roberts, "although the plumber did have to make sure it was properly connected so we didn't feed beer back into the city water supply." (Now there's an ad campaign I'd like to see!)

The effort's not upsetting like some prankvertising stunts, but there is a certain inherent creepiness in having friends and strangers invade your space and make "alterations" when you're not home. Hopefully they removed all the surveillance hardware—14 tiny hidden cameras were used to make the video—or footage of Russ's butt could wind up on YouTube any day now.

This is the kind of stunt Anheuser-Busch could never attempt. If you replaced tap water with Michelob or Bud, who'd notice?