• That sounds familiar. We can’t quite place it. … it has that “one of the best indie-rock songs of the last decade” sound to it. Wait, did this company totally rip off Fleet Foxes and think that nobody would notice? Bastards. source

• Holy crap. This commercial singlehandedly made Moleskine cool again. The question, of course, is whether or not we can get our black notebook to eat random sugar off a messy desk. source

• Conan needs a desk, a gardening hose, and a crapload of water. That’s it. He doesn’t even need Andy Richter anymore. The hose is the new Andy Richter.

• 27% the increase in Old Spice’s body-wash sales in the last six months
• 55% the increase in sales in the last three months (thanks Isaiah Mustafa!)
• 107% the increase in sales in the last month (thanks viral media blitz!) source

• Wonder if anyone creating this video would’ve imagined how unintentionally funny it would be 40 years down the line. At one point, in fact, it says “You, your kids and your Johnson.” Which nowadays would get you arrested.

• You know, this ad campaign just keeps getting better. First the original, then the sequel, and now these awesome vignettes. All of them based off of real tweets. Here’s our favorite. HuffPo has many, many more. This is what advertising needs to be. source

• Whoever thought up these ads is a genius. The second ad in this well-regarded series, a hit on YouTube and TV alike, presents Isaiah Mustafa as the most confident man ever, pretty much owning his surroundings. It’s been a slow climb, but the deodorant company has truly come into its own with its advertising. Here’s how they evolved:

• 
  Old Spice, circa 1957 As you can tell here, the brand was square in a way that sort of defined it since. In a way, its advertising paved the way for its current ironic manliness, with taglines like, “Never did a dollar bring you so much!”
• 
  old spice, circa 1990WHOA – did you see that captain pick up some other dude’s lady? This is the kind of clip we’re talking about – totally from a different era, one which didn’t feel hip even in 1990. (Here’s another example.)
• 
  Old spice, circa 2007This commercial paved the way for the Old Spice we know and love today. Bruce Campbell doesn’t even have to say the name of the product. We know exactly what he’s talking about. We think.

• You know, I think they might be done. In fact, I heard from John, I think they’re going to move on. I can’t say definitively, which is sad, because not only am I going to miss doing them, but also working with John.
• Justin “I’m a Mac” Long • In an interview with The Onion A.V. Club, where he notes the popular Mac vs. PC ads he does with John Hodgman might be kaput. This would be really sad, because the ads are some of the industry’s best and most consistently clever. The rest of the article is fairly compelling beyond that bombshell, including Long discussing his various voice-acting roles. Apparently he knows how to do a ’90s stoner voice really well. source

• This YouTube clip includes two things: One, a 30-second commercial for Priceline done in Seth MacFarlane’s patented animation style, and two, a not-funny one-minute clip that was seemingly rejected from a episode of one of MacFarlane’s three TV shows. If it couldn’t make it into three different TV shows, you know it sucks. This one, however, is a bit better. source

• The Super Bowl is an American phenomenon. Despite its completely unavoidable presence in the U.S., Super Bowl Sunday is pretty much a nonentity outside of North America, where soccer is king. Even so, it’s still a much bigger moneymaker than any other single sporting event. Here’s a breakdown of how this works out.

Not-so-super viewership

• 106
  million people watched all of last year’s Super Bowl telecast, almost entirely in the U.S. and Canada
• 109
  million people watched all of last year’s UEFA Champions League final, a hugely popular soccer match

Super brand value

• $420M the Super Bowl’s value as an brand, making it the largest brand of all
• $230M the Olympics’ value, despite the fact it’s a much larger event
• $120M the World Cup’s value; it routinely tops the Super Bowl in total viewers

Super ad rates

• $312 million in Anheuser-Busch ads alone since 1990

• $3
  million the amount NBC charged for 69 ad spots last year
• $2.8
  million the amount CBS is able to charge per ad this year source

• Big game, big profits. Despite the fact that it’s just a single game, it often can top the advertising value of both the the World Series and the NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four, which each take place over multiple games.

So why isn’t it spreading?

• complication American football is a much more complicated sport than soccer and basketball, which both have easily and quickly spread into China, for example. Blame the penalties.
• mediocrity The NFL had been trying to tap the European market for years with a secondary league which folded in 2007. Now the NFL has real games in Europe, a better strategy. source