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- Have some fun. Drop a name. You never know who you'll hook up with (or wish you had) while at Cannes Lions.

- If you missed it, here's the video of 13-year-old Nick LeGrande making the opening pitch at the Yankees Athletics game from 1,800 miles away courtesy of Google Fiber.

- Want to make a dolphin talk? Have at it with the Green Works Dolphin app. Hmm. Reminds us of SeaquestDSV.

- Today in pretentious car commercials, we have this Lexus IS ad entitled Crowd.

- Like things that jiggle. No, not those things, silly. Jell-O. Check out CP+B's Jello Jiggle Vision.

- Here's some student work that imagines what would have happened had Marc Ecko bought the recent for sale Air Force One plane.

- This is one very strange cement commercial. This guy needs some better relationship skills.

- Perhaps one of the best handlings of a PR crisis ever.

Twitter taught us we can communicate in 140 characters, Vine taught us that we can communicate in six seconds, the average number of words used in Facebook comments is eight and the length of consumer interaction with a brand online continues to decrease.

Building off the insight that, in today's landscape of content surplus -- coupled with serious attention deficit disorder -- lightweight and digestible content appears to be the best way to reach consumers. Acknowledging this scenarios, Visa has launched a new campaign that signifies the company's mission to be "social at the core." It's called #GoInSix.

Working with MRY Visa's #GoInSix uses short-form content to motivate consumers to take action to go do the things they love -- like dining, travel, shopping and entertainment -- and is implemented through the lens of "six" -- six-second videos, six-photo albums, six-word posts, etc.

The campaign can be seen throughout each of Visa's social media channels including Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Instagram, YouTube and Google+.

Referencing the famed HBO Girls scene in which the Shiri Appleby character receives a "pearl necklace" quickie from her boyfriend, a Family Guy "for your consideration" Emmy ad carries the headline, "Here's A Load of Comedy to Shoot on Your Chest."

Both the scene and the ad were/are bold. But we think the timing is a bit late and even though there's certainly nothing wrong with "expressing oneself" to another as the Adam Driver character did to Appleby, it's all a bit gratuitous even by our standards.

It would seem after so many repeated uses of a particular genre, people would tire of the whole zombie thing but, it seems, as long and hot girls (Kristen Stewart) and brilliant writing (Walking Dead) are employed, the genre will remain alive and well.

Opting for the hot girl approach, Boost Mobile, working with The Monkeys, has created a series of mini-movies which weave the use of the mobile phone into the story line.

Oh and that one that takes place in the grocery store...where the hell does the electricity for the lights come from if everyone is undead? Or how about the juice to power a cell phone network so the characters can use their mobile devices? Minor details, apparently, since what seems to be important in this chapter is sticking the camera up the ass of a hot pants-clad chick as she skates around the store killing cheesy-looking zombies while her princess-like, Daisy Duke-ish girlfriend strains her brain trying to figure out what a cash register is.

At least there's a hot, read-headed nerd with oversized glasses and a crop top, who's ass the camera also loves, who rids an office of all those -- ahem -- office zombies with whom we all hate to work.

Grocery Store:

Office:

Boring Gas Station Version:

Following its efforts last year, Sapient Nitro has again teamed with Cannes Lions to bring us a daily inforgraphic summarizing events and trends during the week-long event in Cannes, France which kicks off this weekend. There will be six inforgraphics in total and each will be in celebration of the event's 60th anniversary.

The first infographic is already out and takes a look at past year's highlights including the fact just 130 delegates attended the event in 1954. How quaint.

iStockphoto, you know...that service you pour over hoping to find the perfect imagery for your creative machinations, is out with an infographic that reveals the inners working of designers' minds.

Findings include the fact* designers have the attention span of a goldfish, equate finding the perfect image to finding $1 million, have a thing for unicorn deathmatches and have a really, really intense propensity for the color blue.

Check it all out below.

* Word used in the loosest sense possible. Though experience shows, it's really not all that far from the actual truth.

Marketo calls it marketing automation. HubSpot calls it inbound marketing. Others call it other names. There are grey areas but what we're talking about here is marketing software that makes it easy for your customers to find information about your brand, easy for you to manage the content you share with your customers, easy for you to capture leads and easy for you to nurture those leads into customers.

A new whitepaper from Marketo, the Definitive Guide to Marketing Automation, aims to answer any and all questions you have about the topic (well, there version of it, at least.) It will show you what marketing automation is and how it can help your company. It will show you how to select the right system, and what investments are required for success. It will also explain:

• Why marketing automation is so hot right now
• How marketing automation differs from other technologies such as CRM and email marketing solutions
• The common features and advanced functions of marketing automation tools
• How to build a business case and convince internal stakeholders to act
• The future of marketing automation

Download this guide now to learn about marketing automation and how it can simplify your marketing efforts and increase ROI.

Have the ad industry's data collection practices fueled the general public's acceptance of the government's prying eyes?

This morning, we got to hear first hand from PRISM Whistleblower Edward Snowden in a video interview conducted by the Freedom of the Press Foundation. In the 12-minute video, Snowden gives in-depth commentary on his decision to release NSA documents and why Americans need to be more vigilant on the issue of privacy.

After watching the video, Digital Net Agency Chief Strategy Officer Skip Graham had a bit of a crisis of conscience regarding the online advertising industry's part in the collection and use of personal information.

In an email, Graham said, "For years we as digital marketers have created systems that gathered vast personal data while telling consumers that they should have no fear of such activities. We told them that despite the fact that we were in essence watching everything that they did and making calculated choices to manipulate their decisions based on that knowledge, that this was ultimately a benefit to them and that they were still remaining anonymous and therefore their privacy was not at risk. And we said this even though the slightest application of historical perspective would have clearly shown the slippery slope to its inevitable complete loss."

Graham argues that the advertising industry has played a key role in "softening" consumer's viewpoints on privacy issues effectively making the public feel "OK" about handing over personal information online.

As this relates to Snowden and the NSA, Graham continues, "I don't believe it would have been possible for the NSA and the American government to so blithely act as if their current actions were not a violation of our constitutional rights without literally years of prior effort by some of the best minds marketing has to offer to convince the public that this was the reality of how data is gathered and can be be maintained. We went first and told the public not to worry, to have faith and to trust. We crafted the arguments, molded the opinions, and quieted the skeptics."

It's no secret the advertising industry has become a master at data collection. After all, a marketer wants to know all the can about a person's likes, dislikes, demographics, behavior and general demeanor.

Is it conceivable the ad industry played a role in facilitating the vast collection of data now living in the cloud and available to anyone with proper or improper access? Has this practice of data collection made people immune to potential consequences that might result from the collection of this information? Or is data collection really not the issue, rather it's use?

Not exactly filled with the same panache of the original, Wieden + Kennedy is out with a new Southern Comfort "Whatever's Comfortable" commercial in which a man finds comfort in an unlikely place. The original ad has been credited with increasing sales 6% during the first year of the campaign. We're not sure what this second one will do for beauty parlor revenue.

The campaign, which launched last August, encourages a devil-may-care, be yourself sort of attitude. The first spots from the campaign ("Beach", "Patio") and website (comfortableweatherguy.com) highlighted a man who embodied the campaign's tagline, "Whatever's Comfortable".

The campaign now continues with "Shampoo", a :60 spot launching online today. In "Shampoo" we meet a character who also exudes this same devil-may-care attitude. The song featured in "Shampoo" is called "The Beat" by Lou Johnson.

Of the campaign, Southern Comfort SVP Mark Bacon said, "We want to champion consumers to 'be their awesome selves' and that attitude comes out through this work. We're comfortable being Southern Comfort and we want our consumers to embody that same attitude about themselves."

A :30 version of the spot launched last night (6/9) on ESPN during the St. Louis Cardinals vs. Cincinnati Reds game on Sunday Night Baseball and is set to launch globally across key Southern Comfort markets this summer. The campaign also features print/OOH/point of sale and online banners, which will be running globally.

The iconic "A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste" PSA has, 40 years later, been reimagined with a new tagline and a new purpose. The new tagline is "A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste but a Wonderful Thing to Invest In." The new PSAs, created by Y&R which has handled the account for 40 years, center around a stock market-style metaphor urging people to invest in social change.

Economists developed an algorithm to quantify the social return on donating $10 to UNCF, showing the donation's impact on earnings, crime, poverty and health savings. The new TV, radio, print, outdoor and Web PSAs feature students who have benefited from UNCF and their stories, building on those first introduced in 1972.

A new BetterFutures.org website conveys how a stock for social good works through tools such as an economic calculator. The new creative is the first shift from the 40-year old campaign's mission of solely sending kids to college, and focuses more on a commitment to social change by investing in a future better for everyone.

Working with Swedish agency Abby Norm to promote Adobe Creative Day, Adobe pulled a delightful bus stop prank that involved clandestine photography, on-the-fly-digital manipulation and some nifty diorama dynamics. Commuters who visited a Stockholm bus stop, were photographed and quickly added to an electronic billboard next to the bus stop.

We've seen ambush stunts before and most come off as overly invasive. Not this one. This one has fun. A of of fun and those pranked truly seem to have enjoyed their digital manipulation experience especially one man who was transformed into a he-man-esque superhero.

The video of the prank has been viewed 9.5 million times since it was posted Friday.

Social media is, of course, all the rage these days but did you know integrating email and marketing automation into your social media efforts can increase your revenue 6X? Did you know triggered emails that are part of the marketing automation process can yield 75% higher open rates and 115% higher click through rates? And how about the fact incorporating video with email can increase the performance of traditional direct mail by 280%?

Yea, it's all true. Download this guide from Stream Send now and learn how to incorporate social, video, remarketing and marketing automation into your marketing strategy.

Several young creatives at the Creative Circus just won the Cannes Future Lion award. Unfortunately, the team cannot afford to go to Cannes and accept their award in person. The creatives are willing to wear the logos of sponsors all over the Cannes festival. Total amount of funds that need to be raised is $20,000 for all 5 team members to get to attend.

Remember the first time you went to Cannes? Come on, you know you do. And you know you were starry eyed and all gaga prancing up and down Le Croisette. Give these budding young creatives a chance to experience all that. So who's in? Anyone want to sponsor these budding creatives? If so, head over here and hook them up.

A new campaign from Denver-based Cultivator Advertising & Design for e-cigarette company FIN Branding Group touts the brand's smokeless, tobacco-free cigarette. A new commercial entitled "Rewrite the Rules" aims to illustrate that e-cigarettes are acceptable in places were regular cigarettes are not; in bars, bowling alleys, the office and restaurants.

Two versions were created because even though e-cigarettes only emit water vapor, some broadcasters do not allow images of the vapor on air.

The campaign targets current adult smokers and will run nationally on cable channels including ESPN, Comedy Central, Discovery, FX, History, AMC, Speed, SyFy, TNT, Game Show Network, ReelzChannel, OWN, Velocity, ION Network, Military Channel, among many others. It will also appear online, on networked financial, fashion, sports, fitness and entertainment media websites, plus Facebook, YouTube. Additional support media include radio, magazines and newspaper (with couponing). The media agency is Women's Marketing, Inc., in Atlanta.

After you have watched this prank created by Leo Burnett London for the UK's Department of Transportation THINK campaign and have regained your senses and maybe your heart is back inside your chest, we can safely report no innocent bystanders were harmed in the administration of this stunt.

After all, there's only so much scaring the shit out of people you can do before they begin to sue your ass. Hence, those pranked in this stunt are actors.

Still, even to actors, this stunt drives home the point. It ain't pretty getting into a car accident because you had too much to drink.

In this PTTOW video, ad legend Lee Clow discusses his 30-year relationship with Apple CEO Steve Jobs. As Chairman and Global Director of TBWA\Worldwide, Lee Clow has, of course, been responsible for such iconic campaigns as the Energizer Bunny, the Taco Bell Chihuahua and most Apple work from the 1984 Super Bowl Spot to "Think Different" and the iPod silhouettes.

Give it a watch.

Here's the problem with this don't text and drive campaign from Belgium-based Happiness Brussels for Parents of Road Victims which employed New York artist Andres Serrano as photographer. The campaign, entitled Don't Text and Die is, of course, designed to call attention to the dangers of texting while driving. And the campaign's title harkens the death texting while driving can cause the driver and those around him.

Now we understand this is one of those artsy fartsy approaches to advertising that attempts to lend some cachet to an otherwise mundan cause campaign but if all you are going to talk about in the campaign's documentary is how the subjects in these photographs look like they are dead while texting, they should probably be texting while they are being photographed.

Yes, we know, we know. It's a metaphor. And we get that Serrano is big on shooting death. But do you think your average, uncultured 17-year-old is going to make any kind of connection? This is the kind of campaign that is designed to appeal not to the actual target audience but to peers and critics.

Kind of like most the entires you see at Cannes.

Timed to coincide with the Supreme Court's pending decision on DOMA and Proposition 8, Expedia is releasing "Find Your Understanding," a video about same-sex marriage created by 180LA, on television for the first time starting today. The online video, which debuted last October has been viewed 2,533,874 times on YouTube and has been featured in major media news outlets.

The film follows a father's journey, both literal and figurative as he confronts his conflicting emotions around his lesbian daughter's same-sex marriage. Through his trip to her wedding, he ultimately finds his understanding.

n February, the ad was selected as one of TED's Ads Worth Spreading. Partially as a result, "Find Your Understanding" actually assisted in granting Nikki the legal adoption of Jill's son, Adler, as their marriage was not recognized as legal by the courts in California at the time of his birth.

Now the spot arrives to television, launching on several cable channels including CNN, Bravo, History, Logo, A&E, H2, and Ovation. With the broader audience, Expedia has succeeded in making a bold statement during an important time for LGBT rights, as the Supreme Court decision on DOMA is just around the corner, and the celebration of Gay Pride Month is in full swing.

Of the work, 180LA ECD William Gelner said, "When done right, an ad can truly have a lasting positive impact on the world. In hopes of doing just that, our three minute film airs before the Supreme Court rules on the issue of same-sex marriage."

The spot is part of Expedia's "Find Yours" campaign, which aims to highlight the real-life stories of travelers' journeys. The thtree minute placement can be seen tonight on Anderson Cooper on CNN, Life Below Zero on National Geographic, and at various times on A&E, Bravo, CNN, H2, History Channel, Logo, MSNBC, National Geographic, and Ovation from June 6-8.

In this case study from SwitchVideo, a company that develops explainer videos for barnds, the company shares how the creation and use of an explainer video increased online conversions 20% for search marketing company Ibenta.

In the whitepaper, SwitchVideo takes you through the process of how it goes about creating a video including brand messaging, character development and animation.

Download this whitepaper now and find out how your brand can increase conversion with video.

For its latest entry in its All Drive, No Drama campaign, Cars.com has employed James Van Der Beek, heart throb from Varsity Blues and Dawson's Creek, to add some drama to a commercial that touts the fact buying a car with Cars.com is, well, drama-free.

In the ad, when an exchange between a customer and a car dealer isn't quite dramatic enough, the car dealer brings in Van Der Beek to deliver a dramatic line from Varsity Blues. Sadly, Van Der Beek has never been, shall we say, a very dramatic actor.