SPARK: A website made of bacon, Mary J Blige singing about chicken and Newcastle Brown Ale mocks Stella Artois

TINY BILLBOARDS MADE OF BLOCKS ADVERTISE LEGOLAND HOLIDAYS:

Advertising agency DLKW Lowe created this great poster campaign for Legoland Windsor, installing tiny Lego billboards around London and inviting passers-by to tweet #legolandminibreaks with a photo if they spotted one of them. The agency shared a Google Map of their locations to help people find the miniature advertisements. The nation’s smallest ever billboards promote different aspects of Legoland Minibreaks.

JC PENNEY: MONTHS OF THE YEAR

JCPenney is running an integrated marketing campaign focusing on the month of the year. Beginning in February, the campaign ties together television advertising, store catalogues, in-store design and website design with themes and colours associated with the season. February introduced pink and romance. March introduced green and spring. April brings in aqua, bunnies and Easter.

HOW ‘DRAW SOMETHING’ IS TAKING OVER THE WORLD:

It’s official: The world is obsessed with 'Draw Something'.

The game, which asks you to sketch objects and pop culture references on your smartphone or tablet for your friends toguess, has become a dominating force on the social graph. In a short time, it has earned the number-one best seller slot in many countries, in both the iOS App Store and Android Market, It has sold 37 million times worldwide, as of this writing, and doesn’t show signs of petering out. MBAOnline took note of Draw Something’s incredible growth and came out with a clever animated infographic done in the Draw Something style. It shows that 20 million active users have created 3 billion drawings since the app launched just seven weeks ago.

PLAYA: THE FIRST CONDOM HOLDER FOR YOUR PHONE

Because nothing says 'forever alone' like buying an iPhone case for the sole purpose of carrying around condoms.

Australia-based Annex Products debuted today its latest case for the iPhone 4/4S — and it packs a special surprise. Dubbed the Playa Case, this $30 Polycarbonate iPhone protector has a special slide-down back where owners can discretely store two condoms. Classy… If you need some more convincing, then watch Annex Products’ promo video for the Playa Case, which does an incredible job of convincing you just how little action you’re going to get when packing one of these hard-shell protectors. Enjoy.

BURGER KING NEW BRAND PUSH FEATURES MARY J BLIGE SINGING ABOUT CHICKEN: CONTROVERSY ENSUES…

As part of BK’s rebranding effort, their new TV spots feature big celeb names such as Jay Leno, Salma Hayek and David Beckham, however, it’s the spot with singer Mary J Blige that has resulted in the ad being pulled for ‘licensing purposes’. The Blige backlash was swift, with mocking approaching meme levels over the ridiculous spot, in which the diva stands on a table and rhapsodizes, "Crispy chicken, fresh lettuce, three cheeses, ranch dressing wrapped up in a tasty...flour...tortilla." Thankfully, someone ripped the video from Youtube before it could be taken down so you can watch it here…painful.

HOW THE HUNGER GAMES BUILT UP ‘MUST SEE’ FEVER:

Selling a movie used to be a snap. You printed a poster, ran trailers in theaters and carpet-bombed big night lineups on TV with ads. Today, that kind of campaign would get a movie marketer fired. The dark art of movie promotion increasingly lives on the Web, where studios are playing a wilier game, using social media and a blizzard of other inexpensive yet effective online techniques to pull off what may be the marketer’s ultimate trick: persuading fans to persuade each other. The art lies in allowing fans to feel as if they are discovering a film, but in truth Hollywood’s new promotional paradigm involves a digital hard sell in which little is left to chance — as becomes apparent in a rare step-by-step tour through the timetable and techniques used by Lionsgate to assure that “The Hunger Games” became a box office phenomenon on the opening weekend.

MAGNUM PLEASURE HUNT: PART TWO

Everyone loves a race across the internet, so here comes round 2 of the Magnum Pleasure Hunt Advergame, this time taking you for a run in New York, some flight time over Paris and even a surf in Rio De Janeiro through a partnership with Microsoft/Bing Maps

BEER BRAND SKOL CREATE A BOOZY EASTER EGG:

Beer and chocolate sounds like the perfect combination right? Brazilian beer brand Skol has combined the two with beer-flavored Easter eggs. Fans of the brand on Facebook can win a six pack of the beer-eggs by hunting for them on the page, starting on March 30th.

HOW A JIVING TWO-YEAR-OLD MADE IT TO THE TOP OF THE VIRAL AD VIDEO CHART IN MARCH:

Fleet-footed William Stokkebroe proved you don't need a huge budget to make your ad a hit online after footage of him wowing onlookers while dancing to Elvis Presley's Jailhouse Rock soared up the charts to take the top spot during March. At first, the clip of the Danish wunderkind just looked like a random, ultra-cute clip caught during someone's wedding. But the video was actually a very smart, but quite blatant ad for Studie43, a dance studio run by his parents, Kristina and Peter.

The clip was preceded by the message, 'You are never too young to start'.

The tiny dancer's performance managed to pull in over an incredible 1.1 million share in just 3 weeks, easily making it the most popular ad last month on the Viral Video Chart.

NEWCASTLE BROWN ALE MOCKS STELLA ARTOIS ‘CHALICE’ CAMPAIGN:

Newcastle Brown Ale, which prides itself on being a "no bollocks" brand, is showing off its no-nonsense side in its latest campaign.

In a dig at the Stella Artois "Chalice" ads, Newcastle Brown Ale has launched an outdoor campaign with Droga5, with ads placed around those for Stella and reading "Who uses the word Chalice?"

Three TV ads have also been released, with Newcastle Brown Ale’s YouTube page saying ‘The more you watch these videos, the less we need to pay to run them on TV’, with the voice over ‘”this is the Geordie schooner, it’s a glass”.

PEPSI NEXT GETS A COMEDIAN TO IMPERSONATE YOU BASED ON YOUR FACEBOOK PROFILE:

Pepsi is taking Facebook-based narcissism to a new level with a campaign that gets comics to impersonate you based on your profile on the social network.

The beverage giant has linked with longtime partner Funny Or Die for a program that will choose consumers for an online taste test for Pepsi Next. Since users can’t actually taste the cola online, Pepsi has opted for the next-best thing: comedians attempting to simulate you will try the drink. Such fans will opt in to be chosen.

“We’ll analyze their Facebook persona,” says Shiv Singh, head of digital for PepsiCo Beverages. “It will be very close to who they actually are. We have improv comedians on standby.” The shoot will take place in Los Angeles over five days, using four simultaneous sound stages and 12 Funny or Die improv comedians. The fan videos will then be edited and posted back to selected users in approximately 24 hours of the shoot.

KRAFT MAKES A WEBSITE OUT OF BACON:

Kraft assembled a team of chefs, web developers and a production team to help promote new Kraft homestyle Sharp Cheddar & Bacon. The stunt turns one of the web’s most popular sites, The Bleacher Report, into an actual bacon version of the site.

INTERACTIVE POSTERS IN JAPAN REACT TO BEING KISSED:

If you've ever been to Tokyo or any other large Japanese city, you'll have noticed the huge variety of billboards plastering the urban landscape, often featuring the month's most popular idol. Now researchers at Keio University are working on a system that will allow passers-by to interact with said posters via an ultrasound sensor setup. The sensor will detect the motion of people in front of it, and display appropriate pictures in response — "appropriate" may not be the right word for everyone, though, as the main use case demonstrated by the researchers so far is the ability to "kiss" the idol on screen

SPOTIFYS FACEBOOK TIMELINE SHOWS MUSIC HISTORY DATING BACK 1000 YEARS:

Streaming music-service Spotify unveiled on Friday its Facebook Timeline fan page which boasts an ongoing history of music dating back more than 1,000 years.

Although Spotify launched in 2006 — and debuted in the U.S. in summer 2011 — the company wanted to give its Facebook fans a comprehensive look at the early beginnings of music. From Eminem and Frank Sinatra’s first album release date to the birth of German composer St. Hildegard of Bingen in 1098, Facebook users can navigate Spotifys Facebook page to learn more about music history. In addition, the Timeline features a link within most entries to the artists’ songs on Spotify, so fans can listen to their music as they search the page.

LAURA ASHLEY OPENS A BRANDED HOTEL:

Boutique hotels are usually the preserve of luxury designer labels, such as Armani and Bulgari, where their monied clientele can eat, sleep and shop the brand.

That is about to change as Laura Ashley, the company famous for its floral prints, prepares to enter the fray. The firm has bought a hotel in Hertfordshire for £5.8m which it hopes will become an attraction for Laura Ashley fans, with all 49 rooms boasting beds, sofa, wallpaper and curtains in matching fabrics. Its chief operating officer, Seán Anglim, said the hotel would become a “brand showcase” for its products and interior design service when it opens later this year.