June 6th is an important date because

a.) it’s my birthday and
b.) it’s international Drawing Day!

Little did I know that my life-long subconscious tendency to doodle all over my notebooks/shoes/everything would someday lead me to my design destiny. Now here’s a day to pay homage to the sketchmaster in us all. The name of the day pretty much sums it up — drop everything and draw for the sake of drawing. 

Not only should you draw, you should share it with the world, via numerous online communities such as DeviantArt, Facebook (with Pencake), and YouTube to name a few. Visit drawingday.org for more ways to share.

Feel free to draw me a birthday present!

At long last… Dominos dishes out an official response on YouTube. Too little, too late?

With only 18,000 views so far, the talking head response barely rivals the original gross-out clip in terms of viral quality. But hey, at least it’s something… and they were smart enough to use video and YouTube to deliver the message.

How much damage can two employees with poor judgement and a video camera do to a company’s reputation? Just ask Dominos…

Once on YouTube, seems like it took just “30 minutes or less” for this gross video clip to deliver Dominos a firestorm of bad publicity and customer outrage.

To date, the video has been viewed over one million times, despite the company’s best efforts to get it removed off of YouTube (video was pulled down just as I created this post). The employees were quickly fired, but Dominos has otherwise kept mum on the issue (so far no word on their site or anywhere else that I can see).

This is just another (unfortunate) example of why corporate reputation management is so important — both offline and online — regardless if you make pizza or powerplants.

In her book, Corporate Reputation: 12 Steps to Safeguarding and Recovering Reputation, Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross (our agency’s Chief Reputation Strategist) warns, “Reputation failure is no longer a threat that looms large for companies only in high-risk industries and activities. It has become an all-too-familiar scenario for all companies in all corners of the world.”

What can I say… I love stop motion animations! A while ago I blogged about Taproot’s “Wherever I Stand” music video — created out of over 8,500 still photographs.

Since then I’ve been finding more and more really cool stop motion videos on YouTube. But while most have merit simply by virtue of the frame-by-frame-by-frame detail involved, I stumbled upon the creation of one young design student from Japan who not only was able to tell a compelling story but also toggled betwen multiple layers and dimensions. Check it out!

At long last Drama Queens have a new public place to make a scene. Although we’re used to snarky debate on the web, Twitter has now become the public square for tongue- tweet-lashing — not from fans — but rather between celebrities themselves.

Celebrities often complain about the media sticking their noses in their private lives. But apparently for Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson, all is fair in love and war — when you live a digital life.

Chronicles of the digi-catfight are on Perez.

If you txt more than you talk, have a blatant disregard for vowels in sntence cnstrction and you tweet everywhere from the subway to the shower than it’s time you meet the next big thing you never knew you always wanted needed… move over micro-blogging, here comes “nano-blogging” — cause 140 characters is way too long for your shrinking attention span.

What’s a penny good for these days? Well, Pumped for Change, a non-profit org out of South Florida, is betting that pennies can make positive change in the lives of homeless citizens in their community. Through The Million Penny Project™, P4C is raising funds and awareness around homelessness; with a goal to raise one million pennies ($10,000) for each participating partner charity.

Here’s a peek at the new PSA spot they just released.

First there was the Subservient Chicken, then Whopper Freakout. And now Burger King is at it again, serving up its latest viral campaign - Whopper Virgins.

This time, the King’s ad men are documenting villagers from far away lands as they try fast food for the very first time.

A lesson in foreign relations, BK burgers seem to bridge all culture and language barriers; bringing smiles and higher blood pressure to all who sink their teeth into the seasame seed bun.

And it seems American consumers are eating it up too… Comscore reports the microsite welcomed 242,000 unique visitors in December alone.

Origami In the Pursuit of Perfection from MABONA ORIGAMI on Vimeo.

In this age of super slick 3D animated films of every talking animal imaginable (you know who i’m talking about), the traditional way of animating by hand seems all but forgotten. While the intricate nature of digitally rendered fur/feathers/water still dazzles at times, it is refreshing and inspiring to find work that utilizes a combination of the old with the new.  MABONA ORIGAMI  designed the origami models and consulted stop motion and computer animation for this beautiful, award-winning promo that tells the story of the Japanese sports brand ASICS.

Want to impress your clients? The next time you have a presentation, go analog! Nobody gets excited for Powerpoint anymore!  Pull out the large pad and watch the hilarity ensue. Nobody’s had this much fun with paper and a sharpie since Win, Lose or Draw went off the air.