1. Disturbing but effective poster ad. http://ow.ly/6oy6

2. New Roles in advertising. “there are new kinds of jobs out there… which require new kinds of skills” http://ow.ly/6onm

3. Did Google just sneakily launch a Facebook killer? http://ow.ly/51L6

4. Nice brand collaboration – Mr Bump and yellow coke bottles. http://ow.ly/6pxT

5. So you’ve got a great brand website, but is that really where your customers are heading? http://ow.ly/6Deb

6. Great Print ads for… Microsoft Vista. Thanks to Apple?? http://ow.ly/7wC9

7. Banner ads can be entertaining: Great Apple banner ads. http://ow.ly/7Qmo

8. Will the QR code ever take off outside of Japan? http://ow.ly/7ABH

9. Google to Run Its First TV Advertising. Interesting… http://ow.ly/6aJy

10. Social Media: Do you need to reinvent the wheel? http://ow.ly/6pa1

1. 15 Creative Ads in Unusual Places – clever stuff. http://ow.ly/3bjI

2. How-To: Search the Social Web. A great list of useful tools here: http://ow.ly/1M06

3. Brain-Twitter project offers hope to paralyzed patients – Twitter really is for everyone. http://ow.ly/3Nf4

4. 60% of Twitter Users Quit Within the First Month http://ow.ly/4mji

5. Why creatives should wear ties occasionally – Rory Sutherland. http://ow.ly/3k0B

6. More sheep based advertising! Sheep used as walking billboards. http://ow.ly/3j9e

7. Nothing is original these days but that’s not a problem. http://ow.ly/2UG8

8. Ikea makes a mess of bus shelter advertising. http://ow.ly/4vvX

9. Clever Google Image search – Google Similar Images – works pretty well. http://ow.ly/4wfm

10. 10 great things about the Internet made even better by mobile. http://ow.ly/3UZs

There’s been some pretty good stuff out there this month, and I’ve been posting a lot of them onto twitter, but everyone loves lists, rundowns, and top 5s, so here’s 5 of the best.

Extreme Sheep LED Art

Perhaps the best use of sheep, ever? You might disagree, but over 4 million thought it worth a watch on youtube.
Yes it’s a great video, but it hardly makes me want to go out and buy a Samsung LED TV, perhaps it’s a better advert for Welsh farmers than Samsung.

Youtube Street Fighter

Very similar technique as used in the Samsung Instinct Campaign, using links to various possibilities to make the user feel in control. Feels a very appropriate technique to promote a computer game, and it should appeal to the target audience.

Mini Clubman: Have you seen that?

Start watching it without the sound and you won’t be that impressed, it will seem like just another of those seemingly real life clips where something unbelievable is occurring. The problem is we’ve seen so many of them, as soon as it gets a little unbelievable we instantly know it’s not real and just some video created with special effects and a big budget. But watch it with the sound on and you’ll see a clever ad that perfectly captures the previous sentiment.

Energy Wasting Day 2009- Official Music Video

Created by Together (the non-profit climate change awareness organization), is a clever video which does at good job at making people who aren’t doing there bit for the environment look the idiot in the video. The idiot called Dan Powers, name checks Jeremy Clarkson who also became a bit of a viral sensation this month in the UK after he got locked in a toilet.

IE8 Net History

Potentially the funniest viral comes from the most unlikely of companies. Microsoft have managed to turn the potentially boring subject of changes made to their Internet explorer web browser that you would normally see in uninspiring bullet point list, into a very entertaining little video. As good as it might be, in terms of ‘going viral’ this video isn’t hitting the multi million views as with the others in this list. Maybe it just needs time or maybe people just prefer to see bright lights strapped to sheep.

You might or might not know about QR codes, they’re usually about the size of stamp and look a bit like bar codes. The QR code can store information such as urls, and can be read by mobiles, this means scan this code anywhere (e.g. in a magazine) with your mobile and be taken straight to the relevant website on your mobile browser.

For a little more info try here.

The QR code is huge in Japan and they can be found on food packaging to outdoor posters. They have even appeared in the UK in a few instances such as on pepsi cans, but never really taken off.

The concept has huge potential, such as it’s ability to allow the online and offline marketing channel to be truly linked, and the chance to provide real time feedback on offline ads.

Microsoft have clearly seen this potential, and decided they can own the idea in the US and beyond with their version of the idea called Microsoft tag. They’ve changed the technology very slightly, codes now make use of colour and apparently are more easily read by mobiles. What’s more QR code contains all the information within the code, whereas the Microsoft tag contains the directs you to the information. This means with microsoft tag you can change the url which the user is sent to after the code has been created, whereas with QR you cannot.

So it seems microsoft might have improved the technology, but for the concept to really take off in the US and Europe they need more people to have mobile handsets that can easily access the internet and ideally they need these handsets to read these codes without the user having go through the hassle of downloading the application or understanding how it works.

The financial power of microsoft, as well as people’s knowledge and faith in the microsoft brand, combined with the current rise of smartphone ownership might just see this kind of technology take off in the US and Europe this year.

image