The end of VIBE

I guess in some ways I'm part of the problem. I haven't bought Vibe magazine for years now. Sadly it will be no more. I have enjoyed the covers over the years. Even the years I didn't buy the mag. I remember great articles and even better photography. I want nothing else to die this month! This is the most dying ass month ever! Good bye June 2009!

*UPDATE*
Statements from Vibe's editor, and a staff memo from the CEO. From editor Danyel Smith:

On behalf the VIBE CONTENT staff (the best in this business), it is with great sadness, and with heads held high, that we leave the building today. We were assigning and editing a Michael Jackson tribute issue when we got the news. It's a tragic week in overall, but as the doors of VIBE Media Group close, on the eve of the magazine's sixteenth anniversary, it's a sad day for music, for hip hop in particular, and for the millions of readers and users who have loved and who continue to love the VIBE brand. We thank you, we have served you with joy, pride and excellence, and we will miss you.

Danyel Smith
the former Chief Content Officer VIBE Media Group
& Editor in Chief, VIBE

**UPDATE**

Quincy Jones announces plans to buy it back

By Adrienne Samuels Gibbs
EbonyJet.com
(June 30, 2009) Vibe magazine founder Quincy Jones is distraught over the news that the famous hip-hop publication shuttered its doors today. Though no longer the owner, he did not anticipate this sudden demise, and he says he's going to bring it back to life � albeit in a slightly different way.

More at Target Market News

Cotton Commercial:Jazmine Sullivan

I'm really digging this music integrated campaign. Jazmine is a lovely talent and sweet young lady so befitting for... a... fabric? Yes perfect for a fabric. She's a tad more hardy than linen and less course than leather. So cotton, maybe not the pima variety, but the egyptian blend of cotton. Jazmine's voice can be as everyday and warmly familiar as well worn jeans or as crisp as a freshly pressed custom tailored button down oxford. I'm wearing cotton for the rest of the summer now that I've seen this spot. Well I was probably gonna do that anyways but this is a stylish good look.


See more here & download this song for free also.

E-Trade: Babies

These spots always make me laugh for some reason. A-cute infant-itis (har har) I guess. I was a little bothered with the baby referring to the adult African American woman as "babe" at the onset of the spot, but perhaps I'm overly sensitive or underly sexism averse. But what really gets me is the white male always in control of every iota of the happenings in this commercial. White male dominance and obsessive control seeps out of every second of video. The brilliant Mellody Hobson is the president of Ariel Investments, LLC, a Chicago investment firm managing over $3 billion in assets. She is also the Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees of Ariel Mutual Funds. Hobson is a regular contributor on financial issues to ABC's Good Morning America. Maybe the Art Director wanted to illustrate the toddler's knowledge and de facto ease of use of E-Trade. But I think we got that point along time ago. I could go on but, perhaps I doth protest too much.



cred:
Grey NY

Return of the Crack: Colt 45 now available in Malted Meth!!!

There's a new Colt 45 can design and advertising. The corner store mainstay is changing it's spots. It seems to be selling (read dealing) itself to a different crowd (if you know what I mean). Is there a new slogan too? "Colt 45 not just for blacks anymore!" It looks like they are servin' the brothers up some old school Billy D. ish. So maybe instead of calling it crack I should call it canned meth, eh?

More on this "beverage" here.

If this movie happens, I'm there.

That's all I'm saying. Black people like their male comedians in wigs panning the opposite sex. (See Tyler Perry)

Confession: I Really dig Billy Mays

Dude is louder than a bomb! He's a pit-bull with a script! He's got that 1920's carnie swag. He sounds like he's hawking impossible to win boardwalk games, "THREE TOSSES FOR-A-DOLLAR... AND THAT'S NOT ALL YA GET... !" And it works. I know somebody may want to take away my black card. Note to white friends: Black people have cards that we arbitrarily take away from each other for the smallest of offenses. Like; wearing loafers, working in advertising or liking Billy Mays. But I don't give a damn, I'm putting it all out there. Billy was the shizz-tick. I tivo his reality show. I watch his commercials leaning forward and never turn the volume down. Billy sells shit. He doesn't go for the pretty sh*t either, no overly produced spots with actual soundtracks and scores and sh*t. He gets real gutter with it. "Hi, I'm Billy Mays and I'm selling the hell out of these here nut sweat pads... !" And the real f•cked up part is; I'm buying it! I need those irrelevant ass nut sweat pads! Billy gets to the heart of what advertising is all about and then clogs all it's arteries with as much sweet sticky chunky product huckstering as it can stand. Then he actually clocks the dollars he makes or doesn't make. With a $10,000 budget and a two minute commercial dude can outsell most big shops second for second, dollar for dollar.

The bearded one is the master. One.

Because you're not worth it: L'Oreal found guilty of racism

by James Quilter , Brand Republic 25-Jun-09, 09:40

LONDON - Cosmetics giant L'Oreal, which was last year accused of whitening Beyonce Knowles' skin in an ad, has been found guilty of racial discrimination by a French court over its all-white recruitment policy for its shampoo sales teams.

La Cour de Cassation, the French supreme court, heard that in 2000, Garnier, L'Oreal's beauty division, was looking to recruit a sales team for the Fructis Style haircare range.

When the brief went out, one of the requisites was that staff should be "BBR", an acronym for the colours of the French flag and widely used to signify someone who is white and of French descent. It also wanted the women sized between 8 and 12.

The case was brought by anti-racist group SOS Racisme after it was discovered that only 4.65% of sales staff hired were black, Asian or Arab despite those groups covering 38.7% of potential candidates.

L'Oreal and recruitment consultancy Adecco, which handled the recruitment drive, has been fined £25,500 each and ordered to pay the same amount again to SOS Racisme.

L'Oreal expressed "disappointment" over the verdict while Adecco insisted the company had been looking for candidates who "could express themselves in French." Adecco also said the brief to hire BBR candidates was a personal initiative rather than company policy.

The case is the latest embarrassment for L'Oreal over its attitude towards race. Last year it came under scrutiny over allegations it had whitened Beyonce Knowles' skin in an ad, a claim it was forced to deny.

While in India, actress and L'Oreal brand ambassador Aishwarya Rai, who starred in 'Bride and Prejudice', refused a request from the manufacturer to appear in a campaign for a skin whitening cream.

The L'Oreal discrimination case ends as another featuring fashion retailer Abercrombie & Fitch is about to start. A former employee with a prosthetic arm who claims she was forced to work in the storeroom because she did not fit in with the company's "looks policy" is taking the store to an employment tribunal.

Law student Riam Dean is seeking £25,000 in compensation. She said Abercrombie's policy made her question her "worth as a human being".

However the store claimed Dean's problems stemmed from anxiety issues rather than Abercrombie's personnel policy.

Copied & Pasted from here.

International Society For Human Rights: Mugabe, Kim Jong Il, Ahmadinedschad

cred:
Scholz & Friends, Berlin, Germany
Chief Creative Officer: Martin Pross
Creative Director: Matthias Spaetgens/Michael Winterhagen
Copywriter: Stephan Schaefer
Advertiser’s Supervisor: Martin Lessenthin
Account Manager: Joris Jonker
Art Buyer: Kirsten Rendtel
Art Director: Marc Ebenwaldner
Photographer: Hans Starck
Graphic: Dominika Dobrzalski/Heidrun Kleingries/Lisa-Marie Schroeder
Postproduction: Appel Grafik

Love you Michael. (Did anyone notice I changed the name of this post)

As I watch the media fumble in their half-hearted attempt to eulogize and harshly criticize Michael Jackson, it brought to mind the fact that they don't understand how much we love him. Not loved, past tense, but love him. Not loved him when he was 11 years old and remarkably cute. Not just when he was making us drop whatever we were doing and run to the television for a few moments of physical & spiritual melded elation.


We didn't discover he was amazing at Motown's 25th. We grew up with him. He grew into us. His music was one of the first gifts I gave to my child, because it was seminal and germane. It could in an easily palatable form impart to a small child in an aural transmission black experience and expression in ways I could never. She sings to this day. He was our brother who did what we all did in some fashion, dance, sing, show-off & show-out. He just did it a little better and somehow we were never jealous. We always felt he was doing it for us, to make us proud.


Sharing dance and impressing family is an ancient Black tradition. That was part of his magic, he gave back to us whatever bits of magic he found in us. He gave back Black love, Black dance, Black song and Black spirit. This is not a suggestion that all things culturally "Black or African American" are better than anyone else's rituals. Although they are very popular and define a lot of the worlds culture, they are merely different expressions of various amalgamated forms. Even Black love is merely a different expression of a universal energy. Black love often feels more expressive and more open. That's what we saw in Michael's dance and in his song, it was always for us.


I believe that same "Black" love expression will be on full display at the BET awards. I honestly can't stomach another media hatchet job of this man's life. I think that if only a tiny bit of the indebtedness owed to MJ shimmers through we are in for a banger! Although the some of the praise may go over the top or feel a little put on, there are so may who's careers would have no basis or backing except for the talents, tenacity and celestial timing that still is and will forever be; Michael Joe Jackson.

I finally understand what it means when people say, "Long Live The KING!" R.I.P. M.J.

I honestly can't speak on it yet. I'll let my peeps from around the nets help me understand my vacuum, my personal abatement of pain. (so I'll keep updating this one post to help me understand my/our loss)

"The deepest sound is silence."
-365 Tao

"It's like I'm sad but also hearing all of his music makes me happy and think of my childhood...but there are things all of us can take away as we celebrate(and unfortunately criticize) the life of Micheal Jackson...I think the most important thing would be to never be afraid of experimenting or doing something so radically different from the norm in your career that you create and define your own genre...that fearlessness is what separates the exceptional from the excellent...

The world has one less star today which means we all must burn brighter for him..."
- Kwesi Amuti

"My heart is hurting"
-Andrea

"It's time to turn down the chatter and turn up the music"
-LA Reid

"My thoughts are completely scattered. Some of which I was able to purge on Twitter last night with the rest of my family. But honestly, at a mere 24 hours in, I cannot fathom what tomorrow will look like. I feel like whatever was left of my childhood was obliterated"
-NovaMatic (SoulBounce)

"The loss of a true artist. A natural talent. A true beacon of creativity. A door opener. A changer of status quo. We lost Michael Jackson at 2pm today to a cardiac arrest at the young age of 50. I want to write something profound. I want to touch on his personal impact on my life. But...I can't explain it. I can't describe how he shaped my creativity. How he gave me confidence. Or how his music was my childhood. I'm literally still in shock. To think that he will never make another song and that I will never get to see him perform live...kinda kills me inside. When I heard he died today, I started shaking. I shed a tear. Friends called and texted me to see if I was ok. It was and is like loosing a family member. Someone I truly grew up with. A constant in my life. And it makes me sad. I even tried to celebrate his life infront of the Apollo Theater, surrounded by a crowd dancing, singing and jiving...and I felt nothing but sorrow.

This...is a hard one."
-Shaun (Prostituted Thoughts)

"I remember Michael Jackson for the internalized racism that he seemed to increasingly display, and for how the incredible light in his young eyes gradually faded as he grew older, perhaps in part as a result of that burden.

I remember him more, though, for so much amazing music, and for what was even more amazing to me, the many ways that he made his body move."
–macon d (stuff white people do)

"Michael Jackson music sales are going through the roof. Somewhere Jacko is hollering, “Oh, now you muthafuckas wanna buy my shit? Where were y’all when I released Invincible?”
HighJive

"I want to pour out a little Pepsi on the sidewalk [(c) Questlove] and add my voice to the millions across the globe who are giving their testimonials as to why MJ was the Greatest that Ever Lived.

Except, each time I try ... I start to sing instead. I can't help it."
Harlem (SoulBounce)

"Yesterday, where I reside at least, was a beautiful, sunny day. Not too hot and slightly breezy. Yet for whatever reason, yesterday seemed off to me. If pressed, I can't explain why. It was like walking onto a movie set where all the elements are in place, yet a soulful element is missing. The reason for the vacuous element was answered once I returned home midday."
Ill Mami (SoulBounce)

Mike had a multitude of detractors, but their voices get drowned out in the roar of his legions of fans. whatever clever off-color jokes you have, i'd rather not hear them. thanks... i was not Micheal Jackson's #1 fan, but i was a fan. sure, he made me shake my head sometimes, but he also made me laugh, dance and cry. though he was long past his prime, i had hoped we would have more time with him. he is often imitated by popular musicians today, and probably will be for years to come.
Rest In Peace...
-samax

"I hope that the media avoids the victim-blaming once the cause of death is made public (though I don't have much hope in that, since there's already speculation of drug abuse, followed by the, "well he didn't take very good care of himself" crap--oh you think? Too bad we were all too busy finger-pointing and making a spectacle of his freakishness to step in and offer help. This society is plagued with a desire to see the greats fall, to illustrate that they're human too, and in that we are all guilty because we "other" them, ostracize them for their abuses and mental issues, and then are shocked when they tragically die. I'm fucking sick of this. We're all human, but rather than help each other we blame them and cause more damage and say it's all their fault anyway for being addicts or being crazy or being fat or having identity issues or whatever else we can point and laugh at, and then marveling when they're dead).

It simply cannot be ignored that Michael Jackson brought joy to millions of people around the world. He was an entertainer, and he was a great one. His influence in pop music is still evident in the genre. No other artist has compared to his success thus far. And to say that I am anything less than devastated by his death would be an understatement.
-Filthy Grandeur

BET Awards 2009: Jamie Foxx

I wish I knew who did the crushing artwork for this campaign. For years they have been stepping up their game, at least in the graphics department and this year is no exception in that trend. I've scoured the internegs looking for the guilty design shop. But they must be in hiding. The curvilinear figures along with the bright and blended mottled watercolor motif bring a welcome freshness to the BET imagery.


cred:
I gotta know...
**UPDATE**
The Design work is done by the BET inhouse design department (You guys are k-k-killing it!)

Tyler Perry: I Can Do Bad All By Myself Poster (First Look)

Nokia: Album Covers

Boy, would I like to re-do this. With perhaps a few more familiar album covers. I loved it when Erykah Badu did something similar.

NIKE: PAPER BATTLEFIELD

cred:
Advertising Agency: McCANN WORLDGROUP Causeway Bay, HONG KONG
Executive Creative Director: Spencer Wong
Creative Director: Nick Lim/Terry Tsang/Chris Fong
Copywriter: Terry Tsang/Wong Wai
Account Manager: Yen Lee/Penelope Yau/Calton Chu
Art Director: Cherry Yiu/Nicky Sun

The ADCOLOR® Awards: I Love You Man

Have you nominated someone yet??



Hurry on over to AdColor.org (Tyff'll love you for it!)



cred:
The ADCOLOR Industry Coalition
Tiffany R. Warren - Omnicom Group
Michelle Newson - Onederland Events LLC
&
Toni Thompson - McCann NY Archie Bell - Arnold Worldwide Kenji Summers - GroupM Victor Velez - Arnold Worldwide Johnny Nguyen - McCann NY Mikal Cook - McCann NY Beny Ashburn - McCann NY Eric Tao - McCann NY AGENCY - McCANN NY: Groups CDs: Sallie Mars Art Director: John Nguyen Copywriter: Mikal Cook Producer: Beny Ashburn, Co-Produced by Eric Tao Production Assistant: Chandler Simms Business Manager: Ken Krausgill PRODUCTION - PICTURE PARK: Director: Benny Boom Executive Producer: Mark Hankey Line Producer: Roger Ubina POST FACILITY: Post: Jon Grover (editor), Cut & Run Mixed: Steve Rosen, Sonic Union Transfer: Lex, Nice Shoes Graphics: Charlex & Gary Mack, NBA Music: Akintayo Adewole of Akande Music + Publishing LLC

Ya boy is back, the bounce is back, the booze is back

Why does anyone think this 70's icon (Lady Sings the Blues, Mahogany), 80's comeback (Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi)and 90's cameo appearance star (In living Color) should be in these ads again? Who's the intended audience for malt liquor these days? I cast no aspersion on Billy D. William. I love him. This man had (I hate you use this word) s-s-swagger (there, got it out) before we knew what it was and his picture should appear in the wikipedia posting of the aforementioned term ( I use the term 'term' loosely). But I remember there was some outrage for years when he first got his first contract or paycheck for... I mean, decided to endorse this smooth tasting soul drain-o libation. I'm happy one of my favorite actors is getting a little kick-back, but at what cost? I've seen the ravages of alcohol on many communities and the low cost high proof brands are the worst. But I guess it still 'goes down smoooth' for some marketers and with a slogan like 'it works every time' you just have to give a go one more time. Maybe it will be successful but, "success is nnnnothing without someone you love to share it with!!"




Let's think of Mr. Williams as he is today, an artist and a gentleman.




"I call my paintings 'Abstract Reality'. Sometimes I refer to them as 'Impressions/Expression'. It's the best way I can explain them." Come in and view our different gallery rooms.




Thanks HighJive for reminding me and asking the question, "Why does he look like he did in the eighties in those ads?"

Subway: Eaten Word (City Symphony)

Global Hue steps up to the plate and chomps down on a "tuscan chicken melt" for Subway. The spot doesn't continue the "$5 dollar foot-long" mantra that has been droning on for what seems longer than the recession and slightly more debilitating. Instead they try an "Eat Fresh" approach by losing the chanting and bring on the rapping (read spoken word). The spot starts off with a rushed bit of a concept where the city stops and a jazz combo slides in when someone pulls out and prepares to eat a sub. Did you catch that? I watched it over and over again to get that point. I've been there before where you have an idea and it gets brushed aside either in editing, scripting or by the client. So the spot rushes into it's quirky parts with the humorous spoken word ode de sandwiches. The cast goes beatnik delivering staccato lines like, "Sweet peppers the best, whaaaat, makes me flex my chest..." *pectoral flexing ensues*. All in all the spot makes you take note while taking you away from the five dollar singing but does it make you want to buy a sandwich or put you in the mind of Subway? I think it does. It also makes me feel like this is a premium sandwich and not available for five bones per foot. The agency succeeds at changing the pace and making me a little hungry, so I can say we have been, well served.


cred:
GlobalHue

Hospital A.C. Camargo: Cigarette, Ashtray

“Cigarettes. Just looking at them makes you sick.”





cred:
Advertising Agency: JWT, Brazil
Creative Directors: Mario D’andrea, Roberto Fernandez
Copywriter: Christian Fontana
Art Director / Illustrator: Pedro Izique

Do brands matter in a recession?

Ije Nwokorie, Senior Strategist at Wolff Olins in the UK discusses the importance of brands in recession.

Fine Artist, Illustrator: Dawn Okoro

Born in Houston, Texas, Dawn Okoro holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of Texas at Austin and a Juris Doctor from Thurgood Marshall School of Law. Her artwork incorporates photography, collage, and ideas from popular culture.
Okoro's work was most recently on exhibit at the 2009 Texas Biennial.






See more Dawn here.

DAN FUNDERBURGH: FAESTHETIC/SCION SHOW

www.danfunderburgh.com

Obama for D&G

You've seen their ads, the highly charged and curious group photographs that suggest a gang rape or gay orgy. On his recent trip overseas, President Obama was photographed outside the home of the Ambassador to France. I like that we have a leader who isn't afraid to sit on some steps, ("disgracing the office," many will say) but I could not resist childishly converting the scene.

[Politics aside, I bet even kansmen find this dude cool]

Found this while shopping for Jetpacks!
This entire post was done by "Where's My Jetpack".