Charpie

Microsoft’s new $300 million ad campaign to counter Apple’s PC vs. Mac ads has debuted with a somewhat unusual approach. It kicked off with a 90 second tv spot featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates last Thursday. It’s definitely entertaining, which is not something hard to fetch when featuring Seinfeld. I could sit and watch him eat a churro and probably laugh my ass off for hours. Maybe that’s just me. However, what did the ad accomplish besides seemingly mindless banter about shoe size? Many don’t seem to know, and I don’t think we’re supposed to know.

Yet, anyway.

As much as I dislike Microsoft, they’ve got superstar agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky heading up the campaign and with their track record I know they’ve got something interesting up their sleave. But what is it? So far, the ad is seeing some harsh reviews and they’re probably from people who just aren’t seeing the whole picture.

Either that, or Microsoft just sucks. We’ll see.

The Dandy Dwarves have produced this pretty good spot for Full Throttle energy drink. Enjoy!

Hey, everybody! The TEP Inc. website is now up and running! The site for Thermal Energy Products was designed a couple months ago as part of an identity makeover. We wanted to keep the design simple, clean, and refreshing given that there would be a lot of complex images the user would be bombarded with once delving into the content of the site.

TEP Inc. is the leader in thermal and accoustical insulation covers for very large equipment in factories and plants. Their solutions help businesses maintain efficiency from an energy standpoint. Go green tech!

We’re pleased to announce the launch of the new First and Deli site! We’ve pushed up a simple little one page design for your enjoyment. First and Deli, formerly Barbara’s First and Deli, is an outstanding place to grab some fresh grub in downtown Fargo. I frequent quite a bit and highly recommend the Combo sandwich on the garden vegetable bread. Their salads are great, too! What’s more? They deliver! Yippeeeeeeeee! I think you stop in, though. There’s usually a pretty good crowd around the lunch hour, and that’s always more fun.

If you’re on the Twitter bandwagon, check out www.twitter.com/firstanddeli for the soup of the day. We’ve incorporated Twitter into the site as well. We wanted to make it as easy as possible for First and Deli to update the soups on their site. Knowing they’d have to do it every day, we thought what better way to do it than with Twitter. So now, all they have to do is text the soups from their cell phone, and the First and Deli site will automatically style and update the graphic at the top of the page. Pretty nifty! And on top of it, fanatics like me get the soups delivered to our cell phones as well!

Enjoy!

If you know me, you know I like to grill. So, over a few beers and some minor planning, some friends and I developed “Grill-A-Thon.” About once a month we get together and grill over some hot hot coals from 9am until roughly 2am. There’s no rules, except that the food prepared must be made on the grill. There’s a lot of meat, a lot of booze, and a lot of good times!

Each Grill-A-Thon seems to get twice as big as the previous, so it was time to start branding the event. I whipped up this logo, and am in the process of getting a website up and running so everyone can follow along or even join in on the fun. We’re in preparation of the next event, July 19th. It will be held at Rose lake in Minnesota and feature the live music of The 404.

All are invited! I’ll get directions posted soon!