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Kevin Butler commercial cloned in New Zealand
Whether you call it an homage or a rip-off, an ad produced by New Zealand's TV3 bears a striking similarity to one of Sony's US PlayStation 3 ads starring faux executive Kevin Butler. As noted by Buttonmasher, the two commercials include nearly the same dialogue, setting, reaction shots and ... well, everything except the same actors. When ad agency Deutsch won the $150 million Sony account back in 2007, it had an uphill battle to change Sony's image following its, err, avant-garde advertisements under TBWA. The new agency succeeded with Butler, who has gone on to become a sensation -- and that's where this copy gets unique. "It's rare to see a carbon copy of a U.S. commercial or campaign created by smaller players overseas," explains Tim Nudd, editor of AdFreak.com. "I think there's a healthy fear of getting caught and sued by the big guys. More common is the reverse -- a big U.S. marketer/agency ripping off unknown work from smaller players." Potential examples of the reverse situation include companies like Apple, 3M and, funny enough, Sony itself with its Japanese "Gameface" ad. See for yourself how similar the two ads are, right after the break.
Official Star Wars lightsaber and blaster accessories for licensed Wii Jedis
Hey, who doesn't have a desire to get down and nerdy with their Wii on occasion -- we respect that. But if you're going to pretend to hold the Wiimote like a lightsaber, you might as well go for the full-on, officially-licensed accessory. Oh, there are plenty of pretenders but nothing can feed your delusions of grandeur better than George Lucas' blessing. Yes, the lightsaber glows, and the cats at Bensussen Deutsch & Associates have plans for a matching blaster too. Unfortunately, the accessories don't make room for MotionPlus which is fine, we guess, since they'll be shipping with Star Wars - The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes -- a game that doesn't support MotionPlus anyway. How wude.
??bersetzen Sie das, bitte (Translate this, please)
For German users and English-speaking users with German-language needs, Philipp Brauner has made available the dict.cc Dictionary Plugin for Leopard, which adds the dict.cc vocabulary compilation to the OS X Dictionary. dict.cc is a community generated and verified English-German dictionary. The large download size (125M) speaks to the expansiveness of this compendium. The plugin not only enhances Dictionary.app, but other services that tie into the OS X Dictionary, including Spotlight and the Dictionary widget. It comes with a handy installer which makes the plugin easy to install for all users. The plugin borrows from a previous project by Wolfgang Reszel which integrated the BeoLingus vocabulary in the same manner. The dict.cc plugin is open source and the dictionary data is licensed separately, but available for use. Whether you're an English speaker with a desire to dabble in Deutsch or German is your native tongue, it's worth the sizable download.
Sony hires Deutsch for Playstation advertising
Agency Spy reports that Sony Computer Entertainment of America has already decided upon a successor for the American Playstation advertising account. The Los Angeles-based agency Deutsch, Inc. will reportedly be taking over the $150 million account, following Sony's decision to remove TBWA -- their ad firm of the last 13 years -- from the account's review.Deutsch, one of the five finalists in the review of the Playstation account, is an award-winning ad agency first established in 1969. Currently helmed by chairman Donny Deutsch (pictured above) and CEO Linda Sawyer, Deutsch's clients include the likes of Ikea, Snapple, Johnson & Johnson, and Verizon. The agency's acquisition of the lucrative Playstation account has not yet been made official; we have e-mails in to Sony and Deutsch, and are currently awaiting confirmation.Update: A representative from Deutsch, Inc. has confirmed that the agency has in fact been awarded the Playstation account. Now we'll just have to see what they plan on doing with it.[Via GamesIndustry.biz]
EGM to confirm Pilotwings sequel for the Revolution?
Speak Dutch? If not, then the link isn't going to mean much to you aside from the sporadic words of Revolution and Pilotwings. Apparently they are saying the latest issue of EGM confirms that a sequel to the series is to appear on the Revolution, yet photographic proof of such is scarce. Now if any of our readers found some snapshots and would like to share, that would be most appreciated.Some of the parts that create the sum of the Pilotwings experience would be an interesting fit for the Revolution control scheme as skydiving and pilotting a bi-plane through rings would be a difficult challenge to adapt to the remote. We're confident that if this rumor is true, Nintendo will not only do it, but do it so well it'll literally impress your pants right off of your body, fold them neatly, and tuck them away into a drawer.[Via Go Nintendo][Update: Dutch looked very German to me, but thanks to the wonderful readers, I've been corrected.]
