Hurley's World

On Thursday, January 8 at 11 AM, the NAACP and the civil rights law firm of Mehri & Skalet will announce the Madison Avenue Project, an initiative created to address the advertising industry's alleged "long history of widespread racial discrimination."

While advertising-fueled website page takeovers are nothing new, they don't usually integrate quite so intricately as this one does for the Ford F-150 on the new ESPN site.

I met Julia Roy on Twitter over a year a go. I somehow saw a tweet or two from her and decided she was interesting enough to follow. But that wasn't all that caught my attention.

- The New York Times is pushing front page display ads. It's hard times, yo; deal with it.

One Chicago-based furniture store is happy to admit it sells more seats than Governor Blagojevich -- and at a better rate, to boot.

OK so Tom Dickson has been hyping his Blendtc blender in online videos for some time now.

A new Fallon Minneapolis-created ad for job site The Ladders does a great job distinguishing itself from the rest of the pack.

Once again, it's time to look back at the past year and share with you the hottest, sexiest and raciest ads of the year.

A wee Brooklyn-based shop called Fantasy Trophies ("Hand-made trophies worth bragging about") has launched a YouTube campaign, "Bragging Rites," that consists of nine videos which get progressively more retarded.

It's always a little difficult to gauge the quality of advertising from other countries, but "Don't Disturb the Ones Working" -- an ad for the Norwegian Association of the Blind -- really threw us for one.

Nothing makes a woman scream more than a well-stocked walk in closet. All those shoes in perfect alignment. All those jewels perfectly displayed. All those clothes perfectly hung.

While statistics are easy to play with and manipulate to suit a particular argument, this video from Did You Know 3.0 offers up some stunning stats.

In an all out effort to accost, uh, make the public aware of its new logo and celebrate the "next generation's" apparent positive outlook for the coming year, Pepsi has unleashed itself upon Times Square with a week-long promotional extravaganza.

On Christmas day, One Laptop Per Child brought back the voice (if not the body) of Yoko Ono's beloved John Lennon.

Where we to honor an advertising agency for creating the best holiday card of 2008, that distinction would go to Cleveland-based agency Brokaw

Plaid made the holidays extra-special this year by sending a video to clients and friends -- including us -- that makes it look like we've been involved in an affair with Mrs. Claus, which has since gone public and may potentially destroy Christmas.

No ad industry holiday is complete without a lovable mood-setting douchebag. This year Tom Fellow is ours.

With help from production firm Dictionary Films, Leo Burnett launched a TV spot for "Food Shouldn't Be a Luxury," an effort to encourage locals to donate supplies to the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

Last year JWT sent us a holiday card featuring Albert, an animated tool whose tongue's been attached to the same pole for a year, I guess.

URLesque has compiled a list of the top ten spec ads of 2008. Our fave, the JCPenney Speed Dressing ad is on the list.