Tiny banner ads attached to flies generate buzz. Too much?

"A company at a German trade show has attached tiny banner advertisements to flies and set them loose on unsuspecting visitors, in a bizarre yet effective marketing stunt.

The banners, measuring just a few centimetres across, seem to be causing the beleaguered flies a bit of piloting trouble. The weight keeps the flies at a lower altitude and forces them to rest more often, which is a stroke of genius on the part of the marketing creatives: the flies end up at about eye level, and whenever a fly is forced to land and recover, the banner is clearly visible. What's more, the zig-zagging of the fly naturally attracts the attention because of its rapid movement."

(credit: Wired)

Man sues over lack of 'Lynx effect'

A luckless Indian romeo is suing Lynx after he failed to land a single girlfriend during seven years of using their products.

Vaibhav Bedi, 26, is seeking £26,000 from parent company Unilever for the "depression and psychological damage" caused by the lack of any Lynx effect. Court officials in New Delhi have agreed to order forensic laboratory tests on dozens of his half-used Lynx body washes, shampoos, anti-perspirants and hair gels.

Lynx - marketed as Axe in India - is famous for its saucy ads showing barely clothed women throwing themselves at men. But Bedi says in his court petition: "The company cheated me because in its advertisements, it says women will be attracted to you if you use Axe.

"I used it for seven years but no girl came to me."

When contacted Unilever declined to comment on the case. But India's leading compensation litigator Ram Jethmalani warned: "There is no data to substantiate the supposition that unattractive and unintelligent men don't attract women.

"In fact some of the best looking women have been known to marry and date absolutely ghoulish guys. I'd suggest that the company settles this issue out of court."

(credit: Ananova)

Bicycle exhaust that plants flowers

"The Bloom device is meant to be a subversive and inspirational tool for our concrete jungles. Similar to the tuft of a dandelion as the wind carries the seedling, we propose a way of dispersing seedlings with bubbles and bicycling. Seeds are co-mingled with a bubble mixture and upon pedaling to your destination , you release the floating seeds which land in cracks and crevices throughout the city streets. Over time, the seeds grow into flowers and plants to create a green “fringe” to our sidewalks and streets."

(credit: commutebybike.com)

the toilet cleaner that doesn't smell like one

The new Ambi Pur campaign from Australia. Funny. But lemon smells like a toilet cleaner to me. Bergamot or vanilla would've made a bigger splash.

(credit: Ohlalamag.com)

Someone dropped their huge pink bunny rabbit!

"Every once in awhile you come across something so strange and whimsical that it makes you smile, and you feel a little happier knowing it’s out there in the world. Such is the case with this gigantic pink rabbit which took five years to knit by Gelitin, a group of four artists. The rabbit is a unique art installation which awaits visitors in the Italian Alps, close to Cuneo. The designers poetically offer, 'behind a hill, as if knitted by giant grandmothers, lies this vast rabbit, to make you feel as small as a daisy.' Like another famous pink bunny, this Rabbit keeps going and going and going… in size, and its creators assure, “the rabbit will wait for you 20 years from now.”

There's someone in my tea

These are made by German design company Donkey Products. They come in three sets, each with five bags: RoyalTea, DemocraTea, and StripTea. Would be cool if each of the characters had a unique flavour attached to them. 'Putin' would taste rough and outdoorsy, 'Sarkozy' perhaps a little sharp and bitter...and you'd just put 'Obama' in whenever you felt like a little change.

(credit: Gizmodo)

I'll have a Slow Cow Vodka please.

"Out to help those looking for a quick relaxation fix, a new drink from Canada offers ‘an acupuncture session’ in every can. An antidote to energy drinks like Red Bull, Slow Cow was developed to help people de-stress.

Under the premise that caffeine-packed drinks tend to increase anxiety, Slow Cow contains theanine, chamomile, valerian, passiflora and other ingredients known for their calming effects. The beverage is meant to increase mental awareness while improving relaxation, without the post-hit dip that caffeine and other stimulants cause.

Slow Cow, whose tongue-in-cheek logo apparently did not amuse Red Bull, might have found a gap in a market saturated with energy drinks of every possible variety. It's not the only beverage to position itself as a relaxation drink, mind you, (Drank is another), but Slow Cow gets our vote for best branding. Seems like a natural fit for spas, hotels, airlines—or anywhere else consumers could use a serving of relaxation."

(credit: Springwise.com)

Perspective creates floating words

Graphic designer Axel Peemöller painstakingly painted distorted letters on the walls, floors and beams of a Melbourne, Australia parking garage so that when you stand in the right spot, they seem to hover in mid-air. He won several international design awards for this project.

The YouTube Dilemma

"YouTube provides a steady stream of inspiration to advertising creatives, but it also leaves young directors vulnerable to having ideas stolen and agencies open to accusations of plagiarism. How can both directors and agencies protect themselves?

In 1998, director Mehdi Norowzian sued the Irish advertising agency Arks Ltd for copyright infringement. He claimed Arks had copied a substantial part of his short film, Joy, in its hugely successful Anticipation advert for Guinness which featured a man performing a flamboyant dance as he waited for his pint of the black stuff to settle. Norowzian lost, the case setting a precedent over the legal rights of directors and artists when claiming the artistic content of their work had been 'appropriated' by an agency.

The tense question of plagiarism has become a regular part of advertising life ever since. Accusations from artists and directors crop up periodically in the media, where a discussion on their validity will take place before the subject is usually dropped. The agency in question may be left with a minor stain on its integrity but with no major ill-effects to its client relationship or bank balance. The rise of internet sites such as YouTube has made this issue even more pertinent, however. Suddenly a research tool is available to advertising creatives giving access to millions of films and ideas from all over the world, leaving the makers of these films vulnerable to having their ideas stolen.

Unlike the more established artists and directors, who have an army of colleagues and fans to vociferously defend their creative ideas if they suddenly turn up in a TV ad, the users of YouTube are often young filmmakers, usually unrepresented by production companies, and therefore especially vulnerable. The weapon of choice for young directors in such situations has become the online blog. With the mainstream media unlikely to pick up a story about plagiarism from someone unestablished, the blog comments box has become an effective place to air grievances. A recent example of this occurred on the CR Blog, where the posting of a new Sony Bravia ad, featuring a life-size zoetrope, caused an immediate backlash on behalf of a young director, Mark Simon Hewis, with claims that Fallon, the agency behind the spot, had based the commercial on a short film by Hewis. The situation raised a number of questions, about how young directors can protect themselves against their ideas being stolen, but also about the increasing necessity for ad agencies to find ways to defend themselves against accusations of plagiarism.

In the case of the Sony Bravia ad, the similarities between the film by Hewis and the ad by Fallon are minimal beyond the fact that both rest on the concept of a life-size zoetrope. Hewis' film is a poetic rendition of a man's life story, whereas the Bravia ad sees footballer Kaka showing off his ball skills. Yet Hewis had been approached by RSA, the production company that worked on the ad, with a view to working on an 'up and coming advert opportunity' and was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement on behalf of Fallon which mentioned Sony. When the Sony ad came out, and Hewis had heard nothing more from RSA or Fallon, colleagues leapt to conclusions and to his defence via the CR Blog.


Mark Simon Hewis' film

"I got a sense the Sony ad was maybe influenced by Mark's film," says Katie Daniels, a freelance producer who worked on the film and contacted CR at the time of the blog story on the Bravia spot. "Obviously the idea of a zoetrope is not new, but from the atmosphere I had a sense that they'd watched the film. But it wouldn't be so grating if they hadn't got in touch and then we'd not heard from them again, that was bad etiquette. Directors are creating these films as showpieces for little or no money in the hope they'll get commercial work."

Following the furore on the blog, Fallon explained that the contact had been made with Hewis in relation to a different strand of the project for Sony, and that the production of the Bravia-drome ad was already well underway by the time this occurred. The agency is also categorical in its assertion that it never takes its ideas from outside sources. "We would be doing ourselves a huge disservice if we were found to be deliberately taking an idea from elsewhere," says Fallon partner Chris Willingham. "That's so fundamental to our work, and why clients choose us."

This is not the first time that Fallon has been under fire for allegedly being influenced by the work of others, however. When the agency's Play Doh ad for Sony was released in 2007, the artists Kozyndan complained on numerous blogs, including CR's, about the commercial's similarity to an artwork by the duo which features multi-coloured bunnies hopping through a cityscape. In this instance, Passion Pictures, the production company for the ad, had been in contact with Kozyndan in the past but nothing had come of it. Both Passion Pictures and Fallon firmly deny that the idea was taken from Kozyndan's work.

It's easy to assume here that the advertising agency is always in the wrong. Certainly there are plenty of famous examples where ideas from artists appear to have been directly adapted for ad campaigns, with seemingly little concern for the source of the work. In 2003, Wieden + Kennedy's ad Cog was criticised in the media for its similarity to art film Der Lauf Der Dinge by Fischli & Weiss, and in 1998 artist Gillian Wearing complained about the likeness between her series of photographs which depict people holding hand-written signs, and a VW campaign by BMP DDB. More recently, a John Lewis campaign by Lowe featured shadow sculptures that bore a striking resemblance to artworks by Tim Noble & Sue Webster. At the time, Ed Morris, executive creative director at Lowe, acknowledged that the artists' work was mentioned when discussing the concept of the ad, but that the core idea was already on the table before it came up.

Which brings us to the thorny issue of whether a commercial has only been 'inspired' by another piece of work, consciously or unconsciously, or whether an idea has been deliberately lifted. This is naturally a blurred area, especially as creatives, like the rest of us, are constantly bombarded with imagery. In the continuous quest to come up with new ideas for ads, it is perhaps inevitable that some of this visual input might be unintentionally recycled. This might sound like woolly excuse making, but it is far from unusual. Writing on this issue on Design Observer, graphic designer Michael Bierut recounted how he'd realised that a poster he created in 2005 was remarkably similar to a piece from 1975 by one of his favourite designers, Willi Kunz. For Bierut the replication was made unconsciously, and made him worry. "I don't claim to have a photographic memory, but my mind is stuffed full of graphic design, graphic design done by other people," he wrote. "How can I be sure that any idea that comes out of that same mind is absolutely my own?"



Acknowledgments such as Bierut's are perhaps unlikely to ever be heard from an ad agency, however. And often, of course, advertising is consciously influenced by others' work. In these instances a surprising trend is emerging, where agencies are starting to give credit to their sources. Fans of music videos may have been surprised to see a recent Visa ad from Saatchi & Saatchi, which featured a man on crutches dancing through a city. A very similar performance had been seen recently in a video for dance music act RJD2, by director Joey Garfield, and it would be easy to conclude Saatchis had simply lifted the idea for their ad. This was true, but it turned out that the agency had also picked up the performer and director, along with the idea.



"We do the Saatchi & Saatchi new directors' showcase and trawl the internet looking for interesting stuff to put forward for this," explains creative director Kate Stanners. "We found this piece of work by Joey Garfield and thought it would be amazing for Visa. We wanted Joey to be acknowledged in the showcase for having done the piece of film, but equally we wanted to approach him for Visa. We wouldn't have pursued doing the ad if it wasn't with Joey and Bill [Shannon, the performer in the spot], and it ended up being Joey's first commercial." Stanners acknowledged that it would probably have been easier just to approach Shannon for the ad and work with a more established director, but felt it was important to work with Garfield too.



Another music video that was adapted for advertising purposes recently was Roel Wouters' promo Grip for zZz. Distinctive for its use of trampolines, the video had done the rounds of the industry's media. When he was approached by ad agency Krow Communications to replicate the ad for a Fiat Grande Punto ad, however, Wouters was not keen. At this juncture, an agency might typically have gone off and made their own version anyway, but Krow went out of its way to acknowledge the influence of Wouters' work and paid him a license fee. This then freed them up to replicate the promo without fear, which they did, to a degree that surprised even Wouters. "I never thought they would copy it," he told CR at the time. "But I think it is quite honest, they're not acting as if they've come up with the idea themselves. Making the decision to do such an exact copy is weird but quite strong I think, it gives the feeling of a sincere tribute."



Even those outside of the industry are beginning to see credit given to their work. In the press materials accompanying the release of a recent Aero ad from JWT London (shown top), there was an acknowledgement that the spot had been inspired by a film on YouTube. Both films show a skateboarder plowing through balloons in a skate park. JWT creative director Russell Ramsay recognises that YouTube has changed the research process for agencies. "All these references are instantly accessible now, which they didn't use to be," he says. "There are so many ads that have been influenced by films and by art. But now the influences can be instantly found, whereas they couldn't be in the past…. Part of the skill is matching these ideas to a brand. Advertising does use these things to that end, and always has done."

Despite seeing the similarities between the two films, Ramsay still feels they are essentially different. "We thought of the YouTube film as the recording of an event," he says. "We wanted to get the best skateboarder – if you watch that film, it's not the best performance of it…. We did acknowledge it in the end, but I think we've done enough to it for people to not be that outraged by it. But people have to make up their own minds."

This nod to the YouTube filmmaker from JWT, however grudgingly given, does seem a step in the right direction, although the next logical move, where filmmakers receive renumeration for their ideas, seems unlikely to occur. Ideas cannot be copyrighted, and, as the Norowzian case proved, using the law to prove plagiarism of imagery can be fraught with difficulty, and expensive. Furthermore, despite the good example set by Krow with Wouters, this still doesn't get around the issue of what an agency does if an artist or director says a flat 'no' to having any involvement with the commercial. All too often, the idea still gets made, and there is little that the originator of the idea can do about it. In this sense, we are perhaps no further on than we were ten years ago. However, with the internet providing an easy outlet for filmmakers to complain when they feel their ideas have been pinched, a new wave of consciousness does seem to be beginning to sweep over ad agencies. "I think ad creatives are very conscious of the notion of originality," says Kate Stanners in their defence, "because part of your job is to come up with original ideas. There is a respect for ideas and there is a respect for the originators of ideas."

(credit: Eliza Williams for Creative Review)

A little taste of Dubai...in Paris.

Dubai café, a tea house/restaurant/lounge in the midst of all that is authentic and beautiful in Paris where you can chill and enjoy the smaller pleasures in life...like fake plastic coconut trees and beautiful vistas of the Burj al Arab. Contact me for the address - whether it's to visit or to avoid it.

Twitter & Facebook screw with our moral compass?

"Rapid-fire TV news bulletins or updates on Twitter or Facebook could numb our sense of morality and make us indifferent to human suffering, scientists say.

Scientists say updates on networking tools such as Twitter are often to quick for the brain to fully digest.

New findings show that the streams of information provided by social networking sites are too fast for the brain's "moral compass" to process and could harm young people's emotional development.

Before the brain can fully digest the anguish and suffering of a story, it is being bombarded by the next news bulletin or the latest Twitter update, according to a University of Southern California study.

"If things are happening too fast, you may not ever fully experience emotions about other people's psychological states and that would have implications for your morality," said researcher Mary Helen Immordino-Yang.

The report, published next week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition, studied how volunteers responded to real-life stories chosen to stimulate admiration for virtue or skill, or compassion for physical or social pain.

Brain scans showed humans can process and respond very quickly to signs of physical pain in others, but took longer to show admiration of compassion.

"For some kinds of thought, especially moral decision-making about other people's social and psychological situations, we need to allow for adequate time and refection," said Immordio-Yang.

She said the study raises questions about the emotional cost, particularly for young people, of heavy reliance on a torrent of news snippets delivered via TV and online feeds such as Twitter.

She said: "We need to understand how social experience shapes interactions between the body and mind, to produce citizens with a strong moral compass."

USC sociologist Manuel Castells said the study raised more concerns over fast-moving TV than the online environment.

"In a media culture in which violence and suffering becomes an endless show, be it in fiction or in infotainment, indifference to the vision of human suffering gradually sets in."

Research leader Antonio Damasio, director of USC's Brain and Creativity Institute, said the findings stressed the need for slower delivery of the news, and highlighted the importance of slow-burn emotions like admiration.

Damasio cited the example of U.S. President Barack Obama, who says he was inspired by his father, to show how admiration can be key to cultural success.

"We actually separate the good from the bad in great part thanks to the feeling of admiration. It's a deep physiological reaction that's very important to define our humanity."

(credit: CNN)

Lebanese Magazine Lifts Veil on Sex in the Arab World

From explicit articles about masturbation and homosexuality to columns about "My First Time", Joumana Haddad is out to lift the veil on Arab cultural taboos with a glossy magazine that is already the focus of controversy.

The first quarterly issue of "Jasad" -- "Body" in Arabic -- hit the stands in Lebanon last December. Tongues have wagged ever since about a daring venture into uncharted territory in the largely conservative and Muslim Middle East. "It's true that this is a first in the Arab world," Haddad, 38, a writer and poet, told AFP in an interview.

"I put open handcuffs near the word 'Jasad' on the cover of the magazine to illustrate that I wanted to unlock a taboo. "We need to stop treating our bodies, especially we women, as if they're something to be ashamed of," she added. "We have so many issues to deal with without having the extra weight of needing to cover our bodies."

The December issue of "Jasad", which sold for 10 dollars, includes articles on self-mutilation and cannibalism. The cover story of the March issue focuses on the penis. Other articles deal with battered men and women, transsexuals and the Kama Sutra.

A regular feature is "My First Time", in which a well-known figure talks about his or her first sexual encounter and subsequent sex life. Sexually graphic images -- including reproductions of works by famous artists such as Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso or Francis Bacon -- accompany the articles by authors from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, the Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

Pseudonyms are not allowed.

Although such a magazine would barely raise an eyebrow in the West, it has drawn the wrath of religious authorities and women's organizations in Lebanon who are calling for its closure on the grounds that it amounts to pornography.

"We are all in favor of modernity... but this magazine, under cover of being cultural, appeals to sexual instincts," said Aman Kabbara Shaarani, head of the Lebanese Council of Women, an umbrella group of several organizations. "Subjects that teach our youngsters how to make love do not fit in with our moral values and civic education." Shaarani said she had written to the highest religious authorities in the country -- both Christian and Muslim -- as well as to cabinet members and the censorship bureau calling for "Jasad" to be banned.

"I will not give up because there needs to be a media watchdog for these sorts of publications," she said. "We are considering taking this before the courts."

For now Lebanese authorities appear content to let publication continue, however. Haddad, who is also culture editor of the well-known Lebanese liberal daily An-Nahar, argues that her publication does not target minors and is sold in a sealed plastic envelope clearly marked for adults only. She said she regularly receives hate mail and her website has been hacked into 15 times and had the words "There is no god but God" in Arabic left on the server. Haddad is not moved by such threats and stands ready to defend herself.

"I'm not afraid of controversy," she said. "I am passionate, I believe in this project and sales have demonstrated there was a need for it." The magazine's first issue -- all 3,000 copies -- sold out within 11 days. Sales of the second issue, printed at 4,000 copies, have so far been brisk, Haddad said.

Outside Lebanon the magazine is sold by subscription only as no bookstore in the Arab world would dare stock it, she said. "The highest number of subscribers, 282 out of some 400, are in Saudi Arabia where the magazine was met with much enthusiasm," said Haddad, who financed the project herself.

So far advertisers have shied away for the most part, fearing a backlash. While Haddad admits that some of the articles and pictures in "Jasad" may be shocking to some, she rejects any notion that the Middle East is not yet ready for such a publication. "Why should we treat the Arab world as a minor?" she said. "People against this project should go back to our own literary heritage which includes 'The Perfumed Garden' and 'Thousand and One Nights'.

(credit: Naharnet.com / AFP)

Study: Experiences make us happier than possessions

"Even in tough economic times, you may find yourself with a bit of cash to spare. You've been working hard, and you want to treat yourself. Should you spend it on an experience, such as a baseball game or concert, or a material object?

Psychological research suggests that, in the long run, experiences make people happier than possessions.

That's in part because the initial joy of acquiring a new object, such as a new car, fades over time as people become accustomed to seeing it every day, experts said. Experiences, on the other hand, continue to provide happiness through memories long after the event occurred.

Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University, presented his findings this week at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology annual meeting.

The study looked at 154 people enrolled at San Francisco State University, with an average age of about 25. Participants answered questions about a recent purchase -- either material or experiential -- they personally made in the last three months with the intention of making themselves happy.

While most people were generally happy with the purchase regardless of what it was, those who wrote about experiences tended to show a higher satisfaction at the time and after the experience had passed.

The most striking difference was in how participants said others around them reacted to either the purchased object or experience. Experiences led to more happiness in others than purchases did. A sense of relatedness to others -- getting closer to friends and family -- may be one of the reasons why experiences generate more happiness.

"When people spend money on life experiences, whether they also take someone with them or buy an extra ticket or whatever, most of our life experiences involve other individuals," Howell said. People were fulfilling their need for social bonding while having these experiences, he said. Visit CNNhealth.com, your connection for better living

Another reason for increased happiness in experiences, the researchers found, was that people felt a greater sense of vitality or "being alive" during the experience and in reflection, Howell said.

"As nice as your new computer is, it's not going to make you feel alive," he said.

Most psychologists who study the phenomenon say people adapt to a new purchase in six to eight weeks, up to a maximum of three months, Howell said. That means the initial pleasure we get from a new possession generally fades in a matter of months.

Howell's study builds on earlier work by Thomas Gilovich, professor and chairman of the psychology department at Cornell University. Gilovich and colleague Leaf Van Boven's seminal 2003 paper "To do or to have: That is the question" found similar results about possessions bringing less happiness than experiences.

Experts also point out that people are less self-conscious when comparing experiences than they are about possessions. It will probably bother you more that your friend's home theater is better than yours than if your friend saw more sights on her South Seas vacation, Gilovich said.

Experiences form "powerful and important memories that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world," Gilovich said.

It's not just individuals who should be thinking about investing in experiences when making purchasing choices -- policy makers should also keep this reasoning in mind for their communities, he said.

"If you create municipalities with more parks, bike trails, more hiking trails that make experiences easier, then I think you're going to have a happier population," he said.

With Valentine's Day coming up, does this research mean you should give your honey a nice dinner or weekend getaway rather than a material present, such as a necklace or watch?

The issue of happiness conferred to others has been studied less, so the answer is unclear, experts said.

While Howell would expect this principle of experiences over possessions to still apply, Gilovich agreed that it may, but also points out that the act of giving or receiving an object as a gift is an experience in itself.

"Gifts of material possessions often become keepsakes and have sentimental value that increase with time, instead of diminishing like most material goods," Gilovich said."

(credit: CNN)

Does your DNA determine how many friends you have on Facebook?

"Always the last one picked for kickball? Never get invites to the hottest parties? Blame Mom and Dad.

That's right, a new study says genes may influence whether or not you're popular. But DNA, or genetic material, shapes more than popularity, according to the research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It may also play a role in the number of friends we have—and whether we're integral or insignificant members of a social group.

Researchers from Harvard University and the University of California, San Diego, found that genes may be responsible for 46 percent of the variation (or difference) in how popular we are versus other people. Genetics exerts a similar effect on people's varying degrees of connectivity (for example, one person might know many of their friends' pals, but another person may not know any of their friends' other buddies.) And DNA has a significant, but lesser influence, on the difference between where one or another of us is located in a social network.

The scientists based their findings on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill of the influence of health on the social behavior of some 90,000 teens who researchers have been following since 1994. Using information on 552 pairs of twins in the study, the Harvard and U.C. San Diego researchers compared the lists of friends of identical twins with the social circles of same-sex fraternal twins. The networks described by the identical twins resembled one another more than those of the same-sex fraternal twins, suggesting a genetic influence on how people network socially. Twin study designs presume that if identical twins resemble each other more on some trait than fraternal twins do, then genes help explain that trait.

'Your social position in a network is not purely of your own making,' study co-author Nicholas Christakis, a professor of sociology at Harvard University, tells ScientificAmerican.com. 'In a very deep sense, our social life is predestined. It's predestined genetically.

'It's not the only explanation,' he adds. 'But there is a discernible and substantial role of genes in your social network position.'

The study didn’t sort out which genes are enhancing or ruining our social lives. Michigan State University research published last year showed that a mutation in the serotonin receptor gene 5-HT2A was linked to variation in popularity. (Serotonin is a brain chemical that regulates mood, anxiety, depression, sleep and sexuality.) The new study examines the genetics of popularity with a wider lens, examining how much DNA may shape the way we socialize.

There may be evolutionary reasons for the variations in our social connectedness, Christakis says. While it may be advantageous to be in the center of a group when rumors are circulating, he says, you're better off being on its fringes if a disease—not gossip—is spreading. But the study didn’t explore who might benefit from being popular—and who may be lucky to be on the outs.

'We're a social species. We shouldn’t be surprised that some aspects of how we're social depends on genetics,' Christakis says. 'Just like other aspects of your personality of how assertive you are, how risk-averse you are, so does your predilection for having particular kinds of social network architectures' depend on genetics."

(credit: Scientific American)

Image © iStockphoto/Andrew Johnson

Helen Bamber Foundation PSA by JWT Dubai

Two arresting pieces of work by my ex-partners in crime at JWT Dubai - Nizar & Ash. Great work guys! Check it out...





(credit: Nizar Swailem & Ash Chagla @ JWT Dubai)

Atheist bus campaign goes nationwide

"A £140,000 advertising campaign aimed at persuading more people to "come out" as atheists was launched today with a plan to broadcast a message doubting God's existence on the sides of buses, the tube and on screens in central London.

Its slogan – "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" – can already be seen on buses in central London. A total of 200 bendy buses in London and 600 buses across England, Scotland and Wales will carry the slogan from today and tomorrow following a fundraising drive which raised more than £140,000.

The money raised will also pay for 1,000 advertisements on London Underground from Monday. Organisers today unveiled a set of quotes from famous writers and thinkers who endorse the atheist message.

The launch, held today near the Albert memorial, featured speeches by Dawkins, author of The God Delusion; Ariane Sherine, creator of the Atheist Bus Campaign; and Hanne Stinson, from the British Humanist Association.

The fundraising drive was prompted by a suggestion from comedy writer Sherine, who received support from the British Humanist Association (BHA) and atheist campaigner Richard Dawkins.

Sherine, a television comedy writer, suggested the idea in a Guardian Comment is Free blog last June, saying an atheist bus campaign would provide a reassuring counter-message to religious slogans threatening non-Christians with hell and damnation.

Speaking at the launch , Sherine said the sheer number of donations received had demonstrated the strength of feeling in Britain.

She said: "This is a great day for freedom of speech in Britain and I'm really excited and thrilled that the adverts have been approved and I hope that they will make people smile on their way to work.

"I am very glad that we live in a country where people have the freedom to believe in whatever they want."

There has been overwhelming financial support for the project, which exceeded its funding target less than 24 hours after being launched, raising nearly nine times the amount needed to have its posters on buses.

Around £6,000 was needed to run adverts in London but within two days, individuals and organisations had pledged more than £87,000. More than £135,000 has been pledged so far. Today's event will also reveal the next stages of the campaign.

The theology thinktank Theos welcomed the campaign, saying it was a "great way" to get people thinking about God. "The posters will encourage people to consider the most important question we will ever face in our lives. The slogan itself is a great discussion starter. Telling someone 'there's probably no God' is a bit like telling them they've probably remembered to lock their door. It creates the doubt that they might not have."

The success of the British campaign has inspired atheists in the US to run their own advertising slogans in Washington DC. The American Humanist Association launched a bus advertising campaign last November with the slogan, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake", appearing on the sides, rear and insides of the city's 230 buses."

(credit: Guardian)