This time for upmarket sex shop, Myla. No, we don’t know what you do with The Sphere either…

Following the recent Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon, Beirut’s billboards, newspapers and magazines have been filled with supportive advertising campaigns – some of them from the most unlikely clients, writes Roanne Bell.

Eskimo Disco, 7-11, featuring everyone’s favourite behaviourially-challenged, flightless seabird

Perhaps it’s the effect of all that hype. Perhaps it’s because Balls was so difficult to top. But we’re feeling just a little, well, underwhelmed by Fallon’s finally-released, long-awaited, 70,000 litres of paint-splashing new Sony Bravia spot.

Watch it here

The winners of the inaugural Smalls awards, which, as the title suggests, aim to celebrate filmmaking for mobile phone or iPod video screens, have been announced.

The Smalls are initiated by design and production company Devilfish, and are the latest example of a creative company using a competition for subtle promotion of its services, as well, of course, as a means of showcasing new talent to the ad and production industries.

The competition, which was free to enter, requested films no longer than three minutes based on the theme of “Moving”. This year’s winner was director Jon Riche, who created a witty pastiche of urban sport parkour that works just as well on a big or small screen (still shown below).

In the history of attention-getting advertising, writes Rick Poynor, Benetton must surely deserve a place as one of the most effective companies ever to splash its promotional message across a billboard or magazine spread. There was a time when not a year would go by without some new outrage or controversy to set the pundits’ tongues wagging, usually in disapproval, and compel everyone else to take notice of what the knitwear giant was up to now. The company’s charismatic creative director, Oliviero Toscani, was able to dream up an apparently never-ending supply of jaw-dropping stunts and dubious provocations. Neither he nor his indulgent boss, Luciano Benetton, appeared to care in the slightest if people were upset or scandalised by the company’s latest campaign. The main thing for them, it seemed, was that we should keep talking about Benetton.

Then, in 2000, all this stopped. Benetton’s Sentenced to Death initiative about killers on death row was a campaign too far. It caused enormous offence in the US and Toscani resigned. If Benetton’s ads are still provoking heated discussion and calls to tear posters down from the hoardings, it has passed me by. It’s hard not to conclude that, without Toscani at the helm, Benetton’s corporate image is a shadow of what it was.