Beauty is truth…

The (un)reality of retouching is probably well understood by most consumers these days - thanks to mandatory on-screen warnings and campaigns by (slightly conflicted?) brands like Dove.

But this viral by commercial director Jesse Rosten gets new mileage from the idea, in a toe-curlingly perfect pastiche of the beauty sector.

Thanks to adverve: for the find!

Fold, snap, submit!

As part of our 2011 festive greetings, we’re curating a little Tumblr called Origami Santa.

Head on over to www.origamisanta.net to get your instructions, then e-mail us a photo of your hand-folded festive figure to photo@origamisanta.net and we’ll put it up.

So spread the word across the social networks - there’s nothing like a bit of home-spun arts and crafts to mark your countdown to Christmas.

The art of brand name translation in China

We liked this NYT article recently - it’s a fascinating insight into the big business of adapting Western brand names for the huge Chinese market.

While early attempts at localising established brands just created phonetic equivalents, recent entrants have opted to convey both meaning and a phonic mimicry of the original name.

Some of the results add a poetic resonance to well-known brands - such as “Quick Steps” for Reebok (Rui bu) or “Tasty Fun” for Coca Cola (Kekoukele).

It made us think: What will happen to the names of Chinese brands that eventually become sought after on this side of the world?

adwriter:

CoffeeCompany WiFi headlines.

Holland’s largest chain of coffee shops is called CoffeCompany. They wanted to attract more students, so they installed WiFi in some of its stores near universities. The problem is, lots of students just come into the store for the WiFi but hardly look at the menu.

So CoffeeCompany decided to move the store’s menu into the WiFi menu of customers’ laptops. They periodically changed the wireless network name from the normal “CoffeeCompany” to hard-selling headlines. So as students looked for a network, they found menu lines such as “mmm….YummyMuffinsOnly1,99″

Agency: They Amsterdam, The Netherlands.