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Morning Update: You Can Drive a Mercedez-Benz in Mario Kart 8; Team behind Dove Real Beauty Sketches join digital agency; Ad Agency creates jewellery meant to combat sexual assault

This is our Morning Update, rounding up international media and marketing news from while you were sleeping.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfs1PJIb_5U

Creativity-Online: You Can Drive a Mercedez-Benz in Mario Kart 8

From Japan, home of the wacky, the weird and the downright innovative, comes this commercial for Mercedes-Benz, which promotes a new tie-up between the automaker and Nintendo’s Mario Kart 8. The spot inserts a Mercedes GLA into old-school game footage of Super Mario Brothers, then segues into a live action sequence featuring a real-life GLA, driven by an extraordinarily buff “Mario” with muscles bulging under his denim overalls.”

The Guardian: Arianna Huffington: ‘I’m optimistic about the media – even newspapers’

“As the finale to her week-long stay in London, Arianna Huffington will today chair an annual meeting of the Huffington Post’s 11 international editors. As well as setting “the editorial priorities for the next year”, the site’s founder says she will reaffirm a strategy whereby “in the last year we went from being primarily a politics and news site to being a thought leader in how we live our lives”.”

The New York Times: A Digital Agency Draws a Pair of Aces in Brazil

“AN acclaimed advertising creative team that has been celebrated forseveral successful campaigns is joining a digital agency on a fast growth curve to help it grow faster.

The team is composed of Hugo Veiga, a copywriter, and Diego Machado, an art director. The pair has created initiatives for the Dove brand, sold byUnilever, that are among the most watched, most shared and most honored recent work in the advertising world. One video, for Dove Men & Care shampoo, mocks the conventions of hair care commercials, and another,part of a series known as “Dove Real BeautySketches,” tells women, “You are more beautiful than you think.””

Mumbrella Asia: Singapore government aims to lift ‘the curse of bad English’ with ‘Queen of grammar’ videos

“A campaign has been launched by the Singapore government to improve the way people speak English, the official language of business in the multicultural citystate.

The campaign from the Speak Good English Movement takes the form of a series of four videos fronted by local comedian Kumar.”

AdWeek:  Ad Agency Creates Jewelry Meant to Combat Sexual Assault

“When JWT Singapore was tapped by the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) to create an educational campaign about date rape, the agency decided to go in a different direction.

The result was Guardian Angel, a personal safety accessory line that looks like jewelry but is also designed to get women out of dangerous situations.

The $120 device, which can be worn as a necklace or bracelet, has a button that, hen pushed, automatically triggers a call to the wearer’s cell phone. That method is billed as a way for a woman receiving unwanted attention to create a convenient excuse to leave. If things become more serious (read: dangerous) the wearer can push the button and hold it down, sending a text alert to a designated contact, who will receive the wearer’s GPS coordinates and an automatically generated request for help.”

The New York Times: Philadelphia Inquirer Co-Owner Among 7 Killed in Massachusetts Plane Crash

“Lewis Katz, an owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and three friends were killed, along with three crew members in a plane that exploded in a fiery crash in suburban Boston late Saturday night.

The seven were the only people on board the plane, a private Gulfstream IV, as it traveled down Runway 11 at Hanscom Field in Bedford and erupted into a ball of fire around 9:40 on Saturday night.”

AdWeek: Visitors to Creepy Hospital Get the Fright of Their Lives in Horror Movie Prank

“The makers of “Lord of Tears,” a well-reviewed Scottish indie chiller, definitely ruffled some feathers with a pair of pranks that brought the film’s evil “Owlman” into real life.

In the first and less elaborate stunt, Owlman popped up on Chatroulette, where he set some teeth chattering with fear, though most users just seemed amused. (By Chatroulette standards, he’s actually not so bad.)

More recently, though, the beaked beastie nested in an an abandoned children’s hospital that’s reportedly a favorite haunt of sightseers and photographers. “Lord of Tears'” director Lawrie Brewster explains: “Whenever we got a heads up somebody was heading this way … we would get our hidden cameras ready to record what happened when they encountered our Owlman lurking inside. We did not expect the reactions we filmed, and had to cut short the second prank as our victim became too distressed. He was eventually fine in the end and even had a cup of tea with us!””

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