Exactly how do you launch a home loan product these days? Well there is the way most corporations would do it and then there is Richard Branson's way, which naturally involves three models in a hot tub.In a bizarre new viral from the world's wackiest billionaire, Branson is seen sitting in a hot tub with his arms around two models while sipping champagne to promote the launch of Virgin Money loans in Australia. While its almost impossible to hear what there are saying (Branson has the bubbles turned right up, of course) one of the models takes a call for the entrepreneur from a Ming like emperor. Branson tells the model he's rather too busy to talk just now.Wrong answer. Branson is zapped by a Flash Gordon-like beam of death. It is only at this point we realise why he was so busy. A third model bobs up from under water.Boy oh boy. Branson takes one for the team. Who came up with the idea? Was it Branson? You can imagine that it might well have been.No one else in the world would do this. It is up there with his dressing as a woman and many many other crazy antics, but then he seems to know what he's doing and having a rather good time at it as he does.The viral is intended for the Australian market only. Take a look for yourself.
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DDB London has triumphed with the new Marmite squeezy jar TV ad, which is a pure piece of slapstick joy. I don't even think you have to love Marmite to enjoy this one, but if you do it only makes the whole spot that bit more entertaining. Who hasn't spent valuable time scrapping away the very last dregs from the Marmite jar, which always makes the option of buying a plastic tub of industrial sized Marmite seem like an attractive option.I found myself offering out advice to the poor guy with his arm in plaster cast as he tried to access his favourite spread. If you haven't seen the perfectly titled "when love turns to hate" spot you can watch it here. It's Brand Republic's ad of the week and rightly so.
A snippet of news from George Lucas and co about the upcoming 'Star Wars' television show, which is apparently due to run for at least 100 episodes or five years in US TV speak. I know that at some stage I should really stop myself being excited by news relating to 'Star Wars', but this hasn't quite happened yet.The show is going to fill in the missing years between 'Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith' and original 1977 movie 'Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope'. It's going to span a total of 20 years, which means among other things it will take in Luke Skywalker's mystery early days with scenes depicting the young Aryan looking Jedi Knight to be flying his "T-16 through Beggar's Canyon bullseyeing womp rats", which of course turned out to be just excellent training for taking out the Death Star.Go we must onto the small screen The series will also focus on the rise of Darth Vader (thankfully sans Hayden Christensen) and will feature Brit actor Anthony Daniels back again as C3P0. It should also mean a return as Frank Oz voicing Yoda, which can only be a good thing. Come on it can't only be me who is endlessly amused by a small green puppet talking sort of backwards.Hopefully this will mean a bidding war between the BBC and ITV to show the series, which should survive the fate of most TV sci-fi and escape being relegated to the grave yard slot on Channel 4 or Five.Star Wars producer Rick McCullum is promising the TV show will be much darker than anything seen before. This possibly means Vader will be cutting a bit of a light sabre swathe. Darker can only be good. Darker, of course, being the new TV black and in recent times has given us the best sci-fi show to grace the TV screen in the form of the reimagined 'Battlestar Galactica'.No, seriously, I'm not kidding. Forget the camp 1970s Star Wars wannabe affair. This time around they've come up with possibly the best show of its kind although the only place to see it sadly is a small corner of Sky One. I swear that this has nothing to do with some of the new bad guy Cylons looking like runway models, but everything to do with its mix of darkness, great writing and a reassuringly unfuturistic...future. Think telephones wires and 1980s IBM looking computers all crammed into something modelled on an old British aircraft carrier.It's just been recommissioned for a third season in the US, but I imagine unlikely ever to make it to terrestrial TV in the UK anytime soon (someone should buy it), in which case you should test run the four hour mini-series that kicked the new series off. Its yours for a fiver.
Media /celebrity gossip website Gawker is finally living up to its name with its latest celebrity stalker site, which puts the crazies and celebs on an intercept course. This is how it works: readers send in their celebrity sightings and in as little as 15 minutes these are published as maps in detail down to the street corner, using Google Maps, on the Gawker Stalker website, giving the crazies, students and the unemployed enough time to jump in the stalker-mobile and roll on to the celebrity location.You have to be quick though... celebrities are a nervous bunch and are prone to move around a fair bit, but with the number of Blackberries and other mobile devices, its pretty much happening in some cases in real time. We are talking major league celebs here, with sightings having included Julia Roberts, Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz. Coldplay's Chris Martin was also recently spotted and was said to be looking nervous. Or maybe he was just looking over his shoulder.Typical entries go like this: "Just saw Adam Sandler heading into the Reebok Sports Club, Upper West Side, on 67th and Columbus Ave...ready to work out in sweats... Or "We spied Mark Ruffalo with a natural-looking red-head woman at Le Pain Quotidien waiting for their coffee or perhaps just coming in from the cold. He is shorter than I thought but they both looked like total New Yorkers."See? It's kind of fun...for at least five minutes. Gawker Stalker for more sightings.The stalker site, as you might have expected, seems to have backfired with stars complaining that Gawker is putting stars in danger.Ken Sunshine, who reps for the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Timberlake and Ben Affleck, is not a happy man."It invites weirdos, if not dangerous weirdos, to physically come in contact with anybody they choose to expose on this site," Sunshine said.In its defence, Gawker editor Jessica Coen says that if people are intent on doing some sort of sick harm to a certain celebrity "that information for finding them is already out there".Although she doesn't exactly say where.
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