I agree with Kirsty and Ben. This is brilliant and perfectly captures the tipping point of enthusiastic marketers inserting ‘social media’ into every available brand orifice. When it works it’s great, but the rest of the time it’s a lazy copout.

Soon to be joined by the pointless iPhone app – it doesn’t matter what it does so long as we get our logo on your home screen.

Anyway, here’s a sausages idea from before the internet…

…Walls liked it.

From the brand that brought you this oddity now comes a whole new level of indulgent nonsense. The red-attired assault on the tube station exit this morning had only one result…

…they were everywhere. So I did actually walk on red carpet practically all the way to work thanks to Virgin.

Who thinks up this stuff?

AKA Selling Twitter to twits. Twitter might not have worked out how to make money out of its free services yet, but other people have. It reminded me of those machines you get on garage forecourts where they proudly declare they offer free air and water.

Then I went round the corner and saw this:

Made me smile.

I just got sent this video, which I enjoyed immensely. Formula 1 team McLaren spotted a video on YouTube of a model race track built for a radio controlled car on a slow day in the office. Step in Vodafone, and all of a sudden you have a Blackberry touchscreen controlled McLaren Mercedes, and the guys behind the stunt get to take their idea right to the top…

…just thought it was nice, and helps feed my appetite for F1 related fodder before the new season starts…

OK, so there isn’t a single easy answer to what designers and marketers can do which will save the planet, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t helping. I must be getting a piece of junk mail a week from Virgin Media since they put their magical cables down our street.

Other offenders are LoveFilm who constantly persist in harassing me to join even though I am already a member, and British Gas, who have sent us 3 boxes of low energy light bulbs whilst raising our bills at the same time by a staggering amount. Barclays are also so desperate for me to take out a loan with them during a time of economic meltdown, that they send me an envelope full of tripe at least once a month which I promptly tear up and recycle.

Maybe there really is no hope.