Whoopsies! The Lifewise ad with the slumped-over dummy that prompted an emergency response yesterday when someone mistook it for a real human was not a potential-disaster diorama, but a legitimate accident, Lifewise employee Amy Carter told us in the comments yesterday. more ›

KIRO's headline from earlier today, "Lifeless man dangling from Seattle building turns out to be dummy," brings to mind still-hanging Halloween decorations gone awry. Perhaps a zombie dangling from a tree. But no: police and fire personnel were called to 2nd Avenue and Virginia Street today because of a meta-billboard for Lifewise health insurance, featuring a lifeless dummy who was seemingly about 80% finished painting a large ad, about eight stories up, before slipping off in some horrible accident. more ›

In honor of its 40th anniversary, Bumbershoot rolled out a list of 40 ways you can help celebrate. They've been going on all summer, which means you missed out. It's never too late to party, though, so we're here to suggest 5 last-minute ways to participate. more ›

"Since taking the Sargon Pills my bowels are regular and my liver is not sluggish like it was, nor do those awful dizzy attacks worry me like they did." more ›

WHERE DOES CREATIVITY COME FROM?: For a city filled with a decent amount of creatives, advertising folks, and clients that always want the Big Idea, newest movie Art & Copy is a must see. The film, created by acclaimed documentary director Doug Pray (Hype!, Scratch, Big Rig), riffles through the minds of the ad industry's most creative and iconic product pushers. After tonight's 7:00 p.m. showing, select Seattle creatives and ad folks will host a discussion panel about the film. more ›

Speaking of regular readers, hey, you fly-by types: What the hell, make a commitment for once in your life. 5,000 people already subscribe to our RSS feeds (full stories on four separate channels), or you can follow us via our automated headline feed on Twitter. Crank up your iPhoneBerryDroid and enjoy our mobile version. more ›

Surprisingly, the above ad (NSFW, unless your work is burlesque- and/or violence-friendly) isn't part of PETA's "sea kittens" campaign, but it might as well be. Objectification of women? Check. Making fish "sexy"? Check. Somehow drawing a parallel between killing a person with harming a fish? Check. The PSA is from Dutch animal rights group Wakker Dier ("awake animal"), but we fully except PETA to recruit some local burlesque performers the next time they need to protest Pike Place Market fish-throwing. more ›

Ouch! TechFlash reported this morning that Microsoft has hired Morgan Stanley to unload digital ad agency Razorfish, possibly on some unsuspecting French ad giant. TechFlash theorizes that the Razorfish layoffs of late have been prep work, to get the firm into auction-block shape. One place Razorfish laid-offs can skip applying at is Wongdoody, which just cut its staff by 17 (or 10 percent). This is what they get for colorizing penguins. more ›

A hearty Seattlest thanks to the Ballard Driving Academy. This is exactly the kind local advertiser--a business that screams Seattle, but really politely, doesn't want to draw too much attention to itself--we're looking for. Remember, with all that's going on in Ballard these days, the safest place is in your car. Why not let the Ballard Driving Academy show you how to drive it, while you're in there? more ›

In the beginning, the word was carved on tablets. Eventually, gospels were inscribed on parchment, then newsprint, then pixellated onto the screens of iPhones. Now the medium is the gunney sack and Starbucks is firing back. more ›

We'll keep this short, for our readers' benefit--Seattlest.com is now accepting local advertising, which makes great sense because our readers are local, too. In a Seattlest survey, 87 percent of our readers said they live in Seattle, while 97 percent lived in Washington State. (Thank you, Seattle! And West Seattle! And the Eastside!) more ›

Microsoft-owned Razorfish, one of the largest digital ad buyers in the world, has a new virtual book out, the 2009 Digital Outlook Report. These reports are very much documents of their moment--as Forbes points out, two years ago Razorfish was announcing that portals were back from the dead; this year portals have an icy gray hand clutching their ankles again. more ›

New rules promulgated by the French Health Ministry, so help us, read: "The consumption of alcohol, and especially wine, is discouraged." This on the heels of a study by French national cancer institute, which says the consumption of even a small amount of alcohol can increase the risk of mouth and throat cancer by 168%. "Small daily doses of alcohol are the most harmful," the study's chief scientist told the press."There is no amount, however small, which is good for you." All this from the government of right-wing, non-drinking Nicolas Sarkozy, who campaigned on a promise to reduce the previous administration's harrassment of wine producers...and of editors who print stories that cast wine in a favorable light. The world is upside down. French paradox indeed. more ›

Tomorrow morning, Wednesday, you can join Seattlest (MvB) and CHS (jseattle) for a eye-opening talk about neighborhood and news blogs and online marketing. We're holding the big event at Office Nomads on Capitol Hill (invitation with RSVP right here). The workshop is sponsored by the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce, begins at 9 a.m. (should be about 90 minutes with Q&A), and comes with a $5 suggested donation to the Chamber. We just went over the PowerPoint deck with jseattle, and boy is he good with maps and infographics. If you're curious about who the new neighborhood media are in Seattle or why to advertise with them, come by and enjoy a cup of coffee with us as we explain. more ›

We'd heard that the media's other, cash-poor shoe would be dropping after the election, when all the campaign money dried up. But the Seattle Times is going shoeless a day early, with the announcement of a "workforce reduction of approximately 130-150 positions, a combination of voluntary separations and layoffs." Back in April, the Times shed 200 employees, and said then that further cuts might be necessary. What with classifieds, real estate, and financial services advertising down to a trickle of their former Niagaras, political advertising was the last...oh, we've done the shoe thing already. But you get the idea. Next up, similar news from the P-I? more ›

Tired of those ridiculously clever Mac vs. PC commercials painting them as out-of-date and incompetent, Microsoft is trying a new ad campaign of their own. A $300 million dollar ad campaign to be exact, with Jerry Seinfeld as the star-power at the helm. We're a PC-owner and we find ourselves nodding knowingly at the Apple ads all the time. So Microsoft and Seinfeld are going to have to come up with something mighty clever to distract from the truth found in those witty Apple ads. The ad campaign debuts on September 4th. We don't suspect it will end our Mac lust. more ›

Thursday night, we left our advertising job for the day, drove deep into the Washington Park hood, wolfed down our freighter-sized BLT and bag of salt and vinegar chips in the parking garage, and made our way into the New Gym at The Bush School, which is apparently insanely cool. (Hello? A whole program on diversity? Seniors fundraising so they can attend their second White Privilege Conference?). There we witnessed the brilliance of Jean Kilbourne, superstar lecturer. more ›

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Last year we invoked the name of Cal Worthington as a flimsy excuse to post the amazing "Montgomery Flea Market" ad. Now, we actually have an ad from the master himself. Big ups to Cal for wearing a Mariners jacket (and also for the zebra). There is a definite lack of men on horses leading zebras around in our television advertising today. more ›

Redmond native and actual Guitar Hero Carrie Brownstein did some work on the advertising of the game Rock Band. You might have seen these commercials; four rocker-lookin types sit around and cut on each other in the jaded and weary fashion of musicians on the road. That's not her work, thank god. She was on a different team pushing a different concept. Anyway, she's got an article up at Slate today about her experiences with the game, which, ultimately, she ends up kind of liking in an "it's not as evil and fake as American Idol" kind of way. Of course anything less than an absolute trashing of the game leads us to suspect she's still on the payroll, but she's a music writer so we'll say no. It's an interesting take on the game either way. more ›

While we're finding you writerly folk some jobs, why don't some of you look into the Puget Sound Business Journal: they've got two staff openings: the banking, residential real estate and economy beat and sports, retailing and marketing and media. more ›

When we sat down to do our endorsements we reached a disturbing conclusion. We cannot, in good conscience, vote for anyone. more ›

For everyone that doesn't have an eight, nine or ten-year old daughter or doesn't work at either paper or any of the local television stations or at Key Arena, Hannah Montana is some Disney television thing that toured through Seattle yesterday to a storm of coverage and over-inflated ticket prices. The show's pretext is that this teenager leads a double life: everyday anonymous jerk by day, rock star Hannah Montana by night. more ›

This company pissed us off with their graffiti-esque chalk attack advertising recently in Downtown Seattle, but as far as we know not much came of it. Well, an anti guerrilla advertising site was created, but to our knowledge the city of Seattle didn't hold the company responsible for all their visual litter. more ›

We'd like to take a brief moment to thank this week's advertisers on Seattlest more ›

Tuesday night Seattlest won $35 playing pub trivia at the Boxcar Ale House in Magnolia. And we earned every goddamn penny -- it was a brutal slog of an evening. "I'm about to get stabby," said one of our teammates at about 9:50, when it was clear that we weren't getting out of there anytime soon. more ›

Yesterday at about six o'clock in Westlake Center square there was a protest going on. Matching shirts, coordinated singing and sign stamping; it was the most together group we've seen demonstrating since...ever, probably. Westlake's mix of teenager hanger outers, office workers and shoppers gave them a wide berth, hanging out on the fringes as if gulping a huge breath of air before darting for the entrance to the mall. Don't look, don't acknowledge, don't--for god's sake--stop when one of them has you in their sights. Dammit, Lush is right there! Is there another entrance? more ›

There was a time when every urban iPod listener had a choice to make regarding personal speakers. Do you use some pair of headphones from the 80s with the orange foam on them that you found in the spare electronics box in the garage to disguise your identity as an iPod owner? Or do you fly the snowy whites your iPod came with and announce your Apple Cool to everyone on the bus, and damn the mugging risks, this being Seattle after all. Or do you sport the giant cans because you absolutely need to squeeze as much sound performance as you can from a 128 kb-encoded MP3? The question has fallen moot as time, incessant television advertising and the near-ubiquity of iPods themselves have wrung the last vestiges of cachet out of the white cables. Just go with what ya got--Seattlest has a pair of these Sony earbuds that sound ok, but have this terrible cord configuration that was dreamed up by either a moron or a marketing guy hoping to horn in on Apple's headphone branding successes. more ›

You may recall that Seattlest recently moved to Rainier Beach. more ›

Hey guys, we hate to have to ask you to do this, but if you have a minute or so can you fill out a survey? It would really help us get a handle on who's out there which will in turn help us improve the site. Fourteen multiple choice questions and you're out. more ›