You know, 98% of the time I hate advertising — I hate how its getting evermore ubiquitous, and evermore insidious. As devices like Tivo allow us to circumvent the ancient, nearly obsolete Old School Guard of advertising like commercials, advertisers are becoming ever more cunning in inserting their Brand in front of your eyeballs and it makes my stomach churn (like wrapping the entire interior of trains, or projecting ads on actual BART and Boston subway tunnel walls, or this lovable entrepreneur who wants to sell ads on the surface of the moon…I shit you not). They claim that putting ads in video games is more realistic, but c’mon — I call bullshit on that. I don’t need to see a Cap’n Crunch billboard in Vice City to make GTA any more real…or interesting…or visually captivating. And I don’t want to hear people refer to Fenway Park anytime in the near future as Bush’s Baked Beans Stadium, nor do I have any interest in watching the Gaylord Hotels Bridgestone Music City Bowl (sadly, I didn’t even make that up). Please — give us a fucking break! When it takes longer to say the name of your bowl game than play it, you may wanna reconsider your sponsors. And does anyone need to see an Exxon logo peering back at them from the bottom of their morning coffee mug? (Idea patent pending.)

So its’ with great relief that I came across this gallery of Creative and Clever Billoboards, cos it gives me hope that out there are some people putting actual thought into their ads, and transforming simple advertorials into playful devices of idea transmission that even interact with their environment. How modern.You mean, you can be clever and tell me about your product??? Get the fuck outta here! No way! Here’s to a world of clever and playful advertising…

Go to the link, plenty more examples to peruse…

Of course, from the Economist:)