Copywriting, branding and other mayhem.

The UK’s Advertising Producers’ Association has released its annual list of the 50 best commercials. See them at AdRants.

That fantasy flying diesel from Honda (by Weider & Kennedy UK) looks like a Disneyland dream. (Personal skepticism: ok, Honda’s diesel is clean and quiet, but is it fast?)

The Stella d’Artois spot from Lowe London is a major WWI epic. A “reassuringly expesive” spot to produce, I think.

Is that “big and agile” gymnast wearing a fat suit? (He’s selling a “big and agile” Skoda SUV.) You be the judge.

The Return of the Train spot by Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y & R incorporates scenes from Hitchcock’s North by Northwest to sell a fast, new Virgin Train service. Using a terrific movie to sell a product without a big stretch of “borrowed interest” is seldom accomplished.

All in all, these are awfully intriguing commercials and easily worth the 2 Euro membership fee.

If the attorney general of California has his way, your “fries with that” may come with an unpleasant bit of copy: a cancer warning. That’s according to a New York Times article.

Bill Lockyer, the state’s AG, says that studies have proven that French fries and most fried potato products contain acrylamide, a known carcinogen. (Both chips and fries are already known for their saturated fat, trans fats and sodium levels.)

The chemical is not an additive, but forms when starches are subjected to high heat.

According to one survey firm, NPD Group, fries are the food most frequently eaten in restaurants. In fact, $7 billion a year are spent on fries and chips in the US. Therfore, the new California warning could change America’s eating habits.

Will there be scarey commercials urging kids to stop that nasty, smelly French fry habit. Will parents be urged to talk with their kids about the dangers of fried potatoes in any form?

Maybe not, but Lockyer has filed suit against McDonald’s, Burger King, Frito Lay anbd six other food companies to force them to include warning labels on their products. The label might say “This product contains a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer.”

The FDA opposes the labeling law on the grounds that the no one knows what the dangerous levels of acrylamide in food are. More studies are needed, according to the agency.

A food industry research group says that California is singling out junk food unecessarily, as other foods such as whole wheat toast, and black olives contain the substance. (Lower levels are in bread, crackers, and peanut butter.) By the California attorney general’s office counters that fried potato products contain higher levels and constitute a larger portion of an average America’s diet.

General Electric has an engaging new TCV spot. It shows ecologically happy jungle elephants dancing in puddles to the tune of Singin’ in the Rain. It’s titled Singin’ in the Rain, too. What would Gene Kelly think?

Very engaging and original.

The Sunbed Associuation, a British tanning salon group, has been promoting the health benefits of tanning in leaflets distriViotamin D, a natural result of sun exposure, they say, helps “some cancers, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, multiple sclerosis and depression.”

They forget about the increased risk of skin cancer, including its most deadly form melanoma. In a current book Risk, authors Ropeik andGray of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, say that skin cancer is not figured into standard cancer risk charts, because it is so very common. In fact, they say, in the US each year, new cases of skin cancers approximately equal new cases of all other kinds of cancer combined. (See p. 346 of the current paperback edition.)

Anyway, the British ad watchdogs, the Advertising Standards Authority, made the sunbed people stop promoting the health benefits of increasing your exposure to UV rays in tanning salons.

According to Adweek, Crispin Porter + Bogusky has won the VW account from Arnold in Boson. The account bills $400 million. Amazingly, it will switch without a formal creative review.

There have been backchannel talks with the new agency for some time. US VW sales are slipping some 20 percent this year compared to the same period last year. Sales were down last year as well.

The agency had handled the $25 million BMW Mini Cooper account, but resigned it this morning. A key player at Cooper — marketing communications manager Kerri Martin — moved to VW in a similar capacity and that clinched the account switch. Evidently, the Mini Cooper people were very happy with CP+B’s handling of the account.

In a searching for news about the New Orleans disaster, the key words “New Orleans” produced a travel ad. “New Orleans Superbowl Cheaper Prices.” It takes a computer to do something this tasteless.

Apparently too, the Post Office and odirect mailer firms know not to ship DM offers into the disaster area, but keyword ads aren’t that smart.

Now maybe some human will step in and stop travel ads to the hurricane area?

Record companies, which had supported Apple’s iTunes, are turning against the Apple music system, according to The New York Times.

They want Steven Jobs, the founder of Apple, to see it their way and allow the hot new releases to be priced higher.

iTunes has made a name for itself with its 99 cent price for all the music it offers. Now the record companies want say, $1.49 for the latest hits, and less, possibly much less for older tunes.

iTunes is the music that the incredibly popular Apple iPod can play. The record makers say Jobs is making his profits from iPod sales, while selling iTunes songs too cheaply.

Apple has 80% of MP3 player sales — the iPod — and 75% of digital music sales.

There’s a new study being run in Omaha, Nebraska, by MediaCheck that finds TV commercials reach saturation levels for their audience in a matter of weeks. After that, the spots should air less often. Therefore, advertisers will need more commercials to run less frequently.

The problem is that TV production costs are high — about $400,000 for a 30-second spot. So agencies are looking at less costly production techniques.

One large agency is studying MTV’s methods because it produces so many videos so affordably.

Then, too, production costs are lower in other countries, so Canada, South Africa and India are being considered as low-cost production venues. It is said that computer links can afford control over the shoot without sending everyone to Calcutta.

No matter where the spots are shot, it is becoming more and difficult to get the consumer to actually see them, so in the seesaw battle between creative and media, media is on the upswing.

The Omaha study is named the Wanamaker Project after the Nineteenth Century department store magnate John Wanamaker, who said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”

New York magazine, after going eight years without an ad campaign for itself, will try to make up for lost time. The magazine will run new posters in subway stations every weekday.

The campaign with tagline “This is New York,” will run the daily series in five subway stations in Manhattan: Columbus Circle, Times Square, Pennsylvania Station, 68th Street, and Spring Street.

The poster will appear starting this Friday and running through September 30th with timely topics: Primary Day September 13th will feature the four Democratic candidates for Mayor. When the Feast of San Gennaro starts on September 15th, the posters will list the calories in traditional Festival foods.

There will be unchanging posters as well on phone booths using a reflective material, again stressing “This is New York.”

The new ad agency is Weiden & Kennedy, the creators of advertising for ESPN with the theme “This is SportsCenter.”

Viewers of W&K’s ads must have short memories, I guess. But the daily poster replacement is innovative and will be a logistical challenge.

In what may be the world’s wettest ad posters, a German company Bitfall has designed waterfalls that show advertising in the waterfall itself. On the drops.

They nickname the drops “spherical robots.” Their main website has that phrase in the title, but their internet provider is not happy with all the traffic these amazing still images and movies are creating, so the main site is down. Too much success.