Articles from AdWeek Advertising and branding

It's flashback week for fans of 1990s hip-hop, with Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs and Snoop Dogg making advertising cameos that would have seemed inconceivable 15 years ago. Combs, known these days as Diddy, headlines a new 60-second spot from Fiat and ad agency Doner. In the ad, we see two men wandering the desert in a delirious haze, unsure if they're really being saved by a celebrity or just imagining a mirage. Meanwhile, Snoop, who has gone by Snoop Lion lately, has popped up in, of all places, a British auto insurance ad.

Hey, professional truth-benders. Here's a sweet mockumentary-style PSA about professional truth-bending. Extra bonus if you also happen to be a tree hugger. In addition to fairly broad swipes at snake oil salesmen (you must have known the advertising industry was a popular punching bag when you got into it), the spot—funded by organic businesses—is aimed at illustrating how the use of the word "natural" on food labels is pretty much meaningless.

Today, the NHL Network is launching NHL Tonight: 2014 Sochi Edition, a live highlights show that will run immediately following the Latvia-Switzerland telecast. In this week's Data Points we learn how Olympic viewers like to be marketed to.

Caribou Coffee, whose previous out-of-home ad stunts have included heated bus shelters in Minneapolis, is back with another special campaign—a giant, five-story-tall Pinterest board built (with help from ad agency Colle+McVoy) at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn. Caribou used pinned images from fans as inspiration for its new Real Inspiration Blend blend of coffee. That sounds like a stretch, but the giant Pinterest board is pretty impressive.