I spent the last couple of years living outside the US so I had the pleasure of being entertained by a variety of ad campaigns that ranged from truly awesome to “oh no you didn’t!” So in an attempt to make the advertising world a better place with fewer borders, I’m going to share international campaigns that spark my fancy every so often. Our first stop takes us to a little village called London, England.

I found this campaign browsing around adsoftheworld.com. It combines online and mobile with an offline “interactive installation.” Nokia built a signpost arrow suspended from a crane 150 feet in the air in the middle of London. The crane could rotate a full 360 degrees to point in the direction of a location that people sent to it via their phone or from the Nokia OVI Maps website. Webcams were also used to stream video of the crane directly to nokia.com so that anyone, anywhere could participate.

Despite having the crane offline and only at one location, the mobile and online integrations are what make it so impressive. While I’m sure it would have been really cool to be in London and control the crane in person the fact that I could do it online and watch it from a webcam is still rewarding enough to make me excited about it.

Props go to Farfar for helping Nokia make their navigation services about as fun as navigation services can be.

Hi Internet. It’s Mekanism. How have you been? We’re good.

So we have a social media team here. Our job is to know the internet better than you, so if you ever want to hire us, we can say, “we know the internet better than you.” You can imagine, then, that working on the social media strategy team is phenomenal. Because the internet is kind of like a creepy hoarder’s house, and we get to sort through all of their creepy rooms finding the gems.

Starting today, we’re going to give you a weekly dose of all of the crap on the internet we like. Little things we’ve stumbled on that are either:

- Funny.

- Weird.

- Brilliant.

- Creepy.

- A cornucopia of all of these qualities, which is really just an excuse to use the word “cornucopia”

It’ll be like Oprah’s Favorite Things. Except Oprah will have no affiliation, and it will probably involve more dancing animals and nut shots. Welcome to Mekanism: that’s pretty par for the course.

So without further ado, here are our team members selections of crap we liked on the internet this week. Feel free to share your own. We will probably see whatever you write, retweet it back out and give you absolutely zero credit for it.

Brendan Gahan (@BrendanGahan): LINO

Brendan wants you to, “put your helmet on, because this thing is going to make your brain explode.”

For the record: Brendan makes this statement at least twice a day. He believes that everything is going to blow your mind. I’m pretty sure he says it about things that are not, in fact, going to blow your mind. This is a fair one, though.

Ryan Lee (@owlsquid): Sharktopus Trailer

There are no words for how amazingly f%&king rad this is. THIS IS A REAL MOVIE. SERIOUSLY. IT’S A SHARK AND AN OCTOPUS. AND ERIC ROBERTS IS IN IT.

Gino Click (@ginobot): Tortoise is Dancing at Satisfaction

“Get it turtle. Get it. This thing is racking up views. Mostly from my desk.”

Shepard Wallace (@regularshep): Samsung 3D Event

Just go to that link. It looks cool. We promise.

Elijah Bilotta (@frodoBKK): The AppleGirl Phenomenon

“It started 4 months ago with 3 iPhones and a cover of Beyonce’s Irreplacable. Now Kim Yeo Hee has 5.7 million video views, a record deal, an iPhone app, and my undivided attention. I gave her a shout out on Twitter expressing my support. Unfortunately no response.”

Drew Hoolhorst (@drewber): Kittens Inspired By Kittens!

Yes. I am well aware this is 4,276 internet years old. Calm down before you start with that crap, internet nerds. I’M ONE OF YOU. But honestly: watch this again. Gotta be a top five of all time for me.

DOUBLE HEAD!

Until next Friday, everyone.

Apparently, you can actually make a living putting all of your heart and soul into surviving off of beer and cereal (touché, everyone!).

We are very proud to announce that we walked away from the 2010 Cannes International Advertising Festival with 2 lions, a shortlisted director, and another director being selected for the Saatchi New Director’s Showcase reel.

The Golden Grahams Golden Grant, a project we teamed up with McCann Erickson NY for, walked away with a Media Lion for Best Research and a Bronze Cyber Lion. Which, you know, was enough to want to go spend too much at a bar for in celebration.

But the good news kept on coming, as Malcolm Murray was shortlisted for a Film Craft Lion for direction on the Stella Artois short “Up There” and Michael Langan was selected for the Sattchi New Director’s Showcase. We imagine this is why Roberto Benigni made an ass of himself at the Oscar’s:

Because it’s really really great to be honored with so many other talented people.

We’d like to thank France for getting about three members of Mekanism too drunk on a few nights (JUST A RUMOR) and we’d like to thank everyone we worked with on these projects, as we’re proud to have worked on such great stuff.

So eat some Golden Grahams and drink a Stella Artois. That’s an award winning meal right there. Don’t let ‘em tell you otherwise.

Also: if you are coming from twitter and presumably want to talk about that Fast Company thing we’re doing? Feel free to drop us a line. We’re happy to have you swear at us or invite us out to dinner. Either way, we’re okay with that.

Yes. That was a shameless plug. Deal with it. This is the internet.