Walmart officially launches the Empowering Women Together campaign through the retail giants Global Women's Economic Empowerment Initiative. The online destination Empowering Women Together gives shoppers who want to buy unique and interesting products the opportunity to do so while supporting small women-owned businesses around the world.

With each purchase, consumers lift and empower the women behind these products to create new jobs and improve both their own lives and the lives of their families and communities. Currently, Empowering Women Together is offering shoppers more than 200 items from 19 businesses in nine countries.

In the Initiatives own words:

Women in the world's economically-challenged nations − and even here in our own backyard − dream of a better life. Yet for most, entrepreneurial success is an exception, not because they lack the ability or drive, but because so often they lack the opportunity.
At Walmart, we're working to change that. As part of our commitment to empower women worldwide, we've launched Empowering Women Together, a Store For Good, and a dedicated space on Walmart.com that connects products from women-owned businesses around the world with U.S. consumers. Our hope is to provide these hard-working women with opportunities to improve their own lives, while creating new jobs and enhancing the lives of their families and their communities. Each supplier in the Empowering Women Together program is a woman-owned business or an aggregator with the mission of supporting women-owned businesses.

Mr. Worldwide, indeed: Pitbull will fly to Kodiak, Alaska, to visit the small island's Walmart store as part of a competition sponsored by the WalMart and Sheets by Listerine. The contest promised that the rapper would appear at whichever Walmart branch got the most likes on Facebook and, early on, it was hijacked by David Thorpe and Jon Hendren of the website Something Awful, who started a campaign to send Pitbull all the way to the Kodiak Walmart. As a result, the store's page netted over 71,000 likes, even though Kodiak's population is just over 6,000 according to the 2010 U.S. census.

Pitbull seems stoked, anyway. "I heard that Kodiak, Alaska, has the most likes due to someone who thinks he was playing a prank," the rapper said in the announcement video. "But you gotta understand, I'll go anywhere in the world for my fans." He even took the opportunity to extend an invitation to the pranksters. Nice work, Internet!
Via

Walmart thanks our troops for all they've done with a heartfelt new commercial created by The Martin Agency entitled "Big Sister." It's pretty hard not to get emotional when Mom walks into the room....nice work.
Credits:
Agency: The Martin Agency
Chief Creative Officer: John Norman
Client: Walmart
Group Creative Director: Joe Alexander
Creative Director: Vanessa Fortier
Senior Art Director: Eric Shi
Copywriter: Robin Bidwell
Executive Producer: Christina Cairo
Junior Producer: Emily Noechel
Broadcast Production Manager: Julie Basham
Director: Kinka Usher
Production Company: House of Usher
Executive Producer: Nancy Hacohen
Producer: Mark Walejko
Editor: Heidi Black
Assistant Editor: Rachael Waxler
Editorial Company: Whitehouse Post
Original Music: Beacon Street
Composer: Andrew Feltenstein
Executive Producer: Adrea Lavezzoli
Audio Mix: Eleven Sound
Engineer: Jeff Payne

Here is the latest commercial for MetLife entitled "Whistle" starring Snoopy and the Peanuts Gang characters. The ad introduces a whole new way to buy life insurance...in a box, with Snoopy on the cover, at Walmart.

MetLife introduces a brand new way to buy life insurance. And we're getting a little help from the Peanuts gang to explain just how easy it is. To get started, pick up a box at select Georgia and South Carolina Walmart stores today.
start.

Enjoy the Yodeling Cat as he sings Jingles Bells to us all on behalf of Walmart. Apparently this is a preview to soon air TV commercial.

Credits:
Ad Agency: The Martin Agency

Behind every great Christmas there's mum. The UK retailer ASDA (psst they are owned by Walmart) proves that with this great new TV advert. The ad has been getting some heat, but let's be honest in most homes (mine included, my mothers included, my sisters, my aunts, my best of friends) this ad got it just about right, so suck it up dads.

Credits:
Client: Asda
Advertising Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi.

El Rico

What happens when a stuntman, actor/director and screenwriter walk into a Gold Coast bar? They come up with the concept for an action fantasy film that is already raising eyebrows in Hollywood no joke. Rene Perrin, Avelino `El Rico' Lescot and Susan Macguillicuddy are the trio behind The Black Sun, which recently took out the Most Ambitious Screenplay award at the 2015 International Action on Film Festival in Los Angeles.

The locals are hoping the added hype surrounding their screenplay will push the project into production and attract the eye of distributors. Lescot, a Gold Coast-based actor, stuntman and filmmaker who has worked on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Peter Pan and The Condemned, said The Black Sun incorporates several genres.

``It's enchanting and mystical,'' he said.
``It's a gypsy, action, adventure, romance, western with a strong supernatural feel that is set in the Pacific Islands, Mexico, China, New Zealand and here.
``At the moment the film industry needs something different but financially manageable and that's The Black Sun.''

He said The Black Sun's `twist ending' had helped draw attention to the project. The film follows a warrior's worldwide journey on the Matariki boat, which Lescot said is `like another star of the film'. Lescot and Perrin have an impressive international fanbase thanks to the success of their action film Among Dead Men. It won several awards for best fight choreography and generated considerable profits in DVD sales in Canada, Germany, Thailand, Cambodia, Poland, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and Hong Kong. It also grossed several times its $7000 budget in DVD sales through Walmart in the US. Perrin, who has worked as a stunt performer on films such as The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Daybreakers, Nim's Island, Fool's Gold and Ghost Ship, said they wanted to combine their `love of action with a love of romance' in The Black Sun.

Balancing out the testosterone on the team is screenwriter Susan Macguillicuddy. Despite having worked with the likes of Cate Blanchett, Jessica Alba, Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffiths, Macguillicuddy said working with `the boys' on The Black Sun has been her `most cherished writing experience'.

``It's like we each started at one end of the canvas and worked our way to the middle, fine-tuning the parts of the script we liked,'' she said.
``It took us about a year and hundreds of meetings but we're happy with the finished product.
``We wanted to do something very avant garde with the genre and something new.
``Getting the Most Ambitious Screenplay award means we really pushed the genre, which is what we set out to do.''

International distributors have shown interest in The Black Sun and the trio is currently in the process of looking for investors.