Traditionally Halloween is a huge event in the US, but more and more countries globally are getting involved, particularly the UK (where it's become nearly as big as it is across the Atlantic), Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Here is our pick of the most scary ad campaigns for Halloween, but comment below with your favourite Halloween advertisements.

Last weekend we saw another awkward media campaign and this time it came from the popular alcohol brand Guinness.

Until recently, it was difficult to differentiate one consumer technology store from the next in the US – they all sold more or less the same products and provided the same level of service.

Fast forward.

Today, many businesses are aggressively searching for ways to stand out from competitors, while earning consumer trust. In fact, electronics and technology retailers are looking to technology solutions companies to help boost their brand and in turn positively impact their bottom line.

Video is one of the most versatile and valuable tools that modern marketers can have in their box of tricks – you do have a box of tricks, right? It enables you to craft a message you’re happy with, told in the way you want to tell it, consistently and to everyone. And it’s the ultimate flexible communication tool: you create it once and publish it everywhere; your website, Facebook page, YouTube channel, presentations… you get the picture.

The point of a good video is to show your clients and prospective clients what your additional copy tells them. Traditionally, if someone lands on your site, they’re faced with a pretty straightforward option; navigate and read. But, this takes time and mental effort. Most people are lazy. I’m lazy. I bet even you’re lazy (sometimes).

To make sure that there’s plenty of cool stuff for you to check out, we’ve added 10 new case studies to the Cream database this week. For all the latest innovations from around the world, be sure to check them out. We’ve got some snuggly OOH billboards in Canada, Captivating Tales from Nivea, a revamped online news offering from St John Ambulance in Australia and a global contest from Metro in Latin America, plus many more.

We all know that Brazil is known globally for its creativity, vibrancy and passion. Its recent uprising has highlighted the desire of a cross-section of its population to be heard. Sergio Gordilho, president and chief operating officer at Brazilian creative agency Africa spoke recently at The Festival of Media LatAm on what recent events demonstrate about creativity in the country and how, and if ad land should respond.

Check out his presentation below:

And here’s one of our favourite campaigns from Africa in the Cream database:

Budweiser – The Return of Vinyl

As I'm sure you may have heard, it’s been a pretty bad week for British Gas. By 3pm on the 17^th October it had received an outstanding amount of tweets via its #AskBG hashtag (roughly around 11,500). A pretty triumphant social media campaign you may be thinking, right? Oh you couldn’t be more wrong.

We all get into a mental rut sometimes.

This is usually accompanied by a cloying sameness: the same commute, the same magazines, the same pictures of someone else’s dessert flowing through your Facebook page (sigh). Creativity really doesn’t prefer to manifest itself under those kinds of conditions.

To remain as creative as we can be we need to shake it up and get different stimulus through the brain to keep our thoughts fresh. Jumpstarting creativity is really only possible when you put some NEW items in there to be creative with. Why is this important? Breakthrough ideas are generally interpretations or re-combinations of old ideas – you either have not made a new connection on the synaptic level yet, or you just don’t have the right raw material at your disposal to re-combine in surprising new ways.

With this in mind, if you find yourself feeling as though your creativity is not flowing as easily as it should, some of the following ideas will help you to see things from a new perspective: