Weiden+Kennedy, the ad agency best known for its 20-year relationship with Nike, recently made waves through big ad agencies when Nike parted ways with them to seek an agency with more prowess in digital media. Now, under the direction of Joakim Borgstrom, hired to the newly created role of Interactive Creative Director, W+K Amsterdam have launched a rebuttal against Nike’s vote of no-confidence in their interactive media skills: Karashin.com, an online campaign promoting AE’s violence-embracing game Burnout Dominator. Karashin actually refers to a Tibetan principle of “inner peace through outer violence”—in other words, relax by playing a video game where you get to crash cars and make things blow up.

The Karashin site is an interactive experience that plays out at its own pace, to the point where you might wonder if it’s practicing a different Tibetan philosophy, say, silent meditation? It makes the user wait and wonder a bit and forces him to time his clicks, something of a nod to a gaming experience, but the eventual payoff lets the user engage in some inner peace through outer violence…
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