TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

HP is using celebrities to advertise the TouchPad:

Tying its marketing to Mr. Brand and Miranda Cosgrove and Lea Michele — stars of Nickelodeon’s “iCarly” and Fox Broadcasting’s “Glee,” respectively — H.P. is underscoring its slogan that the TouchPad “Works Like Nothing Else.”

And to add a little swagger, the company also hired Manny Pacquiao, the champion Filipino welterweight boxer, politician and aspiring singer, to advertise its compact Veer smartphone and its multitouch tablet.

(Via Lessien.)

Here are the Russell Brand TouchPad spots, if you haven’t seen them. Most of them are dreadful.

They need to do something to grab attention from the iPad and rise over the sea of boring Android tablets, though, and they may succeed at that. It may at least get it into people’s minds—”Oh, there’s another tablet available other than the iPad”—and that might be enough.

This also indicates that HP thinks youth are one of their target markets for the device, which is kind of odd. There’s nothing very exciting about it right now for younger people, besides perhaps Flash-support in the browser, but once they actually use it I don’t think they’ll find that much of an advantage.