Lest anyone accuse us of ignoring negative publicity about a company we're in bed with (which we very much are when it comes to ad:tech), it's our duty to let you know about a little pay for play snafu ad:tech found itself in when it offered "key influencers" free or discounted access to its New York conference in exchange for three pieces of media coverage. The media coverage could take the form of a blog post, a Tweet or a mention on Facebook.
more »
The most loved and hated socnet du moment is partnering with Crushpad, a company that lets amateurs make, sell, brand and market their own wines -- to produce a Twitter-branded Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
1/4 of the proceeds for the project, dubbed The Fledgling Initiative, go to a nonprofit called Room to Read, which promotes literacy for children in places like Sri Lanka, India, Laos, Zambia and Nepal.
According to Biz Stone and Ev Williams, the partnership's in keeping with their commitment to grow Twitter -- "because if you can't read you can't tweet!"
So there you have it. Ignite a future for the high-profile navel-gazers of tomorrow with your own bottle of Twitter wine, which goes for $20 a pop. Every case sold buys 60 local language books for Room to Read. You can also keep up with The Fledgling Initiative and find ways to get involved by following @fledgling.
With help from Crispin Porter + Bogusky (featuring built-in tweetage from @bogusky hisself!), two intrepid messengers from Brammo are on a mission to present President Obama with the most energy-efficient electric vehicle in America: the Brammo Enertia powercycle.
The pair adds a dash of bloggable epic to the quest by road-trippin' it from Detroit to Washington, DC: the route automotive CEOs took when they made their pilgrimages to beg for bailout aid.
"But instead of seeking aid, were going to present President Obama with a homegrown solution to the transportation crisis," the pair writes gleefully.
To succeed in their quest, dubbed ShockingBarack, they're depending on little more than "the kindness of everyday Americans." Visit the ShockingBarack website to offer them a place to crash, a source that'll help them get in touch with the President or an outlet to fuel their motorbikes. (They promise to reimburse you the $0.30 it takes to charge them.)
If you lack the inclination or the geographic convenience to do either, follow the journey. The latest video -- where they visit the Mayor of Adrian bearing a peace offering of donuts -- appears below.
more »
"Not only am I a terrible copywriter but my client actually approved this shit." That's the apparent confession of a DeVito Verdi New York creative during a Copywriters Anonymous meeting earlier this week. The copywriter was referring to recent television commercial created for client Meijer, a Midwest-based retailer. You can view the disaster here.
But that's not what we're really talking about here. The retailer recently launched a Halloween promotion that, OMG, lets you make a video of yourself wearing a Halloween mask! It's really easy. Here's what you do.
1. Fire up your webcam (Oops, don't have one)
2. Go to http://meijerhalloween.com and oops. You have to give Adobe Flash Player permission to access your webcam and microphone which you don't have. No worries, we'll just check it out anyway.
3. Click Allow and oops. "Total Immersion D'Fusion Web Plug-in Installation Required." Say what? Never heard of that. (Why do we need yet another plug in when Flash would have worked just fine?)
4. Throw your hands up and download the plug in anyway.
5. Refresh.
6. View screen as it reload and, again, tells you, "Total Immersion D'Fusion Web Plug-in Installation Required." (Um, say what? We already did that.)
7. Oh wait. Note onscreen verbiage, "You have to manually launch it."
8. Proceed to waste more time digging around your hard drive to find out where exactly that weird ass plug in downloaded to.
9. Give up and move on with your day.
And if you're the one reviewing this less than wonderful Halloween promotion:
10. Feel sorry for the creator who sent you the work and link to what one of these video creations would look like.
11. View the video and, again, feel sorry for the person who sent you this work because you know them.
12. Don't publicly out them because your not a dick and don't want to hurt their feelings by telling them this is one of the lamest pieces of shit you've reviewed in a long time.
13. Have second thoughts about mentioning this at all.
14. Then click the Publish button. Because it's your job.
Pardon the conference-related commercial interruption but we feel it's our duty as a respected advertising industry media outlet to make sure everyone knows where the wilds thing are during a conference. Oops, bad movie pun but there will be wild things and there will be parties. They'll be in Las Vegas and they'll be during BlogworldExpo occurring this week Thursday through Saturday.
Aside from the fact it's a great conference (you can read about last year's here), there will be many, many social events where conference goers can go to kick back and relax or, conversely, get so inebriated they find themselves in a hotel room bed the next morning with a person whose name ever so awkwardly escapes them.
You decide how you want your night to play out but the least we can do is tell you where you can get your night started. So, here's the list of parties to be held this week at Blogworld. No doubt there will be more added but here's a starting point.
So be good. Or be bad. It's Vegas. It's your choice.
This is part two of our IZEAfest coverage. Part one is here. After the Icebar party and late night hotel room shenanigans, day two of IZEAfest in Orlando kicked off to the more subdued (and late) start. We'll be blunt. We missed the entire first half of day two having slept a bit late and getting caught up in picture editing and work. Though we hear the speakers were great.
Aaron Brazell gave the keynote and spoke to the issue of finding an audience, cultivating that audience and becoming a leader in one's area of expertise. Next Liz Strauss covered the area of leveraging relationships. Akin to building yourself up and establishing yourself as the go to person in a particular space, developing and maintaining relationships with others in the space is key to your continued success.
 After lunch Brett Bumeter moderated a panel which included George Smith, John Andrews, Joseph Jaffe and Zena Weist. This panel dove into the realm of advertiser's needs and wants in the social media space and how that relates to bloggers creating content. While many topics such as urging marketers to join, listen and participate in social media were covered, a key take away was the need to target. And that's what blogging and certain aspects of social media can offer marketers, And, conversely, offer opportunity to anyone with the skills in a particular area to give that marketer a targeted pathway to building a customer base.
more »
Social media is great, right? It's fun. It's social. It's amusing. But it's also a serious form of communication and interaction businesses can use to connect with their customers. If that sounds like a line out of a social media conference description, it pretty much is.
Adrants is supporting Business Development Institute's The Social Consumer B2C Case Studies & Rountables Conference occurring November 12 at the Graduate Center of The City University of NY from 8AM to 1PM.
At the conference you will hear case studies from McDonald's and its Voice of McDonald's campaign, Intuit and its iPhone application, Allstate Insurance and its use of blogs, and user-generated content, JetBlue and its 'social customer service" and Roger Smith Hotel, the New York City mecca for all things social media.
Roundtables will include expanded discussion on the presented case studies as well as additional topics.
If you're interested in attending, check out the details here.
- The Michelin Man is getting makeover. He's transforming into a "tire-chucking superhero." OK, then.
- WONGDOODY: The company, along with a few lucky staffers, will be featured on next week's Oct. 14 episode of "America's Next Top Model" as part of a "challenge" experienced by the season's petite models.
- Ooo. Ooo. Here's a good one from a reader: Bridge Worldwide, an ad agency in Ohio, is having employees spend the day selling the CMO's new book, Marketing With Meaning. They've sent my company four unsolicited emails about it, in addition to spamming social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter. Marketing With Meaning? I don't think these people understand what irony is.
- This is what those New York creatives who charge $750 per hour do with the money.
- Outside Magazine enters the world of Harry Potter moving media.
- Check out Milkquarious. It's about a rock idol, White Gold, who swears by the power of milk for strong bones, hair, teeth and nails.
- Yellow Pages guerrilla marketing campaign hits the target.
Yet another Twitter-based promotion. Yawn. In fact, we're so tired of these things we can't even write about them anymore, so we're going let a Twipple representative tell you about the promotion. Oh wait, we can't be tired of this. There's a quote from Adrants right on the Twipple home page. Guess we should be nice. But anyway, we're still letting them tell you about it.
"Under my guise of Twipple I'm accepting emails to me - or to one of my Kind Agents - to perform acts of kindness on a nominated party.
So, the successfully nominated friend or colleague will wonder (happily) why someone has just bought them a coffee. As they leave, they see someone drop a wallet, when they hand it over the person says, hey, here's $40 for being cool. As part of the nomination Twipple will ask for some loose details on likes dislikes.
They may turn the corner and be pleased to have the most gorgeous man/woman say "hi" and compliment them.
You get the idea?"
Not really but we'll just go with it for fun. Already, Twipple has 72 random acts of kindness and is now selling items and donating the proceeds to NY Cares.
- Toyota and Saatchi get sued for freaking a woman out with their stalkerish Matrix campaign.
- If you guys are in NYC next week, join me at an AdForum social media sesh called Brand Servants or Brand Masters?. I think you can guess what it's about and why it might be relevant. Entry's $95; it'll be two hours long.
- Social media summed up.
- The October 23 deadline for the Viral Film Festival, held by Vanksen, fast approaches! Get your cool viral work in and see it projected over a panoply of drunk people in Paris on November 26. No cost to enter; this is all for the love of the crowd. (And some goodwill for Vanksen, natch.)
- One tweet you probably don't want.
- Something about nosepicking.
- NPR wants hyperlocal journos.
|
