So A1 Steak Sauce is having a singing contest. People can submit videos of themselves singing about how much they love A1 Steak Sauce. Even Meatloaf (the singer, not the meat) is in on the act belting out his famous "I Would Do AnyThing For Love." ballad. Except, in this case, he'd do anything for A1.
It's sort of funny. But sad also. We'd love to see Meatloaf return to his Bat Out of Hell glory days but that sort of greatness usually only comes around just once so we'll just have to settle for an A1 commercial.
Following leaked revelations Twitter will take in as much as $20 million or so per month by the fourth quarter of 2010, it appears the company is testing a new contextual advertising system that will target ads to people based upon the contents of their tweets.
Saul Hansell of the New York Times tweeted yesterday he's apparently in on the test and will have more to report at a later date.
Inline contextual advertising on Twitter might not be such a bad thing. If it's relevant. If it's not too frequent. And if it actually serves a person's needs. Time and testing will address that but one thing is clear. Either through fees, ad revenue or some other source, Twitter does need to start making money. Even the best services can't live on VC money indefinitely.
Twitter, of course, states all this leaked information is inaccurate and unofficial. But, there may be a reality TV show in the works called Final Tweet. Seriously. That has to be a joke.
Why anyone hasn't thought of this witty little word play is beyond us but non-profit Wherever the Need, with help from Skadaddle Media, is having fun with it. The effort aims to call attention to the importance of sanitation and to raise money to build eco-sanitation toilets for third world countries.
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- Random hot ad of the day with Argentinian actress, singer and model Luisana Lopilato
- All you ever wanted to know about Gen Y and why they're not victims of a coddled upbringing but victims of a poor economy.
- Check out this Huffington Post interview with Alex Bogusky during which he talks about the long term economic impact of social media on traditional media.
- Sounding quite a bit more blabble-mouthed than his "Beuller? Bueller?" days, Ben Stein is featured in a new commercial for online credit service FreeScore.
What's a marketing campaign these days without a dollop up Twitter thrown in for good measure? A bad one if you ask any one of those self-style social media gurus. So it makes perfect sense that, yet again, something's being promoted on Twitter.
This time it's Perez Hilton doing the promoting and Sony Picture's The Ugly Truth getting the tweetlicious hype. According to BlogAds' Henry Copeland, whose company serves ads on perezhilton.com, "Readers will tweet their best dating advice to @uglytruthmovie. Their tweets will be featured on PerezHilton.com, where readers will rate the dating tips. The top 10 tips will be featured on the site this Friday. Perez is doing sponsored tweets (clearly marked) to promote the contest."
And yea, the movie's got a great update to the When Harry Met Sally orgasm seen. Except the orgasm isn't fake this time.
Don't you wish you could do something more with your friends on Facebook that poke them, tag them or comment on their status updates? Well, thanks to the Deep Focus-created Facebook app Make A Friend Famous, now you can.
The application is a Fan page-based contest whereby friends take on the roles of Entourage's E and Vince and manage themselves to the top. People vote for the best client/ manager team and the winners get to appear on a billboard in LA and an all-expenses-paid trip to go see it.
Now stop working and go pretend you're E or Vince.
"We know you have a choice in airlines. Thanks for flying United." Dave Carroll acknowledges that choice and won't be flying United again anytime soon. He claims the airline broke his $3,500 Taylor guitar when he was on a trip with his band, Sons of Maxwell. For a year, Carroll attempted to get compensation but the airline refused.
So what did he do? He wrote a song called United Breaks Guitars. Actually, he wrote three songs. One's out. The second is in production and the third is on the way.
Yup. If you're a brand and you anger someone with an audience, there's no escape. We have no idea if United will notice or care about Carroll's efforts but we're happy to do our part educating brands about the power of the individual when handed the internet.
Ever the mysterious one, AdWeak, has returned once again to tear apart the ad industry. Never heard of AdWeak? AdWeak was the George Parker of 2002. The AgencySpy with a heavy dose of insiderism. Adrants with far more imagination. AdWeak routinely skewered the industry with witty spoofs and The Onion-style reporting.
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Social Media got you down? Confused by all the hype? Sick of "social media strategists" knocking on your door all day long? With the introduction of ViralHeat, you'll no longer have to deal with these bothersome headaches. Nope. For just $9.99 per month you'll get a full suite of tools to monitor and analyze all the social media bullshit swirling around the toilet of today's marketing cesspool.
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So Advertising Age is all over agencies today for their use (or lack thereof) of Twitter. A destined to be classic quote from a Euro RSCG spokesperson reads, "We're developing our Twitter strategy and in the meantime want to hold onto the name. It's a Catch-22: You don't want your Twitter handle stolen, but you also don't want to start using it before you're really ready."
On the one hand, all well and good. No one wants to make a fool of themselves. On the other hand, this is not rocket science. Certainly it's easier for a random individual to join Twitter and use it any way they see fit. That, however, is not entirely the case for a brand, an agency or an agency representing a brand.
While the wonderful world of social media is, as everyone insists, supposed to be one gigantic, happy conversation, brands, because they are more than one person, need an agreed upon approach to using the medium. But that doesn't mean they have to over engineer it or have every last detail of that "strategy" in place before they dip their toe.
Why? Because you can't develop a "strategy" unless you know the medium and you can't know the medium unless you use it. Yes, it is a bit of a Catch-22 but the Catch-22, itself, is a Catch-22.
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