NBC’s iPad App Offers Full Videos

October, 2011

NBC’s iPad application is the perfect aid for anyone who may have missed their favorite show or forgot to DVR it. The new iPad application provides users with full video of their favorite shows for free. In addition to the videos, users can also play games and trivia based on the network’s line up. The app also has a customizable “myNBC” dashboard that boasts a view of your favorite shows and content that each user can personalize based on their preferences. This application is now available on the iTunes store.

Showtime’s “Homeland” Social Media Lab

September, 2011

To create more awareness around Showtime’s new show Homeland, the media company has created a social media lab on the show’s micro-site called the “Decryption Lab”. When users visit http://watchcareful.ly, they can view clips from the show, play one of four games, or visit the lab. While in the lab, users can encrypt Facebook or Twitter posts, as well as decrypt posts they have received. Users can also play the four “Carefully” games for the chance to learn more about the show. To learn more about this promotion, please visit SocialMediaExplorer.com.

Google Adds “+1″ Buttons To Mobile/Web Ads

September, 2011

Google announced last week that they will be adding their “+1″ button to their mobile and online ads moving forward. With the addition of the buttons to advertisements, Google can better implement and track social-driven advertisements. Going forward, the button will automatically be added to the advertisements, but advertisers do have the option to remove if they would prefer. To learn more about Google’s new “+1″ efforts, please visit MobileMarketingWatch.com.

Pandora Revamps Its Website

September, 2011

Popular music site Pandora has revamped their site and lifted the existing 40-hour listening cap. The site has moved away from the use of Flash, and is now built in HTML5 to increase the speed at which someone can move about the website. The music dashboard has been moved to the top of the website to allow users to search underneath without leaving the page, and a “shuffle” function has been added to create a mix-up of music possibilities. Social sharing has also been added to the music player. To learn more about the website re-haul, please visit Mashable.com.

LocalResponse Targets Tweets With Ads

September, 2011

Start-up company “LocalResponse” targets local advertisements to consumers by monitoring Tweets and check-ins. The site checks for users that have recently checked-in or tweeted about a local business establishment and provides them with offers that are tailored to that particular place. At this time, LocalResponse has been linked to GM and Verizon. To learn more about this start-up, please visit AdAge.com.

Weather Channel launches Social Site

August 2010

The Weather Channel launches The Weather Channel Social – featuring tweets with forecasts for their web, mobile and on-air platforms. The tweets will be paired with the relevant city location to feature real-time forecast conditions and add an element of “story-telling” to weather reporting. The tweets will appear in Weather Channel’s iPhone app, as well as on television. To further their initiative, The Weather Channel has also created 220 local Twitter feeds for cities. For more information, please see Mashable.

McDonald’s Succeeds with Drink Experiential

August, 2011

McDonald’s Canada created a giant ‘M’ ice sculpture at a summer beach in Alberta for an experiential marketing promotion. Ordinarily this would have been just one extra step towards a puddle of water, but this sculpture was special. McDonalds’ placed over 4,000 $1 coins inside the ice. Which just so happens to be the price of drinks at McDonald’s this summer.  For more information, and video, please see McDonald’s Canada.

MyFlickbooks Converts Videos to Flickbooks

July, 2011

MyFlickbooks released a new app for iOS enabled devices that allows users to upload videos up to fifteen seconds long and turn them into their own personal flickbooks. MyFlickbooks segments the videos into high quality frames and publishes the books for the price of twenty dollars. If your phone doesn’t have iOS, the application can be utilized by the MyFlickbooks website. For more information, please visit Tech Crunch.

BBC pairs with Facebook to stream TV

July, 2011

BBC is offering another form of viewing as a remedy to the recent price hike in Netflix subscriptions,  Although only one show, Doctor Who, is available, Facebook fans of the show are able to “check out” episodes for 48 hour periods right there on the social networking hub. Available in the U.S., Australia, Canada and New Zealand, the new platform could be a revolutionary turn in movie and TV renting. For more information, please see TIME Techland.

YouTube partners with CNN for debates

June, 2011

YouTube’s new partnership with CNN formally named THE CNN*YOUTUBE DEBATES, challenges presidential candidates in debates with questions from user-based videos. Viewers are able to send in live video, content, questions and comments as the debates are taking place. The concept was put into action this past Monday, June 13 when CNN held its first GOP debate. Some stars of the upcoming presidential election were tested as moderators accepted questions and comments through Facebook and Twitter with the use of the hashtag #CNNdebate. This forward-thinking use of technology is on the forefront of real-time politics. For more background and more information see FastCompany.

YouTube Town Hall Puts Congress on Stage

May , 2011

YouTube’s new channel is launching digital debates between members of Congress in town hall style “meetings”. YouTube Town Hall focuses on discussions on topics such as budget, economy, energy, Afghanistan, education and health care – chosen by the top political searches on Google. Each Congress member involved in the debate submits a video response on the subject to the channel to get their POV out, and viewers only find out party affiliation of the members AFTER the views are heard. YouTube has plans to begin accepting questions from viewers in the future.

Facebook Adds Brand Pages Tag In Photos

May, 2011

Facebook has announced that it is adding the ability to tag brand pages in consumer’s photos.  Currently, users are only able to tag other people with Facebook profiles in their photos uploaded to the site.  The new feature will allow you to tag a page in your photo, meaning that along with your best friends, you can also note the presence of your favorite brands in your photos.  For instance, consumers will be able to tag the Coke can or Chipotle burrito they are enjoying in a photo and link to to the corresponding brand pages.  The tagged photos will also appear on the brand page’s photo tab.  This could prove to be key for many brands since this added feature results in free advertising anytime their brand page is tagged in someone’s photo. For more information, see Mashable.

Glamour Magazine Adds SnapTags to Ads

April, 2011

Glamour Magazine has announced that it will feature SnapTags on advertisements in its September issue.  Advertisements in the magazine will have an icon placed in the corner that readers can photograph to “like” advertisers on Facebook and receive special offers for the brand.  The tags, created by SpyderLynk, will work not only with smartphones, but also with any camera phone.  SpyderLynk believes that by prominently featuring Facebook in the tag, the tags will be more appealing to consumers and increase the likelihood of consumers using them.  Glamour said that the tags were added to the magazine based on a high demand from advertisers have their advertising dollars help build their “social footprint”.  Glamour has also built an app for the magazine and iPad2 users will be able to click the tag in the corner of advertisements to automatically “like” the brand on Facebook and receive special offers. For more information, see AdAge.

YouTube Founders Purchase Delicious

April, 2011

YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen have announce that they have purchased Delicious from Yahoo! Delicious is a social bookmark and web sharing site that allows users to share and browse popular bookmarks and sites.  Delicious will now be run by AVOS, the new internet startup launched by Hurley and Chen.  In their press release, Chen and Hurley stated that they plan on making Delicious “easier and more fun” and “improve its ability to help users manage information overload”. While the transition from Yahoo! to AVOS will begin immediately, Yahoo! will continue to officially operate the site until July 2011.  Users will be asked to sign up for new accounts with AVOS inorder to ensure that their bookmarkes will be saved and transferred during the transition between companies.  For mor information, see Directory Well.

Facebook Launches Deals in Select Cities

April, 2011

Facebook is finally rolling out its Deals feature to compete alongside Groupon.  Five cities were chosen as test markets including Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego and San Francisco.  Deals will be featured in users’ news feeds and will also be sent through email.  Deals will also be able to be purchased by using Facebook credits as well as major credit cards.  Please visit moosylvania.com to read further on Facebook’s new Deals feature.

YouTube Crowdsources Ads for Nonprofits

April, 2011

YouTube’s new contest “Good Work” crowdsources ads for nonprofits for the chance to win a trip to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.  The contest is targeted towards members of the marketing/creative industry and is another example of the increasingly popular push to crowdsource creative work to the social network community. The contest starts with nonprofits submitting briefs to the You Tube Good Work site.  These briefs outline the mission of the nonprofit, their target audience, and what they would hope to see in and get out of a 60 sec video ad.  Creatives can then view these briefs and submit their 60 sec. ad spot. The ads will be posted to YouTube where users can vote on their favorites.  The ads with the top 75% of votes will move on to the next round.  The ads will then be judged by a panel of industry execs and be graded on their creative execution of the brief.  The top 5 submissions will be awarded a grand prize of an all expense paid trip and all access passes to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in June.  The top 5 videos will be screened at the festival for industry execs and influencers.  All videos must be submitted by May 9th and winners will be selected on May 21st.  For more information see You Tube Good Work Contest Site.

Amazon Kindle to Allow Library Book Lending

April, 2011

Amazon has announced that it will begin offering ebook lending through local libraries on its Kindle later this year.  The ebook lending will be organized through OverDrive, a popular ebook sharing platform that is used by over 11,000 local libraries and has already been adopted by other ebook readers such as the Barnes & Noble Nook and Sony Reader.  Through this platform, local libraries can buy subscription rights to ebook, and members of the library can then use their library accounts to “check out” these ebooks.  Users are allowed access to the ebook for 2 weeks, after this period their access is locked unless they renew the download through the library.  The ebooks work like regular book check outs in that when one user has the ebook “checked out”, no other users can download it through the library until the 2 week download period is up and the book is “returned”.  Through the Kindle, users can made annotations and add bookmarks with their Whispersync system.  These annotations and bookmarks will carry over to the next time the user “checks out” the book.  The move by Amazon to bring Kindle to OverDrive is seen as a way to bring ebook readers back into libraries and expand library’s membership base.  For more information, see CNN.

Britney Spears Promotes Album With Social Coupon

April, 2011

Britney Spears new album “Femme Fatale” was released at #1 on the Billboard charts in large part due to her promotion of the album through social coupon offers and social media efforts.  Jive Records paired with Crowd Factory’s Social Offer to offer incentives to influencers and increase awareness of the album release.  The offer was promoted on Spears’ website Britney.com where visitors were offered the chance to pre-order the album and share the offer with their friends.  If the visitor got 10 or more friends to visit Britney.com they would then receive a 20% off promo code to Britney’s catalog.  As a result, 30% of the traffic to Britney.com was generate through the offer and each sharer of the offer on average resulted in 6 friends visiting the site.  The success of the album release has been largely attributed to this promotion since it rewarded “superfans” while also spreading the message about the album launch to a wider audience than might have originally been reached.  In conjunction with the offer, Spears also released 10 second teaser videos on YouTube and started a Tumblr account to promote the album release and the special coupon. For more information, see Mashable.

Fox’s “Rio” Features Gamified Sweeps Site

April, 2011

20th Century Fox’s new movie “Rio”, in partnership with Chiquita, has created a micro site to house its ‘gamified’ “Make Your Way To Rio” sweepstakes.  The micro site is centered around the sweepstakes but has added multiple elements to make entry more engaging for consumers and promote continued involvement with the brand.  On the site, players complete tasks such as watching the move trailer, coloring in scenes from the movie, and tweeting/posting about the sweeps in order to unlock badges and receive prizes.  Thus far over 27,000 badges have been unlocked by participants on the site.  Prizes for the badges include ringtones, music from the movie, bananas from Chiquita, Xbox game systems, and a grand prize of a trip to Rio.  The site promotes increase usage and recruitment through team-play features in which users can play with friends as a team in order to unlock special badges.  There is also a newsfeed and leaderboard featuring all players activity which encourages players to keep competing.  The site also features real-time notification updating players on their progress and encouraging them to keep playing for added sweeps entries. For more information, see PromoMagazine.

New York Times Fashion on Tumblr

April, 2011

The New York Times has launch its first Tumblr account featuring its style and culture magazine, T. Other newspapers such was The Washington Post have recently started Tumblr accounts as well, but an increasing presence of fashion blogs and magazines on Tumblr has been noticeable over the past few months.  Fashion/lifestyle based content works particularly well on Tumblr since the posts are highly visually based and there is an easy re-blogging feature which helps content go viral more quickly.  T on Tumblr is largely centered around large glassy magazine quality photos with short blurbs of content rather than long more traditional blog posts.  For more information, see Mashable.

American Idol Sells Facebook Greeting Videos

March, 2011

American Idol is now offering Facebook fans the opportunity to send “Happy Birthday” or “Poke!” greetings from their favorite finalist to their friends for $1 per video.  Fans can choose a video of any of the 10 finalists on the reality TV show and what type of greeting they would like to be posted to their friend’s wall. The contestants were filmed infront of a green screen for these videos so when the video is posted by one fan to their friend’s wall, it appears as though the American Idol star is talking to the fan from their actual Facebook page and interacting with the page rather than appearing like a typical video embedded and posted to a wall.

These celebrity greetings are a product of a new company called Cameo Stars.  These greetings are gaining in popularity and companies are expected to start using them more to leverage their celebrity endorsements on social media platforms.  Under Armour plans to offer these videos of MMA star Georges St-Pierre as greetings users can send and the launch of the newest Kung Fu Panda film is expected to involve sendable character greetings through this platform as well. For more information, see The New York Times.

Rent Movies Through Facebook

March, 2011 Warner Bros. is now offering movie rentals through Facebook.  The service is only currently available in the U.S. and costs $3 per rental.  The Dark Knight is the only available movie to rent, but Warner Bros. plans on releasing more titles in the coming months.  Facebook users can also use Facebook credits to rent a title, which will cost 30 credits per movie and will have 48 hours to view the film.  For more information, visit <http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/facebook-starts-movie-rentals-takes-netflix-hulu-itunes/149274/>

Charlie Sheen Sets Record For Twitter

March, 2011

Charlie Sheen has set a new Guinness World Record for shortest time to reach 1 million followers on Twitter.  Charlie Sheen started his Twitter account @CharlieSheen on March 1 and shortly there after had 60,000 followers before he even posted his first tweet.  He reached 1 million Twitter followers after just 25 hours and 17 minutes.  According to Advertising Age, Sheen was able to get his account verified and publicized so quickly with the help of internet start up Ad.ly who brokered his account with Twitter. For more information see Mashable.

Step Inside with Johnnie Walker

February, 2011

Johnnie Walker gives their Facebook fans exclusive access to local racing activities, VIP parties and experiences and offers them coverage of exclusive events and interviews with their Gold Pass. From the perspective of a promotional agency who offers experiential marketing services, it’s great to see a brand that knows their target market so well and really capitalize on the relationship between Johnnie Walker consumers and their love for the racecar industry. Johnnie Walker knows their audience well and has done an impressive job in connecting with them.

Absolut Fans Share Their Stoop Stories

February, 2011

Fans of the Absolut Vodka Facebook page can get an inside look at the brand’s Limited Edition Brooklyn vodka – a product created in collaboration with Spike Lee. Recipes that feature Brooklyn as the leading spirit are available to download and fans can share their ‘Stoop Stories’ – stories about their love for Brooklyn, New York – and watch video clips of other Stoop Story submissions. From an agency standpoint, it’s fun to see how Absolut has taken advantage of one city – of its dwellers’ pride and passion for that culture – and channeled fans’ interest into the product. Absolut is garnering engagement from its consumers simply by allowing them, as complete strangers to one another, to share their stories about a city they all know and love. Not only are fans interacting with the brand, but they’re interacting with one another – and that’s something they will ultimately attribute to and remember by Absolut.

Create Perfect Cocktails with Patrón

February, 2011

Patrón Tequila has created the Patrón Cocktail Lab on Facebook for fans with a love for their product and a desire to mix it in innovative and original ways. Fans can submit their Patrón cocktail recipes, view recipes that expert Patrón mixologists have created and vote on their favorite drink submissions. Patrón also posts interesting and useful tips for cocktail creation and bartending. With the steady trend of molecular mixology prevalent in the spirits industry, the concept of a cocktail lab should seem simple and obvious – yet we don’t see it often, if ever. Patrón has created both a fun and educational environment in which their fans are able to engage with their brand and with one another – which ultimately gets Patrón to ice that top-of-mind spot that brands vie for. Consumers not only get to enjoy their time spent on the brand’s Facebook page, but they actually learn and become more knowledge about Patrón tequila and cocktail creation in general, so the whole experience overall becomes more valuable to them.

Snowball Fights with Jack Daniel’s

February, 2011

An app on the Jack Daniel’s Facebook page allows consumers to participate in a virtual snowball fight. Depending on their score, fans could win one of three Jack Daniel’s guitars plus any of 100 Jack Daniel’s t-shirts. The Jack Daniel’s brand has done an excellent job, from an agency standpoint, in encouraging and initiating a viral effect. The sharing potential of this app is incredibly high – the target demographic of Jack Daniel’s fans will be very entertained by putting pictures of their friends on the head of the snowman, and will not hesitate to share their scores with everyone on Facebook. Their Facebook friends will then be intrigued when they see the shared link to see what the virtual snowball fight is all about – and so the snowball effect begins (no pun intended).

Kahlúa Fans Win Delicioso Night In

February, 2011

On the Kahlúa Facebook page, fans can enter the sweepstakes for a chance to win a ‘Delicioso Night In’ in New York City, which includes a dinner prepared by celebrity chef Aarón Sánches and a trip to Veracruz, Mexico for four days and three nights with their friends to explore and experience the culture that created Kahlúa. The brand is leveraging their history and culture to create a potentially unforgettable experience for their fans.

Upload Facebook Photo For Donation

February, 2011

New Belgium Brewing company has launched a new Facebook promotion that asks users to upload photos and videos of their dogs. For every photo uploaded, New Belgium will donate $1 to a local animal shelter. Users also are entered to win weekly prizes for every upload and once per week one dog is named “Mighty Dog of the week”.  The promotion was launched to support New Belgium’s new seasonal brew “Might Arrow” that is available until April. So far over $4,500 has been raised through the campaign. For more information, see New Belgium Facebook.

Twitter Trending Topics Revealed

February 16, 2011

A recent study from HP’s Social Computing Research Group gives insights into Twitter’s Trending Topic algorithm. More than 16 million tweets covering 3,361 different trending topics between September and October 2010 were analyzed for research. Research found that the algorithm looks for specific subjects that have a notable reach across Twitter, rather than how often the topic is tweeted . For example, 31% of trending topics are retweeted, and 72% of the retweets come from mainstream media outlets, such as NY Times, ESPN and Huffington Post – which all retweeted at least 50 different treding topics over the research period.