Crash the Super Bowl

5 years ago Doritos had the idea of crowdsourcing their commercials on the biggest stage possible, the Super Bowl. At over $3 Million per thirty second slot, that was quite a risk. Proving that risk has its rewards, Doritos commercials have been consistently rated as the most loved for the past several years. Congratulations to our friends at Doritos, Frito Lay, and all the agencies involved in putting this together and allowing us to play a part. Read a great article about this HERE.

The Pinterest Craze

Every few months something in the social media space raises its hand and demands to be considered for the “Next Big Thing” award. Last year we saw Instagram, Google+, and Quora make a run (none of which have crossed over just yet). Right now Pinterest is the rage. What is Pinterest? Simply put, you see an image on the web you like, you “pin it” and it uploads to your Pinterest page where you compile them into themed “boards.” We fell in love with it early last year and found it great for keeping track of our travels, recipes, fashion, art, and much more. Recently we’ve heard reports that Pinterest is driving more web traffic than Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube combined. For brands, we recommend that you think of Pinterest as a place to propel conversations around whatever you make or sell. Read more HERE

Valentine’s Day

As Valentine’s day approaches it is interesting to see the various social media integrations and promotions that brands are using to sell more products. Jeweler Swarovski launched a mobile site called the Sparkling Valentine’s Day Assistant and Heineken created an interactive Facebook page allowing people to ask each other out on dates. Meanwhile for those without dates February 14 doesn’t have to be lonely, that’s the day Angry Birds debuts on Facebook!

Five Trends from Super Bowl Advertisers

Altimeter Group studied the brands that advertised during the Super Bowl and below are some of their findings:

• Trend 1) Brands heavily invested in promoting traditional websites
• Trend 2) Many did not promote a Call-to-Action
• Trend 3) Only a sixth of ads explicitly promoted social media
• Trend 4) Hash tag marketing emerged to stimulate continued engagement
• Trend 5) Cutting edge marketers teased with new marketing tactics

You can read the detailed analysis HERE.

How is that for a headline? It is a quote from mega new media/tech publisher and conference guru, Tim O’Reilly during a one-on-one interview he did with Jason Calacanis on Friday at this year’s SXSW conference.  O’Reilly told the story of how the government/military GPS program was made public during Reagan’s presidency paving the way for today’s location-based maps and corresponding applications.

I’m a longtime veteran of SXSW Music, but only a sophomore at SXSW Interactive.  This year’s SXSWi was incredible with attendance surging between 15,000 – 20,000 attendees.  A collection of techies, brands, nerds, hipsters, and foodies came together to learn, meet, eat, and drink.

This year’s standout technology was group messaging with GroupMe and Beluga leading the charge. The idea here is that you invite a small group of friends to follow and interact with you, thus avoiding all the clutter and keeping tabs on just the specific people you are most interested in hearing from.  That said, plenty of people were using last year’s darlings Foursquare and year before favorite Twitter to communicate where they were and what they were doing.

Celebrities were abound with sightings of Ashton Kutcher, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Pee Wee Herman stopping by parties, panels, and the IFC Crossroads House for interviews.

Also standing out were some significant brand activations.  Chevy was cutting into the local cab business by providing attendees with free rides in their Volts and other new cars, AT&T supplied much-needed phone recharge centers, and Pepsi had the largest party zone featuring Foursquare-sponsored four square tournaments and plenty of free PepsiMax.

Panels were spread out amongst numerous venues and standouts were AT&T’s head of social media Chris Baccus explaining the complexities of handling customer complaints via Facebook and Twitter, R/GA’s top brass advising on how to avoid your brand becoming obsolete and Wieden+Kennedy presenting the Old Spice case study to a packed room that left hundreds turned away at the door.

While the dense crowds at the Driskill and Four Season hotels made business meetings a challenge, there was still a lot of networking getting done.  Despite the occasional feeling of claustrophobia and exhaustion, SXSW continues to be the most informative and fun conference of the year.

Facebook Pages are Redesigned and Administrator Features are Added
Facebook recently redesigned Pages that look similar to the revamped personal profiles. Facebook offers page owners to preview and upgrade early to the new format (which will shortly become mandatory). You may have already noticed brands switching over to the new layout. If you have, you’ll notice:

• 5 Photos at the top of the page (like personal profiles)
• Navigation is now on the left vs. top of the page
• Activities from others are filtered into the news feed
• The “everyone” feature allows admins to highlight items as top wall posts
• By selecting the “Use Facebook as a Page” option in the account section, admins will be able to get notifications when fans interact with or post comments to a page
• Admins will be able to switch between speaking as the page, and as their own personal profiles

Not everyone is happy with these changes, but few ever are when it comes to change.  Read more HERE.

Facebook’s Next Big Media Move: Comments
Facebook is launching a new third-party commenting system in the upcoming weeks. Unlike Facebook’s “social plug-in” service, the new system involves “handling the log-in and publishing” and automatically “cross-promoting comments on individual’s Facebook walls, and possibly even promoting them as well on media outlets’ own ‘fan pages.” Interesting fact: the new service will have the ability to “surface high quality comments or help users identify trolls and spammers by assigning users an aggregated credibility score.”  Read more HERE.

Facebook Forcing “Credits” on Game Partners
By July Facebook will require all game partners use Facebook credits as their virtual payment processing system. Here are some facts associated with Facebook credits from the article:

• Credits currently processes more than 70% of virtual goods transactions on the network, spanning more than 350 applications
• Developers using Credits can keep 70% of the revenue from virtual goods transactions
• 10 FB Credits currently cost $1 for consumers

Read more HERE

Facebook Sponsored Stories Now Available in the Facebook Self-Serve Ad Tool
Facebook’s self-serve performance ad tool now allows Page, Place and application admins to create Sponsored Stories ads. The recently launched ad unit allows admins to pay for additional distribution of Page stories as well as user updates that mention them in Facebook’s ad space. Until now, these ads could only be bought through a Facebook managed brand advertising representative.  Read more HERE.

In a long-anticipated move into the e-book market, Google has officially launched its massive e-bookstore, bringing more than 3 million books, many of which are available free of charge, to any device that has app capabilities or has a web browser.

But what makes Google E-books better than those already dominating the space such as Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Apple? We’ve compiled the top 5 reasons why Google E-Books is changing up the game.

Free Material
Everybody loves getting something for nothing. Google E-books provides you with roughly three million books free of charge. Google E-books has the largest selection of public domain titles, allowing users to download tons of noteworthy titles without spending a penny.

Cross Platform Support
Google E-books supports any type of device that has access to a web browser. Instead of requiring users to purchase the titles through a single online store to read only on compatible readers, Google E-books allows customers to not only buy books from their own store, but also from any other online vendor that sells books in either PDF or EPUB formats. These downloads are then read by any device that has web browsing capabilities. Google E-Books works cross-platform with computer web browsers, smartphones with the Google eBook reader app, and eReader devices such as the iPad, Nook, Kobo eReader, and Aluratek eBook.

Automatic Syncing
Cross-platform usage would be pointless if nothing synced up. As you read your books on your computer, Android, iPhone, or iPad devices, Google E-Books will automatically sync across all platforms. If you begin reading in the morning on your iPad, you will be able to pick up right where you left off on your Android or iPhone device on your way to work.

Impressive List of Publishers
Google E-Books may have just launched, but nearly 4,000 publishers are already providing the store with content. Of these 4,000 publishers, almost all of the major players have jumped on board including Macmillan, Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette just to name a few.

A New Approach
Google’s approach to the e-book phenomenon is different from those already dominating the space. Because of the way Google decided to take on the challenge, they’ve created a brand new ecosystem which makes both retailers and affiliates, as well as publishers, all part of the e-book selling process for the very first time.

MSBNC.com

Weintraub points out that banner ads and other graphic-based ads won’t soon go away, but they should become more appealing by featuring content that pertains to readers’ needs based upon where they live and what other websites they’ve recently visited.

Click HERE to read more

H5CKBEHN277A