Pink Ponies: A Case Study (Must See)

Making an marketing campaign into something more has always been a problem for marketers. Creating a movement needs careful research, a big idea, an integrated campaign, buzz, new media and techniques, and engagement. The John St. case study shown above is an example of how they made a campaign into a movement.

This is marketing in a very simple form, yet marketers still have problems realizing the same results as this case study. This is great presentation and shows that marketers should slow down, and simplify things a little bit.

Social Media Metrics

Social media is becoming everything, and everyone knows its worth a lot of money to invest in it. However, to this day there has been no concrete way of measuring the success, value of ROI, etc on social media. The Following article

Google Science Fair

 

If you haven't already heard, Google has launched a science fair for students from all over the world. Google encourages young student scientists to submit their projects, discoveries and inventions and to give global visibility to their creations.

This is one of the most creative uses of encouraging young minds to participate in the web in an educational way to date. The ad, shown above, is also very creative in its sheer quirky fun science attitude. This idea is quickly gone

Great Brand Marketing by SpanAir: "Unexpected Luggage"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW5Xo4QrSBw

Coming home on a flight Christmas Eve is not the best way to put you in a good mood. Just a few weeks ago, a SpanAir flight to Las Palmas landed in the middle of the night on Christmas Morning, and SpanAir gave the passengers of that flight a little bit brighter of a Christmas.

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Nike vs. Under Armour National Championship

In the competitive world of competitive sports, one name has always stood out above the rest, Nike. Yesterday, Nike's brand baby U of Oregon took on Auburn in the BCS National Championship football game.

Leading up to the game was an abundance of marketing stunts by both sides to get the upper hand in raising support for their team/brand. Sunday night, Nike was projecting the U of O logo across Camelback Mountain in Scottsdale, while Under Armour

Brazilian Custom Kitchens Kick Ass

Formaplas shines with these new ads showcasing their ability to make the perfect kitchen for you lifestyle. The Flinstones, Jetsons, and the Pink Panther are all customers, you should be too.







“Formaplas custom-made kitchens. unique like their owners. Formaplas. For a life less ordinary.”

Advertising Agency: Fórmula Comunicação, Florianópolis, Brazil

Google's 2011 SEO Wishlist

For those looking to optimize the search engine marketing for their website, Google has a few tips for you in order to meet their needs and thus make you at the top of their "good" list. A WebmasterWorld thread started by moderator, GooodROI, has SEOs and webmasters sharing the SEO Checklist for the new year, 2011.

Here are some of those items in the thread:

Most "Liked" Companies on Facebook Coming into 2011

A ranking that has had not so much importance in the past may become the measure of a company's social marketing (arguably marketing in general) power. The most popular companies on Facebook have more impression and more access to their fans than even those who spend millions on television advertising. And there not paying anything for it! Expect companies to put more money and more importance on these rankings this year.

The largest following of fans is awarded to

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'Golden Voice' Homeless Man New Voice for Kraft

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rPFvLUWkzs

Another viral video sweeps the nation as a Ted Williams, a homeless man who lives in Ohio, displays a powerful voice that will make your jaw drop in surprise/amazement. Immediately becoming a YouTube sensation, job offers started pouring in, including a position with the Cleveland Cavaliers doing voiceovers at games.

Kraft Foods was also one of the companies that fell for the charm of Williams, reportedly has already finished a commercial with him. Kraft Spokeswoman Lynne Galia says, “Like many others, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and our ad agency

Heineken's "The Entrance" Falls Short of Potential

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLgetLmlggA&has_verified=1

Heineken and Wieden + Kennedy recently released this new ad with all the makings to be the "most interesting man on earth" for the younger generations. Within the first 5 seconds of seeing this commercial, I stopped the ad, and for a moment thought this commercial had all the makings to be awesome, I mean abso.lutely. Awesome. I stopped it directly as

Youku Gets Under the Spotlight with Hollywood

Warner Bros. and Youku, China’s leading online video company, have struck a deal signaling Hollywood’s latest push into the world’s fastest growing market for entertainment content, announcing on Tuesday they will stream the action thriller Inception to paying Chinese Web surfers.

Question is, how many are there? In China, where 2010 box office receipts jumped 61% on the year to reach $1.47 billion and there are 450 million Web surfers, film studios have yet to figure out how to monetize Chinese thirst for films via the Internet.

Youku, who has been battling with their business model in terms of profiting from their service, is hoping that this new advertisement-free video-on-demand service 5 yuan ($0.75) each for a one-time view of "Inception" will become a popular trend among China.

“Since we launched the paid service last year we’ve discovered there was plenty of demand from our customers for movie content but there was a bottleneck in the payment solutions.  Now we’ve sorted that out and hope that this is a beginning for something new and exciting,” says Koo, founder of Youku.

Starbucks Makes a "Bold" Move

To celebrate its 40th Anniversary, Starbucks Corp. has unveiled a new, simpler logo. The logo, seen above, has removed the "Starbucks Coffee" ring around the now bigger and bolder mermaid that will now be Starbucks Corporation. The leaders of the company, in press conferences have stated that the Starbucks brand is no longer just coffee, and that the new logo has been changed to embody that idea, to have more products in supermarkets and other things that have no coffee inside.

Not too long ago, in October, another well-known brand name simplified their brand

The Airline That Puts the People First Does It Again

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnqIe3MGP9Y&feature=channel

Southwest Airlines Flys Over the Competition With They're New Ad Campaign.  Any tv goer who watches any one of these new commercials will know the pain of having to pay a RIDICULOUS changing fee when switching flights. It happens all the time, and yet no airline has listened, until now. Southwest has cut out the fee of changing flights after you've booked and  in doing so, has firmly placed itself as the perfect example of a business that puts its customers first, not a business' greed.

Future of Facebook Pt. 1

Over the last few weeks, Facebook has been receiving attention for becoming perhaps the solidified #1 website, over google. Facebook has been a very fluid changing organism that continues to impress and see the future very well. So today we're going to go a little more into what we see the "book" doing these next few years.

What is Facebook? I think that 3 years ago this question was somewhat simple to answer. Its a social network where college students and the younger generations were able to express there words and pictures between friends. However, today is a much different "book". With everyones mom, dog, and employer on the book, it seems as though Facebook is surely soon to lose its hip appeal in our even younger generations (12-18). Facebook has done a very intelligent thing, however, its started to make facebook a business, finally. Knowing that there is only limited time left on the lifespan of facebooks "coolness", Mark Zucker... has started selling out for the big money.

In a recent article, we discussed how JC Penney became the first major store to officially put its entire store on Facebook. This includes the ability to buy clothing. There is no doubt that many brands will follow. Following in this trend Facebook is removing the need for a search engine such as google, as they are creating their own web within the web. However, this is not the facebook that our younger generation will be attracted to. Its just not, in the history of our innovative culture movers, we have always moved away from the overly popular and towards something more simple and less noisy than that which the Facebook monster is becoming.

Here is an image showing the activity of Facebook from around the world.



There is no doubt in my mind that Facebook is the most powerful website in the world right now, and theres no reason why you, as a business person, or even as an individual, shouldn't use the book as a marketing tool. We here, are just stating that the this is about the top of the peak for Facebook, here in the next year or two.

And the Goldman Sachs Investment, this is exactly how things should shake out if Facebook was to take a plunge in the next couple years. The folks at Goldman Sachs, as upstanding citizens as they are, are interested in making a quick buck. Let's just assume that they bought a portion of this company to make money. The immediate future of Facebook is obviously very bright, everyone from around the world is joining the sight at an unstoppable rate. Next, the business' are coming into Facebook, also at an unstoppable rate, e.g. my corner newspaper stand guy just sent me a business "like" request! The value of Facebook from an outside perspective is growing hugely. However, Mark Z is a now thinking like a businessman, no longer a startup entrepreneur, and we know this because he's now in the good company of the fellows at Goldman Sachs.

Facebook is comitting suicide, slowly, but they're doing it while making a lot of money, and I'm assuming Mark Z is okay with that.

Next week we'll have a "part 2" of the future of Facebook on how we at thebestdamnmarketingblog see things going, and talking more about why and how Facebook is killing itself. Until then, please let us know what you think  will be happening with Facebook in the future!?!

Delicious' Big Fall is Potentially Your Big Gain

Web-based bookmarking startups saw huge upswings in traffic in the lsat few days of December. These swings follow the leaked news the Yahoo's Delicious may be shut down or sold off soon. Where will you get you're bookmarking service from you ask?

New sites such as YourVersion, Histori.us, and Springpad are soaking up the fleeing Delicious users, making an easy import of their bookmarks to the new site. Yahoo claims that it wants to sell the app and that users should not jump ship, but its difficult to say who will buy Delicious. Financial struggles and a deep integration into the technology of Yahoo make the site a not so attractive buy.

Amazing Marketing Moves

In the wake of social marketings' big growth, some companies have been more innovative and understanding of the powers that this new beast can have. And although this example is not new, several months ago in fact, the idea is still the same, there has never been a more opportune time to create involvement with a brand.

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Nike Jordan: Agent D3 Escape

In "Escape," the latest installment of W+K/N.Y.'s "Dominate Another Day" campaign for Nike Jordan brand, Dwayne Wade, aka Agent D3 taps his unique combo of skills to tackle the Zen Master.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTHY0I6CQbc