Fantastic new product at the Farmer’s Market shows just how disgusting ocean pollution really is, especially when it ends up where we live.

Star Wars is having an incredible revival from Adidas Shoes to Star Wars Strippers. Brings new meaning to the light saber.

We were in this Zappos pitch. Even though it kills me, I like this. It shows their culture and service.

Captain Kirk has his own social networking site. And the biggest surprise is, it’s really Shatner.

The new face of Chiquita Bananas or should I say new faces?

Interesting blog with some great information on murderers, right-wingers and lots of other stuff that keeps the world spinning round.

Again, paper comes to life. Makes we want to grab the Xacto.

Great tourism ads using expressive fonts.

Nicely designed video for UNICEF.

Tostitos Salsa goes outside the Vimeo box.

KLM seats are like floating on air. Having this pole up my butt for 14 hours might hurt a bit though.

Most of this stuff in the Panadol ads would give me a headache as well.

Simple but true Viagra party favor.

A quick lesson on how to report the news. And a funny one.

The old pull-the-tablecloth-off-the-table-without-breaking-the-dishes-using-a-motorcycle trick.

The best Walmart commercial I’ve ever seen.

A new Google reader that I like and actually understand. Unlike some of the other stuff from Google lately.

Austin is happening and you can watch.

That is this week’s fun. Until next time.

Google by the numbers. They seem to be doing well.

Chuck Liddell should put some clothes on and work out longer. He might win more fights.

This makes delivery look easy.

Incredible Target display in Times Square featuring Shaun White. I’m sorry I missed it when I was there.

I don’t know how I feel about massaging a card, but it’s a great way to get a point across.

More stuff about being a man from French Connection. He knows not of sequins, only of skinny clothes.

My new favorite ad. And I can attest that Old Spice does not smell like a lady. It’s definitely Man Stench:

Free wallpapers from one of my favorites, Mark Weaver.

A great site filled with wonderful stuff to think about.

Some great new infographics.

Something that mixes all those Mad Men secretaries with new iPhone technology.

Everyone is on Facebook now. I don’t feel special anymore.

I pity the fool who eats Mr. T for breakfast.

Two of the many sites for the movie The Crazies. It looks like fun. Here’s one and here’s another.

Window-shopping for real with your iPhone.

Don’t leave home without your glow.

Google won by simply being themselves. The eTrade babies’ “milkaholic” ad was a winner. Punxsutawney Polamalu is not only difficult to spell – it was also fairly creepy, but effective. Coke, while easy to spell, was painfully irrelevant. The GoDaddy ads should just go away.

That’s the general consensus from a solid hour of R&R Partners’ Monday morning quarterbacking of the advertising blitz surrounding that roman numeral-suffixed game played the day before. Our panel of critics included people from all disciplines within the agency.

In case you used commercial breaks for something other than awaiting the unveiling of new advertisements, every spot is easily viewable online. Check out YouTube’s channel, where you can vote for your favorite, or Fox/MSN’s site, which organizes them by quarter.

Overall, our panel thought the 2010 ads were mediocre, with a few bright spots. Absent were the emotional tearjerkers and ads with brand engagement through the Internet. Plentiful were ads bashing white, out-of-shape men – and other concepts we felt like we’d seen many times before.

“I just don’t like the tired formulas,” Associate Creative Director Tony Marin said. “People getting hit, underwear jokes – all of that just makes me cringe.”

“It’s a reflection of the times, but everybody is very, very afraid of doing anything that isn’t pretty safe,” Executive Vice President/Creative Director Randy Snow added. “Even the stuff that was ‘edgy’ was pretty safe. As much as I loved the Google ad, it was just a product demo. There was really no risk in that ad. … It’s because of the economy. Nobody wants to take a shot with $3 million. They’d rather animate animals or pull Troy Polamalu out of a hole.”

That fear kept some normally ad-friendly brands, such as Fed Ex, out of the game entirely.

“They said it was because of cost and because of scrutiny. They laid off employees,” Executive Vice President Rob Dondero said. “And the official NFL beer, Coors, wasn’t even in it.”

Public Relations Group Account Director Clinton Pope asked about the propensity of allowing people to preview the ads prior to the game through YouTube, etc.

Executive Creative Director Arnie DiGeorge had firsthand knowledge. “I did that; I went on the night before and watched all the ones that I could actually see before the game and they all seemed to be bad ones, for the most part. I think those are the ones people are previewing – the ones that really don’t have confidence,” he said. “Your best choice is to have a teaser for the ad that isn’t the ad. But it still has to be great.”

That’s what it boils down to, of course – having a great ad. Some brands, like Doritos and Bud Light, chose quantity over quality, each using a bunch of completely unrelated spots hoping for one or two that “stuck.” Some chose to stick to one message.

“If you’ve got a good campaign and you’ve got multiple pieces of the same thing telling the story, that’s cool, and if you’ve got a brim of broad audiences and you’ve got one against different passion points, that’s cool, too,” Associate Media Director Jeremy Thompson said.

“I thought the Budweiser ads fell short. You go into it with people really expecting a lot from them, and I don’t think they got there,” LVCVA Group Account Director Kim Downing said.     “I really liked the (Volkswagen) ‘slugbug’ ad. It was nostalgic; it showed the product. I just thought it was really good.”

Corporate Director of Digital Marketing Sean Corbett was enamored with the reaction from perhaps the world’s largest focus group – the instantaneous opinions offered up on Twitter.

“The minute a spot ran, you’d start seeing the opinions flow through the Twitter stream. It was really cool to watch. A lot of ad folks, obviously, every agency in the country, seemed to be online last night – and then general people catching on and talking about the ads was really cool,” he said.

WINNERS

• Google’s spot, essentially a product demo, was lauded by the entire group. “It did everything it needed to do. It showed you how much Google is part of our life, it told a story. It was simple. It used their user interface. … It was a great spot,” DiGeorge said.

“It reminded me of why I choose to use it every day over Bing. They are about simplicity; they are about ease-of-use. It was a really great change-up from everything we had seen,” Corbett added.

“I think they accomplished in one ad what Bing has been trying to accomplish with tons of ads,” Marin said.

• The T-Pain ad, even though it was basically a different vision of the “Wassup” ads of a few years so, still worked.
• The eTrade babies, specifically the “milkaholic” spot, was solid.

“I liked the eTrade babies but I’d like to see them go in a different direction now. This should be the end of that type of campaign,” Pope said.

LOSERS

• Coke’s efforts, which included a certainly-not-cheap use of “The Simpsons” and a few even less memorable spots, completely missed the mark. Nobody really cared for the sleepwalking guy, either.

“The fact that a bunch of people from an ad agency sat in a room just to talk about the commercials, and for an hour Coke never entered the discussion – for a brand that big to go that unnoticed says a lot,” said yours truly, Web Content Developer Sal DeFilippo.

• The Who, and more so, the people who were stuck watching them.

“The Twitter backlash on The Who was vicious. One of the better comments was, “can somebody please hurry up and wrap up The Who show because they have to get home and watch Matlock.”

• GoDaddy.com – most disappointing “by far,” according to Pope.
• Taco Bell – the commercials that aired in advance leading up to a very dull “Green Eggs and Ham” spot featuring Charles Barkley. (Note: In fairness, not too many words rhyme with “gordita.”)

Another thought to ponder is what does local, on-the-go mobile advertising mean for the likes of Yelp, Foursquare and Gowalla? Will one of these location-based social networking portals discover a new revenue model in location-based advertising?  Maybe, maybe not. Leave a comment and tell me what you think. Each day, we’re moving closer to having our digital content on any screen, at any time, at any place. Marketers need to keep that in mind.

Many bloggers and industry analysts have pointed to how our society uses social media in a time of crisis.  Haiti, of course, has seen a huge reaction in social media- the devastating loss and suffering has touched people from around the world. Like most people, I’m sure, I first heard of the news through my social media channels. And through social media, the Red Cross has raised an astounding $5 Million towards their rescue effort in Haiti. Below is a special section about the reaction to Haiti in social media.

Haiti & Social Media

The Earthquake in Haiti, Social Media, and Me: A Personal Reflection (Ad Age)

Red Cross Raises $5,000,000+ for Haiti Through Text Message Campaign (Mashable)

President Obama Finally Tweets – For Haiti – In Third Person (TechCrunch)

Haiti Earthquake Disaster: Google Earth, Online-Map Makers, Texts “Absolutely Crucial” (Fast Company)

Tweak the Tweet: New Twitter Hashtag Syntax for Sharing Information During Catastrophes (Read Write Web)

Mashable

Why Social Media Isn’t for Everyone

Local Faceoff: Yelp vs. Foursquare vs. Gowalla

Tech Crunch

YouTube Helps Vevo Overtake MySpace Music In The U.S. (Plus, Top Ten Music Properties)

Fast Company

iPhones Might Get Automatic Location-Aware Ads

Ads in Google Maps Street View: A Sign of Things to Come

Channel Web

Facebook Offers Free McAfee Software To Users

Google Docs Play Intensifies Cloud Storage Competition

Yahoo! News

P&G floats selling products on its own website

Apple may wipe slate clean for new tablet computer

Read Write Web

Google Plans to Upgrade Old Billboards in Street View

Twitter’s Growth Slows Dramatically

Blogs and Other News Sources

Google Docs gets file uploading, but no direct desktop sync (Ars Technica)

Netflix on Wii Won’t Challenge Microsoft, Sony (PC World)

Google Wakes: Dreams of Internet openness in China appear to be a fantasy (Forbes.com)

Google begins replying to more Nexus One complaints (Computer World)

More changes to how Facebook handles privacy settings.  With an update last week, users can now set privacy settings for each wall posting separately, and now Facebook profile information can be indexed by search engines (which has implications for real-time search). Be sure to read up on the changes from cnet News and PC World.

Holiday shopping is in full swing, and analysts have reported an up tick in online shopping this season. New research comScore has shown just how much social media is effecting holiday shopping.  Check out this TechCrunch article for details, stats and charts.

A great article from ChannelWeb discusses Google and Apple’s dance with acquisitions. Earlier, Social Media News reported Google’s acquisition of AdMob. Recently, Apple just purchased online music streaming service LaLa, which may revolutionize the way Apple sells music.

Mashable

What Do Goo.gl and Fb.me Mean for Bit.ly?

8 Must-Have Traits of Tomorrow’s Journalist

Friendster’s Fate: Sold to Malaysian E-commerce Giant

Facebook Connect: 365 Days, 60 Million Users, 80,000+ Web Sites

What Do Seniors Do Online? Visit Facebook and YouTube, of course [STATS]

Nexus One: T-Mobile Partners on Google Phone

Ad Age

Augmented Reality Is Overhyped And Abused

Tech Crunch

Apple Brings iTunes Gift Cards To Its Facebook Fans, With Help From Black And GroupCard

Online Holiday spending Reaches $16 Billion; Social Media Continues To Influence Purchases

MySpace Kills Off Imeem API Without Warning Developers

Yahoo! News

How fakes sites trick search engines to hit the top

What the Apple-LaLa Deal Cpould Mean for Video Streaming

cnet News

Facebook backtracks on public friend lists

Facebook details new privacy settings

Fast Company

Today’s vision of Tomorrow: All Your Music in the Cloud

Major Print Publishers Gang Up to Pre-empt Apple, Already Make Mistakes

Cheddar for Tweets: @HuffingtonPost’s Twitter-Based Revenue Scheme

Blogs & Other News Sources

Facebook Simplifies Privacy Options (PC World)

Love The One Your’re With: Apple Wanted AdMob, Google wanted Lala (Channel Web)

HarperCollins Joins Ranks Of Those Delaying E-Books (WSJ)

Online, Offline, No Line (WSJ)

Google ponders risky Android solo act (CNN Tech)

Social Marketing News from 11/14/09 covered Rupert Murdoch’s statement about preventing Google from indexing News Corporation publications. This week, Google announced an update to its “First Click Free” program, partly in response to Murdoch’s threats I’m sure. First Click Free allows web users to access paid content, like news from newspaper websites, for free if they found that content through Google search. Now Google is giving more control to publishers, allowing them to lock out unregistered users after a defined number of page views. Google allows paid content providers to limit up to five free page views, per day- after that, users would be redirected to a registration page. Google search plays a huge role in helping users discover paid content, providing a significant amount of site traffic to many of these large publishers. So it makes sense for publishers to allow their content to be indexed by Google. However, publishers of premium content are also interested in making a profit. It will be interesting to watch what happens now, if News Corp. really does decide to completely block Google indexing, and if they decide to make an exclusive deal with Bing. If you’re still confused about First Click Free, check out this great 5-Click FAQ from Wired.

Google also announced a deal with Twitter this week to integrate the microblogging site with its own social media service, Google Friend Connect. That’s really interesting, because Google and Twitter are both in the race for real time search, so in a way Google and Twitter are competitors. It’s also interesting in light that Yahoo! and Bing have recently made deals with Facebook, and Google has yet to follow suit. Check out the Bing announcement here, and the Yahoo announcement here.

Speaking of Facebook, there’s a lot of talk about Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement of privacy changes. If you’re worried, don’t be. The announcement, which was posted in a Facebook note to users, doesn’t reveal sweeping new privacy changes. It does say that Facebook is doing away with regional networks, which is a good thing. This only relates to privacy in that you won’t be able to share your photos and posts to all of your selected regional network, which would be the town you live in or the college you attended. If you’re anything like me, you didn’t do that anyway. Users have always had the option to select who sees what, and I generally limit my content to Friends, or Friends of Friends (if you need help understanding how to manage your Facebook privacy settings, leave a comment).

A more significant bit of Facebook news came from Mashable in a reveal of screenshots for the next redesign. This interface update is more extensive than the simpler News Feed/Live Feed update. I’m looking forward to the launch, these new layout changes should improve Facebook’s engagement and usability.

The best tablet computer interface that I’ve seen to date is this demo from Sports Illustrated. SI appears to be moving in the right direction transitioning from print to digital media.

If you’re considering a new mobile site, or looking to improve, check out this article from WSJ: Squeezing Web Sites Onto Cellphones.

Wrapping up, I wanted to point out two important articles from Brandweek. Be sure to read Why Social Sites Are Less Friendly to Video Ads, and A Marketer’s New Worry: Are My Ads Retweetable?

Mashable

Facebook CEO: Prepare for Some Big Privacy Changes

5 Big Changes to Watch in Facebook’s Upcoming Redesign

Microsoft Launches its own Twitter… in China

WSJ

FCC Seeks Revamp of Phone Subsidy

Squeezing Web Sites Onto Cellphones

Media Post

Bing And Facebook Launch New Photo Contest

Ad Age

Sports Illustrated Readies Digital Version for Tablets

Brandweek

Why Social Sites Are Less Friendly to Video Ads

A Marketer’s New Worry: Are My Ads Retweetable?

Geotargeted Display Ads Poised for Growth

IRI Unveils Service for Measuring Online Ad Effectiveness

JC Penney’s ‘Doghouse’ Lives to Bark Another Season

Fast Company

New Layar Makes The World Your Augmented Reality Show

With Redesign and Twitter Deal, Is Google Growing Up?

Blogs And Other News Sources

Yahoo! Extends Facebook Integration to Bring Together Social Experiences From Across the Web (Mercury News)

The Fall Of Bing (Seasonal Release, That Is) (Tech Crunch)

New Data: Canadians Embrace Social Technology (Groundswell)

Placating Publishers by Limited Links: A Google 5-Click FAQ (Wired)

Then a few days later, TechCrunch Europe published this article detailing a secret presentation by Microsoft to various leaders of UK news media. According to the article, Microsoft is developing something known as ACAP, “Automated Content Access Protocol,” to index content like news stories on Bing in a more robust way than Google’s robots.txt protocol. If a significant amount of news media corporations get on board with the new indexing protocol, it will have a serious damaging effect on Google’s popular news search, news.google.com.

Though it may be bad news for Google in the news media industry, the communications industry might be looking up. On Thursday Google announced that it had purchased Gizmo5, which will power Google Voice with VoIP capabilities. This move makes Google Voice a serious competitor for Skype, and could also be a really nice addition to Google Wave.

In the same week, Google also purchased the popular mobile advertising platform, AdMob, for $750 Million. With this deal, Google now has a powerful mobile display advertising product that it can add to its existing mobile search advertising offering.

Twitter is in the process of rolling out its Retweet feature, though the public launch of the feature may take a little longer than expected. Prior to this announcement, retweeting has been an established norm in the Twittershere but has not been officially supported by the Twitter API.  Due to its enormous popularity the Twitter developers have been working on incorporating the retweet action to become an official part of Twitter.com, but apparently they are still trying to figure out exactly how to do it.

Now here’s an interesting story in the world of social gaming. Personally, I avoid Facebook games like Farmville, Mafia Wars and Sorority Life like the plague, but I’ve always known that these games are popular among my friends. And I wouldn’t have guessed that a game maker like Playfish, the creators of games like Pet Society and Word Challenge, could be worth a whooping $400 Million. Last Monday, Electronic Arts (EA) acquired Playfish in a move that signifies just how lucrative social gaming has become. Be sure to check out this Mashable article, The Future of Gaming: 5 Social Predictions.

Mashable

5 Impressive Real-Life Google Wave Use Cases

7 Ways to Get More Out of LinkedIn

BREAKING: EA Acquires Facebook Game Maker Playfish For Up to $400 Million

Rupert Murdoch Plans To Hide His Sites From Google, The World Yawns

The Future of Gaming: 5 Social Predictions

New Version of Google Search Is Launching Soon

STATS: Has Twitter Flatlined Just Short of Mainstream?

LEAKED: Facebook is Coming to the PlayStation3

Top 5 Must-Read Social Media Books

Tech Crunch

Twitter To Rollout A New API For Location-Based Trends

Google Acquires AdMob For $750 Million

Exclusive: Google Has Acquired Gizmo5

If The WSJ.com Says Goodbye To Google, It Will Also Say Goodbye To 25 Percent Of Its Traffic

Social Networks Continue To Rally Around Twitter As LinkedIn Goes Tweet Crazy Too

When It Comes To iPhone In-App Purchases, Games, Social Networking, And Books Rule

Hate It Or Love It, Twitter’s New Retweet Style Is Rolling Out

Google Latitude Now Tells You Where You’ve Been

Zynga’s FishVille Sleeps With The Fishes For Ad Violations

Facebook Killed The MTV Star: Shakira To Debut New Music Video On Ustream/Facebook

Retrevo Lets You Tap Into Electronics Recommendations Via SMS And Twitter

Badda Bing! Microsoft woos newspapers by funding their stick to beat Google

Fast Company

Augmented Reality Is Both a Fad and the Future — Here’s Why

Cisco’s Collaboration Platform: Facebook for Business?

New “Microformat” Could Change the Way We Read Online

YouTube Does Something Great at Last: 1080p HD

Ad Age

Why Digital Agencies Are Indeed Ready to Lead

Brand Week

Good News, Bad News for Mobile Marketing

Wendy’s Hunts for Bacon Lovers in Social Media

Blogs and Other News Media

Google Puts Voice on Steroids with Gizmo5 (PC World)

Second Life Founder Launching Reputation Currency System (Read Write Web)

Project Retweet: Phase One (Twitter Blog)

Think about this for a minute. You use Google to search and they know what you search for. You might use a Google Android phone and they know who you call, where you go every day and what apps you download, buy, etc. They know who your friends are and what you talk about by offering products like Gmail, Google Messenger and now, Wave. And, with this new browser, they’ll learn more.

I wonder what Google does with all of that data they collect. I wonder if it’s good to have one company know so much about me. I think of movies like Terminator and Minority Report and think to myself the rise of the machine is inevitable. I think about which Gap pants will be suggested to me as I walk by the outdoor board and it scans my retinas (please note, I am a nerd). I also ponder the billions of ways marketers can use that data. Part of me drifts into daydreams of robust targeting methodologies and one-to-one messaging. I dream of automated systems delivering multivariate ad units that can predict what products and services a consumer is likely to buy next based on the millions of other consumer data profiles. Some of these things may be built by now. I dream of a future where companies consult with Google to determine what types of business models to pursue. Why? Because Google will know everything we’re talking about, searching for and buying to the person. Why not start your R&D process with Google? How much would that data be worth to you as a business searching for new products to build and market?

Did Minority Report predict the future of advertising?

I also think about how annoying all of that could be. I think about the plethora of spam that lands in my e-mail inbox. I think about the spam-robot Twitter followers I swat at on a daily basis. I think about how much I hate it when people tell me what I should need or want. I am a free thinker after all. Not really!

Remember that old cartoon where the bulldog is being annoyed to death by the little dog that jumps around saying, “Hey Spike! Hey Spike! Hey Spike!”? We run the danger of being that little annoying dog. As marketers, we have a responsibility to not annoy people. To use the knowledge we have for the purpose of good. Not evil. Our responsibility is to the consumer and for us to provide them with messages that improve their lives. To send them messages they want, when they want them, how they want them. Google is our friend. Not the Terminator.

Think back to some of the biggest breaking news events of the past year. When the US Airways flight landed on the Hudson it was Twitter that broke the story. When Iranians rose up to speak their minds and protest the presidential election they used Twitter to overcome media blackouts. The news of Michael Jackson’s death was a trending topic even before it was on TV. And, when the world was riveted to television wondering if balloon boy was actually in the balloon, it was the Twittersphere who began to dig into the bizarre background of the balloon boy’s father.

By making Twitter searches and other real time updates searchable on Google and Bing, news will travel faster than ever before. I am not as likely to tune into Fox News or CNN any more. My first move is Twitter. Now, I can hit up Google or Bing to get the latest in user-generated reports. And, for this former journalism major and geek, that is just cool.

Click here to view the announcement from Google and here for the Bing news from Wired.