Adam Blogs, TV Guide Gowns, AT&T Mobilizes, Old Folk Socialize

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- Aquent is hosting a webcast on September 27th entitled "Getting it all Together: Best Practices in Planning for Coordinated Print and Web Initiatives." which will examine how to make print and online work together better.

- The recently formed Association for Downloadable Media (ADM) will hold its first in-person meeting at the Podcasting & New Media Expo in Ontario, CA. The meeting will be held at 7:30 a.m. PDT on Friday, September 28, 2007 in Ballroom A.

- A new eMarketer report examines the value of social media and whether or not the hype meets with the reality.

- Website uptime monitoring company has gotten cute with its homepage turning it into a modified 404 page.

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by Steve Hall    Sep-12-07    
Topic: Events, Industry Events, Research, Social, Weblogs



Farting Farmer and Nice Cans Sell Microbrewery

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If you like farms with pigs, cows, fish, farting farmers, aliens and atomic bombs that launch out of grain silos, you're gonna love this new site for Butternuts Beer & Ale from Woods Witt Dealy & Sons. just click around and have fun. Don't forget to click on the tractor in the back.

Along with the website, the campaign also includes print ads, table tents, packaging, posters and a MySpace page, all of which can be seen here. In one of the print ads, the cans are celebrated with the write-itself headline, Nice Cans. The ad is also carries a blue ribbon honoring the breweries position as best brewery in Garrattsville, New York. Not that there's any other brewers there which , of course, is the entire point of the ribbon.

Dubbed "farmhouse ale" (whatever that is) the beer's got great names like Porkslap, Heinnieweisse and Moo Thunder. If a microbrewer has to set itself apart from the pack, aligning the brand with farm nomenclature is certainly one way to do it.

by Steve Hall    Sep- 7-07    
Topic: Good, Magazine, Online, Point of Purchase, Poster, Social



Yahoo Inhales Lithium, Business 2.0 Dies, Brothels Advertise

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- Yahoo grabs ad network BlueLithium for a $300 million.

- It outlasted every other dot com magazine but Business 2.0 has finally succumbed to the tightening economics of magazine publishing and will cease to publish on its own, becoming part of Fortune.

- Make sure your Facebook profile doesn't include any salaciously incriminating information. The site has just made profiles publicly searchable.

- JupiterResearch reports just 15 percent of viral campaigns achieved success in the last year. Good. Maybe we'll see a lot less crap from marketers now.

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by Steve Hall    Sep- 5-07    
Topic: Magazine, Online, Social



Quechup Spams Members' Contacts With Invites

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Late last week, we received an invite from Hugh MacLeod to join a new social network called Quechup. While we love Hugh, we need another social network like we need another MediaPost email newsletter. Like many other invites we receive, we ignored it hoping Hugh wouldn't be too angry. He wasn't. Mostly because he had no idea he sent the invite in the first place.

While it's standard practice for a social network to ask you if you want to invite friends from your address book, it's far from acceptable to do it automatically, behind the scenes without the member having any knowledge the invites have been sent. That's what Quechup did. That was bad.

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by Steve Hall    Sep- 5-07    
Topic: Social, Worst



Yellow Up, Anderson Out, Nielsen Socializes, Blu-Ray Revealed

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- Simba reports worldwide yellow pages revenue increased 2.8 percent to $31,62 billion in 2006. While a slight decline is anticipated for 2007, 2008 is predicted to see another increase. Who knew people still used yellow pages?

- As if you hadn't heard, DDB Chicago President Dana Anderson has left the building citing the need to spend more time with her daughter before she heads to college next year.

- That forward thinking company, Nielsen has gone all social networking on out asses with its Hey! Nielsen.

- Sometime you want to appreciate a commercial simply for what it is. Other times, you want to analyze to death all aspects of it and all the work that went into creating it. If you're interested in the latter, Sony's got a behind the scenes video covering the making of its recent Blu-Ray commercial.

- David Pitlyuk has a nice summary of the history of online video advertising and where he thinks it's going.

by Steve Hall    Aug-24-07    
Topic: Agencies, Social, Yellow Pages



Vogue Live Blogged, Apple YouTubed, MySpace Facebooked

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- Glossed Over live blogs the reading of Vogue's 840 page September issue.

- Apple catches wrath from popular YouTubers misfortune with the company's bad customer service.

- Christina Ricci is the new face of Samsonite's Fashionaire accessory line.

- This is how they sell Volvos in Korea.

- Yup. MySpace is over. Now, it's all about creating Facebook applications as Hyper Happen and W3Haus just did to promote the movie Knocked Up in the UK.

- Darren Stevens is dead. Oh wait, he was never alive. Oh wait, it's a new blog to promote a new marketing book. Oh wait, and even another YouTube book video.

- OMG! It's another book! But this one's not about marketing. It's about ghosts, monsters and UFOs. But it counts because a former creative director wrote and took the photos.

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by Steve Hall    Aug-21-07    
Topic: Games, Industry Events, Magazine, Social, Video



Coke's 'Happiness Factory' Does Second Life Press Play

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Brentter has the full story on Coke's Weiden + Kennedy-created Happiness Factory film which made its "global premiere" in Second Life yesterday. The three and a half minute film (oops, sorry. we're drinking the Kool-Aid here)...um...commercial follows the travails of a Coke factory worker who travels across Happiness Land in a quest to get the factory working again.

We passed on the story yesterday since anything remotely related to Second Life makes us laugh...uh...sorry. We should have said "take less seriously." After dumping millions into Second Life six to 12 months ago, didn't marketers conclude it was a waste of money? Call us callous but YouTube has greater reach than SL by far. Oh but, oops. The vid is on YouTube also...with a whopping 434 views. Hmm.

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by Steve Hall    Aug-15-07    
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Commercials, Online, Social



Denver Gets Ego, Canada Goes Social, Merv Griffin Dies, Caveman Loses

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- The Denver Egoist hopes to "promote creative growth in Denver" while at the same time admitting Denver is "conceptually stunted."

- Muchmor Media, an independent Canadian web publisher, has launched mymuchmor.com a social network for naturalized Canadians and the 270,000 newcomers who arrive in Canada every year.

- Cynopsis reports Merv Griffin, creator and producer of game show hits Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, died yesterday. He was 82.

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by Steve Hall    Aug-13-07    
Topic: Celebrity, Social, Television, Weblogs



Bloggers Build DIY Network 'Blog Cabin'

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For those of you tracking the many purposes a weblog can serve, you can now add house building to the list. DIY Network will air a new show August 16 at 9PM called Blog Cabin which will document the building of a log cabin which was built with guidance from bloggers contributing a DIY Network weblog over the course of several months. From roof style to window selection to fireplace, bloggers logged over 4 million suggestions and votes during the project. They even alerted the apparently forgetful building crew a window had not yet been installed. Check out the entire project here.

by Steve Hall    Aug- 3-07    
Topic: Cable, Consumer Created, Social, Weblogs



Dell Reviews, Disney Buys Club Penguin, Deutsch Huffs, Sex Still Sells

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- Dell's $760 million account is up for grabs and everyone wants it.

- Disney just gave the three Canadian dads who launched Club Penguin $350 million with another $350 million on the way in 2009.

- Catch Speedo King Donny Deutsch and uber political commentator Arianna Huffington at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas September 30 - October 2 when they speak at the Electronic Retailing Association convention.

- BL Ochman tells us how one brand, Kryptonite Lock, has improved its handling of social media outbursts dramatically since 2004 when it was awarded Business 2.0's Dumbest Business Moment of the Year Award.

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by Steve Hall    Aug- 2-07    
Topic: Brands, Industry Events, Social, Weblogs