In its quest to boot cable out of the home and replace it with FiOS, Verizon has launched a home upgrade reality show of sorts, My Home 2.0, which will be aired on TV as well as the web and include social media concepts such as blogs and YouTube videos. Five families in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh will have a team of techno types come to their homes and outfit it with the latest and greatest Verizon has to offer.
The installations and block parties held in each neighborhood will be recorded and placed on the My Home 2.0 website, YouTube, Facebook and Verizon's FiOS on-demand cable channel.
If a reality show about people living on an island can sustain itself, we suppose a show about people getting new home technology toys could fair just as well.
Here it comes... Here it comes... Here it comes... Oh wait, that's another thing. But, still, here it comes. Just as we new it would, marketers have begun to ravage Facebook with their wares. MySpace was turned into an ugly, flashing, digital billboard. Second Life was a silly waste of money. What will Facebook bestow upon marketers and marketers upon Facebook?
Whatever it is, no one will care in six month to a year because there'll be something else gracing that slide in every ad agency's PowerPoint presentation where the new and the cool are recommended because, well, they're new and cool and it makes the agency seem new and cool in front of the marketer and the marketer new and cool in front of its customers and investors. Here today, gone tomorrow Cool and the Cool Hunters who follow the wave are about to hit the speed of light.
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Shmuel Tennenhaus writes to tells us Comedy Central has placed a profile for Sarah Silverman on JDate. Yea, this is nothing new. Dating sites have been fooling around with "fake" listings for a long time but we like Sarah Silverman so give her a click.
It might be because we're a sucker for anything with Jerry Bruckheimer-like theme music but we do think this new Saatchi & Saatchi created online promotion for Wendy's is pretty cool. It's a call to arms of sorts but not the military kind. Wendy's believes everyone should be entitled to a fresh, hot, juicy burger and not some frozen crap. And it's crafted a site to spread the gospel.
Those who join the cause can spread the word social networking-style by emailing friends and posting the character they create on the Wendy's site to one of their social networking sites. Points can be earned by spreading the word and by using the site continuously. It's pretty simple and a nice use of viral and social networking tactics.
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When marketers assaulted MySpace with pseudo profiles, the whole thing came off and a lame attempt to leverage social media. For some reason, this doesn't seem to be the case with the growing proliferation of Facebook profiles and groups. Perhaps it's because it's not so much about profile but, rather, groups people can join if they're interested in the subject matter of the group. Perhaps it's becasue Facebook has a cleaner structure. Perhaps, it's just that time has past and the industry has caught up.
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Ning, the Marc Andreesen-backed social network creation service, has reached 100,000 networks. Ning, which powers our own AdGabber social network, makes it easy and free for anyone to create their own social network without having to possess any technical skills. Writing on his blog, Andreesen describes Ning as a horizontal network of social networks which purposefully does not focus on or serve any particular vertical.
Andreesen describes the atmospheric growth of Ning as double viral, writing, "On Ning, users both join existing user-created networks -- one of the 100,000+ networks that already exist -- and/or create their own networks. This is a double viral loop. Loop one is users being invited to join a network created on Ning. Loop two is some percentage of those users creating their own new networks and then inviting other people to join those new networks."
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Everyone loves cool Facebook applications, right? Especially Naughty Gifts because who really doesn't like sharing naughtiness with their friends? Well, Going.com, the company behind Naughty Gifts is porting its little application to meat space in the form of Naughty Parties at which naughtiness will be the central theme.
Natasha Chatilo and Adam Gries are the brains behind Naughty Gifts and wants to tap the avalanche of non-teens joining Facebook. So if you're inclined to take your naughtiness physical, the parties are coming to a city near you: Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston.
- Tom Ford and Vulva fixate on a particular female body part and introduce a new advertising trend: Vaginads.
- Not that you frequent a laundromat all that often but if you do, you just might be assaulted by washing machines bearing gigantic advertising posters.
- We stir debate as to whether or not Mazda, which does still make cars, can still create good commercials.
- What's a week without an appearance by our favorite hottie, Obama Girl? This time she's hooked up with Giuliani Girl to support the troops on behalf of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Association.
- Look! Look! Look! Now you can blow an ad banner and make a website freeze!
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Oh we love how some marketers know exactly how to attract attention on YouTube. To promote the new Fox movie The Comebacks, which aims to do for sports movies what the Scary Movie franchise did for horror flicks, videos of a very pretty, double-entendre spewing, huge breasted hottie in a low cut cheerleader's uniform spouting valley speak are making the rounds.
In the videos, cheerleader Amy, who is the proud owner of magnetically eye catching cleavage, sits in the locker room and in the coaches office of the team telling us things like how hot the players are and how quarterback Lance, who stared at her during cheer practice, is "way hotter than Trotter." All while stroking (jacking off?) a baseball bat she's placed between her legs as she mentally imagines it's the real thing.
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Is it just me or is anyone else sick of the lemming-like flash mob behavior marketers display every time some "really cool" new thing comes along? It's like a shiny new object syndrome. We can't keep our hands off the new toys.
The industry's latest fascination is Facebook. That followed quick blips from Twitter (which actually a good thing) and Second Life (not so much a good thing...for marketers, at least). I joined Facebook almost a year ago or some time after it opened to non-students. Why? For the same reason I joined MySpace. It was there. People were using it and I figured I ought to check it out. For months, Facebook was a ghost town for me. After all, I'm not in college any more. Then, like the unleashing of a pent up orgasm, people spewed forth from every known corner of the ad industry friending me.
I graciously accepted the friend requests because, like a free drink at an ad conference, who am I to say no? And, besides, I know these people. Soon, when it became the rage, my profile page filled up with all sorts of applications, most of which I never use. Some of which I do. In fact, I created two of my own to publish video and photos from the AdGabber site.
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