S'WORLD

This week we look at Old Spice raising the bar, Calvin Klein getting uncensored with QR, CNN traveling with Gowalla, Patriots fans helping Vince, Barbie videoing social media, Google giving fiber to communities, Discovery highlighting small discoveries with Twitter, Patron letting customers create cocktails in the Lab, Starbucks getting 10 million fans, Facebook getting 500 million users, and Hulu at the top of the video ad charts.

Old Spice – It’s the campaign your campaign can smell like.

In short: Old Spice has redefined what a social media campaign is capable of. From this point forward, all social media campaigns will be judged against the success of this campaign.

For an overview of just some of what W+K has done for Old Spice, check out this NOTCOT Blog Post.

The piece of this campaign that has received the most attention is a series of YouTube videos, where Isa Mustafa (the Old Spice actor) makes more than 180 personalized videos that address everyone from Kevin Rose and Perez Hilton to random YouTube users who had commented on the original Old Spice videos. One person even requested that Isa make a wedding proposal video for his girlfriend:

(She said yes.)

The results speak for themselves: 5.9 million views and 22,500+ comments IN TWO DAYS.

In addition, many advertising/marketing blogs have written lengthy case studies about the success of this campaign, and even many of the traditional news outlets have started to cover the cultural phenomenon that this campaign has created.

Following the release of the videos, Google’s CFO said that Old Spice Is The Future, and Alyssa Milano agreed to date Isa if Old Spice donated $100k to the oil spill cleanup efforts:

It’s important to note that this was not just a social media campaign, and was done as an extension of a major media spend which established the character and helped to build the campaign’s awareness, but it does show how you can take a traditional campaign to the next level through the use of clever and well executed social media efforts.

Side Note: One interesting media buy for the Old Spice campaign was BustedTees, where they sponsored Free Shipping for a week:

Calvin Klein Puts Up A QR Billboard – In New York and Los Angeles, Calvin Klein put up a billboard that featured nothing more than a giant QR code and the call to action “Get It Uncensored”.

Users who scanned the code would then be able to view an ‘uncensored’ 40-second commercial featuring Calvin Klein models, and were then given the option to share the ad through Facebook and Twitter.

CNNMoney Features Best Places to Live with Gowalla – As part of Money magazine’s annual 100 Best Places to Live list, CNNMoney has partnered with Gowalla to help people discover the best parts of each city.

Through the partnership, users can take branded trips through many of the cities, and each of the top 25 cities has a trending list of locations where you can see which spots are the most popular amongst Gowalla users.

Help Vince! – The New England Patriots have teamed up with geo-location service SCVNGR to create a city wide scavenger hunt where fans can try to track down Vince Wilfork’s “missing” Super Bowl championship ring.

Using the app, fans will seek out more than 200 places throughout New England, complete challenges at numerous locations, and earn points and prizes for top scorers. The grand prize includes lunch with a Patriots player, and goes to the first person to successfully find the ring.

Barbie Gets Social – Barbie is releasing a new “Video Girl” doll that includes a working video camera and comes with video editing software that girls can use to make their own videos. They developed the doll in collaboration with iJustine, a prominent video blogger, and are launching the doll with a promotion on Foursquare and Twitter:

Fiber For Communities – When Google offered to bring ultra-high speed fiber Internet to a chosen community, they were overwhelmed by more than 1,100 community responses, as well as 200,000+ responses from individuals.

In response, Google created Fiber For Communities, a site where they can “provide additional resources for anyone interested in ultra high-speed Internet access”.

Small Discoveries – As part of their 25th anniversary, Discovery Channel created a program called My Discovery, where viewers and users could share tweet-length discoveries at any scale, from personal life to the wider world, and then Discovery would show the best of them online and on-air.

As Twitter notes, this campaign is interesting because instead of focusing on thousands and thousands of tweets, they chose to highlight a carefully-chosen group of tweets that “surprise, delight, or tell a story”.

Patron Cocktail Lab – Patron Tequila has created the Patron Cocktail Lab application on Facebook, where users can create new drinks in response to a challenge that Patron posts each month.

Once a drink gets created, Patron will have pro mixologists give ideas and feedback through the Patron Facebook wall, and users can vote on their favorites. Then, at the end of each month, a winning drink will be selected and will become an official, Patron-recognized drink.

Starbucks Has 10 Million Fans – On the heels of Lady Gaga reaching 10 Million Facebook Fans, Starbucks has become the first brand to reach the milestone, making Facebook an important channel in their ongoing social media efforts.

Facebook Has 500 Million Users – The rumor that’s been buzzing around the social media world for the last few days is that Facebook is preparing to announce its 500 millionth user, which would mean that they are adding an average of 100 million new users every five months.

At this rate, it won’t be long before any campaign that wants to reach a majority of the online audience is either run through Facebook, or risks leaving a large number of people out of the loop.

Hulu Serves A Lot Of Ads – According to ComScore, Hulu now serves more than 560 million video ads per month, making them the largest online video ad server, and placing them ahead of even Google, which serves just over 200 million across all of its properties, including YouTube.

Quick Hits:

• Moo has posted a few of the recent business card redesigns from their Business Card Project, which was featured in a previous Social Media Digest.
• Sony Pictures is the latest to use Twitter’s new Sponsored Trending Topic ad, with a sponsorship of the hashtag #SocialNetwork for the upcoming film about the founding of Facebook, called The Social Network.

This week, we look at influential link bait, an engagement database, a Humongo road trip, the death of Facebook Gifts and the growth of Facebook Ads, Wheat Thins jokes and Justin Bieber pranks, social media infographics, Twitter sales, sponsored tweets and movie apps, a human avatar, a day in the life of a YouTube user, and an internet full of Comic Sans.

Fast Company Influence Project – Fast Company has created what could be the most effective link bait campaign ever. (Link Bait = Any content or feature, within a website, which somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. – Wikipedia)

Called the Influence Project, its stated goal is to discover who are the most influential people online. In order to prove their influence, users must create an account, and then get others to sign up through their unique link. The more people that sign up through your link, the more ‘influence’ you have, and the larger your picture grows. The person with the most influence at the end of the campaign will be on the cover of an issue of Fast Company, and everyone who participates will appear in a giant spread of all participants.

While this sounds like a great idea for all involved (and they’re producing some pretty interesting blog content as part of the campaign) many claim that Fast Company is confusing ego with influence, and noting that the scoring is coincidentally shaped like a pyramid scheme.

Social Media Brand Engagement Database – The ENGAGEMENTdb is a database and raking of the top brands on social media.

Each company gets a unique profile that lists their social media profiles, including social networking, collaborative tools, blogs, mircoblogs, image/video sharing, social bookmarking and more. They are then ranked based on the number of places they engage consumers, with a higher ranking given to companies with more profiles.

While it’s interesting to just dig through this information and see how your favorite brands are engaging their consumers, it’s also a valuable tool for marketers/advertisers who are looking for examples, or want to see what their competitors are up to.

Humongo Nation – Humongo is an ad shop out of Connecticut (formerly Plaid until they were purchased) that takes a yearly trip around the US to meet with clients and companies they admire and celebrate their innovations.

This year, they’ve loaded up their Ford Flex with cameras and mobile wi-fi so that they can live broadcast the whole trip, and they’ll be sharing their experience with the world in a number of ways, including a blog to showcase the food they eat along the way.

Last Call For Facebook Gifts – In a somewhat surprising move, Facebook has announced that they will be closing down Facebook Gifts to focus more on “improving and enhancing products and features that people use every day, such as Photos, News Feed, Inbox, games, comments, the ‘Like’ button and the Wall”.

The news is surprising because they were making $1 from each gift, and since each gift is just a single image, each sale was almost pure profit. Rumor has it that they were selling millions of these gifts each month, and with the forthcoming growth of Facebook Credits that trend was sure to continue, but apparently they have other plans in mind that will give them a better return on their time and investment.

The Role of Advertising on Facebook – Amidst continued controversy about their privacy policies and exactly how much information they shares with advertisers, Facebook has published a blog post about the role of advertising on Facebook, and how advertising works on their network.

In addition to talking about the types of data they share with advertisers (aggregate and anonymous) they try to dive deeper into how advertisers can target you, and why you see the ads that you do.

Wheat Thins – Crunch Is Calling – Wheat Thins is running an online campaign on YouTube called Crunch Is Calling, where they track down people who have tweeted about Wheat Thins, and then play a practical joke on them based on their tweet.

One woman tweeted that her life was over since she was out of Wheat Thins, so they dropped a crate full of them onto her driveway. Another said that he air guitars with a Wheat Thin, so they set up an air guitar jam session at his house.

It’s a fun campaign, and best of all, they claim that each of the tweets is genuine, so I’m sure the people who star in each of the spots will be Wheat Thins customers for life.

Justin Bieber Will Tour North Korea – The social media world can be a great way to build buzz, but it can also bite back if you’re not careful.

Recently Justin Bieber’s people launched a “My World Tour” voting contest that asked Bieber fans to vote on Twitter about which country he should tour next.

Unfortunately for Bieber fans, the people running the contest didn’t put a restriction on which countries could be nominated, so the group Anonymous from the notorious internet forum 4chan rigged the contest and nominated North Korea with more than half a million votes.

No word yet on how they plan on getting out of this one…

10 Beautiful Social Media Infographics – Want to spice up a presentation with a social media infographic? Mashable has put together a list of 10 of the most beautiful infographics, and in addition to being filled with tons of useful information, they look pretty good too!

Twitter @EarlyBird – Twitter is going after sites like Woot! (which was recently purchased by Amazon), Groupon and Gilt by creating an account called @EarlyBird that will share “exclusive offers from Twitter’s select advertising partners”.

Details on the account are still pretty slim, but rumor has it that they’re going to do large offers that are limited in quantity, and then send them out early in the morning.

NBA Pays to Promote LeBron James on Twitter – The social media world was buzzing about the announcement of which team LeBron James would play for, so the NBA decided to capture some of that excitement by sponsored the “LeBron James” trending topic on Twitter.

Users that clicked on the trending topic were shown a tweet from the NBA Twitter account that promoted Decision 2010, and could retweet the message if they felt that it would be interesting to their followers as well.

Ironically, the tweet directly below the tweet from the NBA was from Conan O’Brien, so said that “I don’t care where LeBron James ends up… As long as it’s not at 11pm on TBS.”

(On a related note, LeBron has officially joined Twitter under the name @KingJames, and within a day of his first official tweet, he had amassed more than 100,000 followers.)

Best Buy Movie Mode – Best Buy has created a new “Movie Mode” app (available for the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile) that adds interactive content to your movie watching experience.

The first movie to use the Movie Mode app is Despicable Me, which allows you to translate the words that the Minions are saying during the end credits, as well as unlock exclusive content after the show.

It’ll be interesting to see how this app is received, since the theaters are usually a cell phone free zone, but if users are engaged by the content and it enhances their movie watching experience, we may have a whole new way to engage movie viewers.

APB’s Human Avatar – All Points Bulletin is an online MMO game that features a customization engine where you can create any character you want and then unleash him on the streets of the game.

To promote the game and its customization engine, APB is creating a human avatar, where fans will decide the haircut, tattoos, piercings and clothing of a real person, and they will then turn that person into a character from the game over the course of three weeks. (Yes; with real tattoos and stuff.)

YouTube – Life In A Day – YouTube has teamed up with Ridley Scott to create life in a day, a global experiment to create a user-generated feature film in a single day.

To participate, just film your life on July 24th. Then, they’ll select the most compelling and distinctive footage and edit it into an experimental documentary film that will premier at the Sundance Film Festival.

Cavaliers Owner Dan Gilbert Loves Comic Sans, Hates LeBron James – When LeBron James announced that he would be leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers to play for Miami, the entire state of Ohio was pretty pissed off, but perhaps none more so than majority owner Dan Gilbert, who wrote a very emotional letter to Cavs fans about the loss and what the team plans to do without King James.

What made news however wasn’t the letter itself, but the font that it was written in: Comic Sans. Almost instantly, the font took center stage, with ‘Comic Sans’ becoming a trending topics on Twitter, and blogs such as TechCrunch jumping in on the action, with a LeBronified Filter that turns every font on the site into Comic Sans.

Just remember, sometimes even the strongest message can get overshadowed by the medium…

VitaminWater has opened VitaminWater Social Clubs in cities all across the U.S. These pop-up venues host various community-centered events, but only stick around for about two months in each locale.

If you’re in San Francisco, make sure you visit the sleek event space, currently located in North Beach until 7/31, for free morning yoga classes, cooking demonstrations, book readings, DJs, fashion shows, and, of course, an entire wall of 11 flavors of complimentary refrigerated VitaminWater. And on days when there are no events scheduled, the Social Club is open to the public. Feel free to stop by and use the free wi-fi, bring your lunch and lounge on a comfy couch, or relax on the beanbags downstairs.

The destination promotes creativity and an active lifestyle, while supporting the passions of the neighborhood residents. It shows how VitaminWater is dedicated to connecting with local communities and bringing people together to interact and engage with the brand. This branding strategy aligns with the company’s decision to completely move their website to Facebook, in order to reach their target on a more social level.

Vitamin Water Social Club SF

This week we look at the Giants’ new Foursquare account, Coke’s promoted Twitter trend results, Ford’s Fiesta delivery strategy, Domino’s new ad images, Moo’s business card project, Chrome’s FastBall, Chiquita’s sticker design contest, Dos Equis’ scavenger hunt, and the most tagged image on Facebook.

San Francisco Giants on Foursquare – With Swirl’s help, the Giants are now the first MLB team to offer visitors tips through Foursquare. Tips range from where to get the best food and drink to facts about the ballpark and how to watch a game for free, and the goal is to make the experience of visiting the park even more magic for Foursquare users. In addition, it’s also great opportunity for PR, as seen by this blog post from About Foursquare about the account.

Coke Shares The Results of Promoted Twitter Trends – Coca-Cola is the second brand to sponsor a trending topic on Twitter, behind Disney/Pixar, and shared the results of the campaign during an interview with The Financial Times. According to Coke, they received 86 million impressions during the promotion, with an engagement rate of 6% on their sponsorship of the #WC2010 hashtag, which was trending during the world cup.

Coke said the sponsorship was relatively small compared to their other buys, but they were pleased with the initial results, which should pave the way for other big name brands to experiment with the technique.

Ford Delivers Social Media with the New Focus – When new Fiesta owners pick up their vehicle from the Ford dealer, they will receive a thumb drive that comes pre-loaded with an audio tutorial that explains the Fiesta’s features and how to use them. (Which can be played through the Fiesta’s Sync audio system on the way home.)

Once they get home, they can plug the thumb drive into their computer, where they will have access to an application that Ford has developed to share information with owners, and let them share their Fiesta experience with their friends. In addition, the thumb drive includes photos of them picking up the car, which can easily be customized and shared with friends through Facebook, Flickr, MySpace and Twitter.

Domino’s Pizza Free Photo Contest – Fast food companies use everything from nailguns to Q-tips to blowtorches to make their food look good on camera, but when you actually get the item, it looks nothing like it did on TV. (See Ads vs. Reality for some… tasty examples.)

Domino’s is looking to change the game up, and is going to feature user generated photos in their future ad campaigns. To participate, just order a pizza from Domino’s, and when it arrives (after being made at Domino’s by a regular Domino’s employee) take a photo of it and submit it to the Show Us Your Pizza website. The winning shot will receive $500, and be featured in an upcoming Domino’s ad, untouched and just like it arrives at your door.

The Business Card Project – Moo wants to help small businesses, so they’ve joined together with iStockphoto, FontFont and ColourLovers to give away $250,000 worth of design consultation to help improve the business card designs of 500 companies.

Chrome FastBall – A Race Across The Internet – To promote Chrome’s speed, Google has created Chrome FastBall, which is a series of interactive videos that are linked with Internet challenges that users must solve as quickly as possible in order to get the ball across the finish line in record time.

The challenges include games, internet searches, trends and other brain busters, and the goal is to see if you’re “Chrome Fast”. At the end, it also ranks your performance against all other players, encouraging repeat plays, and the sharing of results with friends.

Chiquita Sticker Design Contest – Chiquita is hosting a Sticker Design Contest, and 18 of the winning designs will see their stickers on Chiquita bananas across the country.

To enter the contest, users can either download a template and start from scratch, or use the Sticker Studio to combine a number of drag and drop elements into a design of their choosing.

From there, users can vote on designs (and entrants can share their designs and encourage friends to vote for them) and Chiquita will select the top 50, which will then get trimmed down to a final 18.

Dos Equis’ The Most Interesting Cargo Hunt – Dos Equis is sending people on a scavenger hunt to find priceless artifacts that have been lost by the Most Interesting Man. To play, users search for artifacts that have been hidden in various places around the US (usually places where Dos Equis is sold) and write down the 4-character code on the side of the artifact’s crate, which is then entered into the Cargo Hunt website. There is also an online Cargo Hunter’s Map, which functions like an online game that gets played out over the course of a few days, and contains hidden codes that can also be redeemed on the site.

Prizes include the chance to impress the Most Interesting Man, to demonstrate loyalty and friendship, and to merely put another notch of self-accomplishment on your mantel. (As well as a trip to Mexico.)

70,000+ People Tagged In One Facebook Photo – During the Glastonbury Festival in the UK, a huge panoramic photo was taken of the 70,000+ fans in attendance. In partnership with Orange, they created an app called the GlastoTag that uses Facebook Connect to allow users to log in and tag people in the photo, with the goal of becoming the most tagged photo on Facebook. Ever.

Chipotle has launched a new campaign called “No Junk”, designed to turn junk email into healthy school lunches. According to Chipotle, “We don’t like junk. Not in our inboxes and not in our food.”

They are asking consumers to forward their spam emails to nojunk@chipotlejunk.com, and for every 100,000 messages they receive, Chipotle will donate $10,000 to The Lunch Box, a non-profit organization dedicated to healthy school lunches. The campaign will run through August, or until they meet their goal of a $50,000 contribution.

The program aligns nicely with Chipotle’s efforts to serve fresh ingredients and source their food from sustainable and organic growers. The campaign is being promoted through online ads and social media, and Chipotle’s Facebook Page is tracking their progress to date.

Chipotle – No Junk

This week, we look at Virgin America’s influencer targeting, an AR ice cream machine, and Twitter’s new records.

Virgin America Offers Free Flights to Twitter Influencers – Virgin America is now flying to Toronto, and as part of their launch, they teamed up with Klout to identify Twitter influencers in San Francisco and Los Angeles, based on data such as the number of followers and retweets, and offer them free flights to Toronto for the Launch Event. According to a Klout Blog Post, they want to make it very clear that they are not buying a user’s tweets, and users can tell the world that they loved the experience, hated it, or nothing at all. The only request is that if they do write about their experience, they disclose the fact that they received the flight for free. While influencer sampling has always been an important part of social media outreach, this is the first time that an automatic system has been set up to determine who is influential, and should pave the way for more campaigns like this in the future.

Augmented Reality Ice Cream Machine Trades Smiles for Deserts – Customer experience company SapientNitro and ice cream maker Unilever have teamed up to develop what they’re calling the world’s first smile-activated vending machine. To activate the machine, users stand in front of it, and then the software measures the wideness of their smile using facial recognition. (And if you don’t smile, it adds things like mustaches and hats to your face until it coaxes one out of you.) Once it detects a smile, it snaps a picture, and then asks you to upload that picture to their Facebook Page. After you’ve given the smile that the machine so desperately craves, it displays a menu of treats that you can receive in exchange for your participation. While augmented reality is a technique that many companies have experimented with, this is one of the first examples of bringing the technology out into a public space, and engaging the everyday consumer in a new and innovative way.

Twitter Sets Tweets Per Second Records – On average, Twitter sees about 750 Tweets Per Second (TPS), or about 65 million tweets per day. However, on certain occasions, those numbers can spike as users rush to share their thoughts on live events, and Twitter struggles to keep up with the rush of traffic. The World Cup has been a recent source of TPS spikes, and Twitter shared some of the goals that have been the source of the most tweets, including Japan scoring against Cameroon, which generated 2,940 TPS, and Brazil scoring their first goal against North Korea, which generated 2,988 TPS. Neither of those was able to top the current record holder however, as the end of the NBA Championship between the Lakers and the Celtics generated 3,085 TPS.

This week, we look at Twitter’s helpful videos, trending topic ads, Gowalla giveaways, Bravo badges, Loopt coupons, Foursquare bookmarks, Facebook admin removal, films on Facebook, a “Heart-of-a-BP-Executive Black” Tumblr Dashboard, the 2011 Ford Explorer Facebook reveal, Common Craft’s augmented reality explanation, branded Formspring.me pages, a social media command center, David on Demand, and the guy or girl of every Apple owner’s dreams.

Twitter Help Video – Twitter is known for being a difficult service for new users to figure out, so to try and combat that problem, they have created a series of videos to explain some of the more nuanced features of the site.

Twitter Tests Trending Topic Ads – Twitter is testing Promoted Trending Topics, where a company pays to sponsor a topic and keep it in the trending list with their Twitter username attached for as long as the ad stays relevant (as measured by Twitter’s proprietary algorithm). Along with Twitter’s Promoted Tweets, this new format highlights how Twitter will continue to monetize various features of its service.

Gowalla Gives Away 500 Eye-Fi Cards – Gowalla launched a promotion recently where 500 random people who check-in at a Best Buy store will win a free 4GB Eye-Fi card. While the promotion itself is interesting, what’s new and innovative about the campaign is that for users who don’t win, they’ll still receive a free year’s worth of access to wireless hotspots just for checking-in, so that everyone will walk out the door with something free.

Bravo Testing Foursquare Badge Rewards With Sephora – Bravo has teamed up with Sephora to reward users that have earned the “Real Housewives” badge on Foursquare by giving the first person to visit a Sephora store and show off the badge a $100 Sephora gift card. The idea is to give real-world rewards to users of the service (an idea that was pioneered by Foursquare rival Gowalla) and provide additional incentives for users to seek out the requirements for earning badgers related to Bravo shows.

Loopt Star Gives Users 25% Off at Gap – Loopt was one of the first geo-location services, but they were one of the last to launch sponsored promotions. Recently though, they revealed a partnership with Gap that offers any users who check-in at the store 25% off their purchase.

Add to Foursquare – Foursquare has partnered with the Wall Street Journal to test a new function called “Add to Foursquare”. When a user clicks the Add to Foursquare button, the location will automatically be added to their Foursquare ‘To Do’ list, along with a tip from the WSJ editor of the story that included the button.

Facebook Admins Can Now Be Removed – Facebook Page Admins have full control over a Facebook Page, but Facebook prevented the person who set up a page from removing their admin status, which caused problems when they were no longer associated with the company or organization that they set up the page for. Thankfully, Facebook recently revised that policy, and now any admin can be removed by any other admin of the same page at any time.

How Six Big Summer Films Are Using Facebook For Marketing – MediaShift looks at how six summer films are using Facebook to spread the word about their upcoming release, including tactics like YouTube tie-ins and group buying.

Tumblr Helps Save The Gulf – To help support the Gulf Oil Spill efforts, Tumblr released an exclusive “Heart-of-a-BP-Executive Black” Dashboard theme that users can unlock with a $5 donation, allowing them to customize their Tumblr experience, and do some good in the process.

2011 Ford Explorer Revealed on Facebook – Ford continues their dedication to all things social media by planning to reveal the new 2011 Ford Explorer on the Ford Explorer Facebook Page before anywhere else, including major magazines and other media outlets that usually get tapped for this type of news.

Augmented Reality – Explained by Common Craft – Common Craft makes plain language explanation videos, and the latest subject to get the Common Craft treatment is Augmented Reality, which uses smartphones and other mobile devices to add layers of information to live videos feeds.

Formspring.me Branded Questions – Formspring.me is an online question and answer service that recently passed its 700 millionth question asked. As a result, brands are starting to take notice, and using the to connect directly with their customers who want to ask questions about the brand.

Gatorade Social Media Command Center – To help keep track of their growing social media presence, Gatorade has created a social media command center inside of their Chicago headquarters to track and respond to their customers online.

David on Demand – David Perez wanted to go to Cannes, and Leo Burnett agreed to send him, as long as he agreed to do anything that anyone tweeted to him (that was legal) while he was there. During his trip, he’ll be livestreaming the whole experience, and taking suggestions through Twitter for what he should do next.

Cupidtino – Looking for a date, but don’t want to get stuck with a PC user? Cupidtino is a new online dating social network that’s only for Apple users. Think different.

Seth Goldstein, the chairman and co-founder of Stickybits, described the progression of media on the Internet as such: In 1996, sites became media. In 2001, search became media. In 2005, people became media. In 2007, status updates became media. In 2009, places became media. And in 2010, he predicts, objects will become media.

To help objects become media, Stickybits allows a user to scan any barcode using the Stickybits iPhone or Android app, and then add a comment, photo or video to that barcode, thus automatically turning any object into a threaded conversation. Think of it as a mix of QR Codes and Foursquare for products instead of places.

As with any service however, Stickybits needs to make money to survive, so recently they announced their first official sponsorship, which will allow PepsiCo to add “Official Bits” to their entire product line, including Pepsi sodas and Lay’s potato chips. Just like with paid search, when a user scans an official bit, they will see the sponsor’s message first (in Pepsi’s case, it might direct you to their Refresh campaign) followed by user messages in chronological order.

The goal of Stickybits is to turn any product into an automatic social network, and allow users to ‘check-in’ to that product with their phone. As with any new service, the challenge will be to get users accustomed to a new and unfamiliar action, but with a few more major sponsorships like the PepsiCo deal, and a surge of early adopter users, Stickybits just might be able to position itself as the next step in the progression of media.

Source: TechCrunch

This (short) week, we look at Foursquare’s new Howcast video, Ferris Bueller’s Foursquare badge, YouTube’s Show and Tell, a Skittles Mob, a Levi’s Girl, and Apple’s HTML5 Showcase.

Foursquare Howcast – Foursquare created a video to introduce their service to new users and explain the features and benefits, and it’s a great example of how to make a complex service feel simple.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Foursquare – Chicago has been using Foursquare to promote tourism, and has a special badge that users can earn by recreating Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. To promote the badge, they’re going to fly a few users out to the Windy City and give them all the museum passes and hotel stays they need to recreate the journey.

YouTube Show And Tell – YouTube put together a site to showcase some of the best examples of creative marketing on the service. The categories include interactive videos, brand channels, homepages and viral videos, and you can also browse by industry if you want to see what’s being done by a specific type of business.

Skittles Mob The Rainbow – If Skittles can get 100,000 people to ‘like’ their status update on Facebook, they’re going to send someone to bowling college with a full Skittles Scholarship.

Levi’s Girl – Levi’s is looking for a new social media spokesperson, so they’ve created a contest that will run on Facebook to help them find the next Levi’s Girl. (Editor’s Note: Cory O’Brien, a Swirl Account Manager, wrote a deeper dive on ‘experience prize’ contests for his blog: Experience Prizes Keep Contests Alive)

Apple’s HTML5 Showcase – In their ongoing effort to promote HTML5 (and kill Flash) Apple has created a showcase of sites that support web standards like HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript.

Apple recently announced that they had shipped their two millionth iPad less than two months after the release of the device, which puts their new iAds product in direct competition with Google’s AdMob for the eyes and attention of a rapidly increasing number of users and developers. In response, both networks are working to quickly solidify their offering, and make it easy for developers and advertisers to work together to reach this new mobile audience.

With iAds, Apple is promising seamless integration and extremely high levels of posh and polish, but AdMob visited Swirl recently to show off the features and benefits of their platform as part of their Mobile Advertising Solutions road show, and one thing they made sure to emphasize was that they’re already capable of doing what iAds claims to be able to do, and have been doing it for some time with campaigns that are already out in the wild.

Continuing the trend of mobile innovation, AdMob announced today that their iPhone OS SDK now natively supports iPad apps with new ad formats, allowing developers to quickly integrate AdMob code and start monetizing their applications across all iPhone OS devices – iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad – with a single unified binary.

Time will tell which network will come out on top, but for now, it’s an interesting space to watch as both companies continue to innovate and separate themselves from the competition.

Source: AdMob’s iPhone OS SDK Now Supports iPad Native Apps With New Ad Formats