BRANDED ENTERTAINMENT
GE Takes BuzzFeed on a Trip Down Memory Lane brandchannel 09.20.12 Buzzfeed has partnered with GE as presenting sponsor for “The BuzzFeed Time Machine,” inviting Buzzfeed.com users to upload an old and new image side-by-side to show the evolution of their lives and likes through the years. Users can also re-skin Buzzfeed.com pages to reflect a chosen decade and what its coverage and ads would have looked like then. Storytelling builds on a core theme of “GE Works,” a branding campaign that features employee innovation in commercials that ran during the Super Bowl in February and the London 2012 Olympics coverage on NBC.
H&M Releases Lana Del Rey Cover of Blue Velvet brandchannel 09.20.12 H&M released new brand face Lana Del Rey’s cover of Blue Velvet, a music video (so creepy you’d think it was directed by David Lynch, but credit goes to Johan Renck) that features pieces from its fall 2012 collection.
Why It’s Time Your Brand Invested in a Creative Newsroom Advertising Age 09.17.12 What if instead of optimizing branded content to hit every marketing bullet point on a brief, we optimized it to maximize the amount it got shared? Ian Schafer, CEO, Deep Focus, ponders the possibilities…
ADVERTISING
Mom Bloggers Compete on Facebook to Become P&G Trend Experts brandchannel 09.19.12 “Have You Tried This Yet?” is being promoted with Vanessa Lachey, actress and TV correspondent, and Irma Martinez, a “Hispanic style expert,” demonstrating various “innovative” P&G ideas and products in a serious of online videos. It also includes a Facebook Contest in which 15 “up and coming tastemakers” in beauty, family and home goods will compete for votes for a spot in the first “Trend Trio” under the program and to become a relied-upon “expert.”
After Kissing Campaign, Benetton Makes Up By Inspiring Unemployed Youth AdWeek 09.18.12 “Unemployee of the Year” seeks to shine a light on a pressing social problem—the nearly 100 million young people worldwide aged 15-29 who don’t have a job. The digital, film and poster campaign aims to celebrate the creativity and dignity of the world’s youth—and maybe even fund projects they can work on, or even find them permanent jobs.
P&G Puts Gilette Up For Review In North America Advertising Age 09.18.12 Procter & Gamble Co. has launched a review for its North American Gillette men’s shaving, deodorant and body-wash business, putting up for grabs general and digital advertising work on an iconic brand handled by BBDO or its forebears for 80 years.
ENTERTAINMENT
YouTube: 20 of Our Original Channels Now Earn a Million Views a Week Advertising Age 09.19.12 Nearly a year into YouTube’s $100 million-plus bet on content, more than 100 “original channels” have launched, and of those, 20 are now earning a million views a week. YouTube Head of Content Strategy Jamie Byrne compares modern times to the early days of cable, stating, “The networks that launched back then have become great media brands. And we think we’re in a very similar time.”
Cody Simpson’s Choose-Your-Own-Ending Movie Hits Youtube Mashable 09.18.12 Finding Cody, a series of 31 interactive YouTube videos that together create a mini movie featuring Australian pop singer Cody Simpson, just hit YouTube on Tuesday. The videos employ YouTube’s annotations feature to build a choose-your-own-adventure story with 15 possible outcomes. Tweens across the world, rejoice!
MEDIA & TECH
Apple Makes a Wrong Turn as Users Blast Map Switch The Wall Street Journal 09.21.12 Apple Inc.’s move to replace Google Inc.’s mapping software with its own on its mobile devices sparked a world-wide consumer backlash, marking a rare strategic blunder by a company more accustomed to rave reviews from users.
Are Books Doomed? The Rise of E-Reading Mashable 09.19.12 Before you scoff, consider this: From December 2011 to January 2012, e-reader ownership nearly doubled, from 10 percent to 19 percent, among American adults. Can you imagine a world without traditional books sometime in the not-so-distant future?
Shazam for TV Now Works With Any Show Mashable 09.17.12 Shazam, best known as a music-identification app, is venturing deeper into the social TV sphere Monday with the expansion of its Shazam for TV second-screen experience.
