Ok now, I’m not a breakfast person. Not that I don’t want to eat it, I just trade food for extra sleep. Sleep always wins! But when I do wake up and step on my cat in the morning, I tend to always wake up to these awesome Jimmy Dean breakfast foods commercials. The ads were created by TBWA\Chiat\Day and they turn the universe and its gifts into tired office workers. Anyone who ever had  a job analogous with the movie Office Space would relate and laugh. Dragging yourself in in the morning you don’t want to do anything until you had your morning BLT and coffee. The ad above shows Lightning and Thunder getting a boost from Jimmy’s awesome sandwiches. Some earlier ads are below.

With the obsession with Twilight, True Blood and all these other vampire films and shows, Verizon has found an awesome way to capitalize off of that. Though I’m an avid iPhone user and long-time AT&T customer, these Verizon map ads  make me hang my head in shame. Come on AT&T, who said chunky Luke Wilson was the guy to save the day? Whoever said that should be fired and you need to find a new creative director quick, we’re getting slaughtered!

So when you think of Puma what do you think about? Sports. Sneakers. Jamaican Track & Field. But now they’ve just added another branding opportunity to their repertoire… The Puma Phone.

Yes my friends, See how fast you run in those kicks, that’s how fast the download speed is. Ok, that may or may not be true depending on how fast you run but it would be good copy for an ad.

The phone looks a bit like a T-Mobile MyTouch. It has solar charging which is very cool, has a 3.2 megapixel camera, blah blah blah… Why would Puma feel they’ll have an edge up in the phone market. Where did they see the potential? Is it better for Running, does it help you work out? Oh, it does. It has a pedometer, bike tracker, run tracker, compass, alarm, stopwatch and RSS for sports-related news. Yeah, but does it remove sweat? No!

I’m not sure why Puma chose to enter this market and how much was invested. According to Gizmodo they partnered with a below par phone company, Sagem, to create these so they weren’t looking to take over the market. With every phone having its own set of apps and app stores that can provide you with massive amounts of sports related apps, where does Puma see the return?

What do you think?

So for me, the verdict is still out about the new social media venture Google launched called Google Buzz. A few things that already have them on the bench:

• Privacy- How come when I signed up I already had a few people following me? Some I didn’t want to hear from for months or years. Now I see they are about to know every waking moment of my life. (<— Ex-Boyfriend issues). And Why am I already following all these people? I really don’t care about what anyone else is doing except for me.

• Email- The reason why I have a Twitter or Facebook account is so that people don’t use/have my email address. So now you want me to give that away so people can follow me?

• Browser- If Google wants me to use this thing, they need an app quick. I barely go on gmail.com. I check my mail through my phone or Apple Mail (yes, I’m a mac)

• Difference- I so far have no compelling reason to not use Twitter for Google Buzz. I mean I’m already over Twitter, so why would I start up another self-indulgent social networking tool.

Google will really need to give me something equating to a snuggie just out the dryer before I get into it.

Created by BBH New York

With so many companies entering the Social Media space, and with many still being skeptical, the question is still out there– Does social media work as part of a marketing strategy? Companies have said they are going to invest more in social media, but is the ROI attractive enough and can it really be measured?

Word of mouth is the key in driving growth and sales for any company. I tell you that this product is dope and you try it out for yourself, then tell your friends. Same thing can happen to kill a product or company. This ends up happening in a larger scale on social media sites. I make a post about how great this album is and the few thousand friends and followers I have (OK, I’m over-exaggerating but follow me) then read my opinion and will then give the CD a listen and potentially post their view, or start a dialogue with me and our combined followers can chime in, then their followers can chime in, and its eventually huge news across the web. This is the real key to marketing in social media, making it a topic of discussion and spreading the news. Now the issue that companies need to figure out is how to get their product or service to be a topic of discussion.

Here are a few key things that companies need to understand when building their social media plan:

People do not want to be blatantly marketed to when they’re trying to post up photos or update the status. Just having banner ads on Facebook isn’t going to get through the return you want. It’s estimated that the click through rate for such banner ads are at 0.04%. The key to getting your message to the potential 300+ million users is through Social Ads of Facebook. This is where companies create a Fan Page for their brand or product and users can become fans and receive the content in their feed that is posted on these specific pages. When users become fans of these pages, a feed goes through to the users friends messaging that the user has become a fan, for example “Nnenna is now a fan of Da Dirty 30″ (I would be if Cru have a fan page). So now my friends have the potential to see this. I say potential because only the friend that subscribe to my feed will get this message, but subscribing to friends feeds is a default so most subscribe to all their friends.These Posts have an estimated CTR of 6.5%.

Facebook Connect makes it easy for users to bring all of their information to third-party sites, and also share information from third-parties with their friends on Facebook. I won’t get into the full breakdown, just check the link, but over 10,000 companies have integrated it into their websites, and, according to Facebook, saw a 30-200% increase in registration on their sites, and a 15-100% increase in user engagement through reviews and other user generated content.

Just because you hear about Twitter, Tweets, Twitpics, and Twexting (OK, I made that one up), doesn’t mean you can just throw up a twitter page and that’s  how you execute your social media strategy. Twitter is a hard social network to market through, because it is the least involved of all networks. Users provide little information and speak to each other 140 characters at a time. The most popular discussion on Twitter are current events and pop-culture. Some other facts about Twitter than many companies don’t realize is:

• Twitter growth has slowed- Since its peak at 29.2 million users in July, Twitter has dropped down to 23.6 million U.S. uniques, a loss of nearly 24 percent.
• Older Demographic- The majority of Twitterers (Tweeters?) are 25 to 54. So if your product is for the next generation of web users..don’t look for them on Twitter. They do love Ustream though.
• Twitter is a huge promotional tool- Businesses and celebrities make up a majority of Twitter:

1. Among Twitter users, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one. This translates into over half of Twitter users tweeting less than once every 74 days.
2. The top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. This means Twitters are just being communicated to but not engaging in these communications (Retweeting, conversing about the topic, etc).
3. Less than 10% of Tweets are considered of Pass-along value- These are tweets that are retweeted by users.

I write this all to say his, companies are smart to take advantage of social media but they must recognize it is a science. You can use social media completely wrong or you can be a company like Amazon and iTunes that uses it properly.

So for those of you who love all things Apple, like myself, I hope you are ready for the “exciting new product” that Apple is preparing to announce tomorrow.

The rumor for a while has been that the Apple Tablet is coming and apparently it is! McGraw-Hill CEO Terry McGraw who has had a long partnership Apple, confirmed that the Tablet is coming and it will have a similar Operating System to the iPhone. Meaning Apps can possibly be transferred onto this new gadget.

I can’t wait!

In my opinion, and I’ve had this opinion for a while, all those who say they are “Urban Marketers” or that companies and brands need to attract an “Urban Market” need to be slowly  burned with matchsticks. If they think throwing in a fake rapper or having a street dance sequence is a sure way of attracting “urban” aka black and latino inner-city youth, then you clearly have no clue as to what is happening in America.

So here’s McDonalds with their new series of commercials. They teamed up with this site Dollar Van Demos where people record music demos in NYC’s famous dollar vans.  They’re featuring rappers and singers performing a song about the McDonalds Dollar Menu. The first ad features a rapper/singer/violinist of sorts named Joya Bravo.

I’m pretty sure Burrell Communications is behind this one. Doesn’t look like McDonald’s has come very far from the rapping chicken nuggets.

Some people know how to turn off an audience with their attempt to attract a younger and “cooler” audience. Disney has the babies locked down but they realize they can benefit from a bit of an older crowd being interested in their projects, mainly additional ticket sales at movie theaters. Everyone’s looking to grab on to the 18-34 year old audience, the easily influenced and highly influential only when targeted properly.

The Disney/Pixar movie UP! was a highly successful movie. I don’t know how many of hose ticket sales were attributed to adults, but it was all the rage in the world of Social Media. Part of this excitement may be due to this awesome video created by video remixing virtuoso Pogo.

According to Pogo the track is “composed using chords, bass notes and vocal samples” all directly from the film. Excellent stuff. Enjoy.

I love creative thinking in regards to marketing. A Minneapolis-based furniture design company Blu Dot launched an out-of-the-box marketing experiment in New York that capitalized on our obsession with bringing one man’s furniture trash into our home to complement the current decor.

Blu Dot is leaving 25 of its iconic “Real Good” metal chairs around the city in random locations. The designers hope that each one will be taken to a “real good” home. Most of the chairs have been embedded with GPS chips so their adventure can be traced. and one of them has a Twitter account. Its pretty interesting reading coming from a chair. Also check our their adventures on flickr.

Its a compelling enough campaign to generate buzz for the company and well…if the chair is good, I’d buy a few.