Socialmediaworx

Paul Graham at Y Combinator has posted a great list of startup ideas they'd like to fund. Among them - fix advertising. Advertising could be made much better if it tried to please its audience, instead of treating them like victims who deserve x amount of abuse in return for whatever free site they're getting. It doesn't work anyway; audiences learn to tune out boring ads, no matter ...

So today I want to start a new category to catalog some of my favorite creative spots out right now - Hot Spot. Simply for fun - I just want to share creative ads that are inspiring, clever or just downright hot. And since I've been on a bit of a Nike streak lately, I guess it's only fitting that the first one to start the category off ...

Ed Cotton has an insightful take on one of Nike's marketing strategies for the Olympics, which is creating video testimonials and interviews with their lead R&D folks: "It's a reminder that all brands have the opportunity to tell much big stories because the media bandwidth available to do so is that much bigger and costs nothing. Although, these videos currently follow a pretty straight formula, it's like that we ...

Scott Goodson of StrawberryFrog has a post over at Reveries about the social media strategy they cooked up for the Toyota Scion. Understanding that the Scion owners - not unlike the MINI community - are an intensely passionate group of car owners, was critical to developing a strategy that connected with them in a relevant way. Scion owners are all about customizing their ride, so Scott and his team ...

Cross-posted on Viget Engage: Banner advertising has long been the bane of web surfers around the world. Garrish, annoying and ineffective, it's rare that a campaign actually expresses any level of creativity or effectiveness. As social networks entered the scene - ripe with rich, detailed demographic data about each and every user - advertisers simply couldn't resist. But, an odd thing happened on the way to targeting users in ...

Digital synergy (sorry) across advertising, marketing and pr continues to make headlines, this time at Cannes. Money quotes from AdWeek's wrap-up: The push and pull between traditional creativity -- centered on the big idea and storytelling -- and the disruption caused by digital technology has only just begun to play out in advertising. "Your Internet technology person will be as important as your creative person," predicts Mark Kvamme, a ...

Bob Gilbreath is blogging from Cannes Lions 2008, and he's got a great recap of Nike's presentation. He reports about Nike’s Stefan Olander, Global Director for Brand Connections, who listed many of the creative ways in which Nike continues to lead the pack among social media marketing initiatives to develop deeper engagement with customers. Money quote: "Nike continues to blow me away with its whole-hearted dive into meaningful marketing. ...

I posted this last night on the Viget Engage blog: It’s easy to spot the advertising and marketing today done by companies who simply don’t care about delivering valuable marketing to their customers – companies too content with interrupting them with annoying, trivial messaging. Some, however, are beginning to see the light. There may be several names for it, but no matter what you call it, there is no doub that ...

While the conversation about tomorrow's digital agency will look like (Agency pick-a-number-dot-oh), Mark Kvamme reaffirmed that the creative coming out of their shop needs to at least be equal to the quality of their technical chops. Speaking at the 4A's Digital Conference, Kvamme said: "You have to have world-class creative but you have to have world-class tech folks who can translate that into conversations," said Kvamme, currently a venture ...

Brandon Berger at MDC Partners has a great article in AdWeek about how to lead with digital: When you lead with digital, "How will the consumer interact with my brand?" is always the first question. The key word there is interact.  The problem comes first, then the audience, then the solution. You don't go into the brief with an expectation of what you want to create; you go into ...