Coke may be the real thing, but Red Bull is making its own authenticity case in courtrooms across the land. From Iowa City Press-Citizen: The distributor of the energy drink Red Bull has filed a lawsuit against an Iowa City bar for mixing cocktails with an imitation, but failing to tell customers who specifically ordered drinks with the popular beverage. Red Bull North America Inc. filed its lawsuit in U.S. District …
Kids Today
If you market to tweens or teens, hopefully you know where to find them. Tina Wells, CEO of Buzz Marketing Group knows. In an OMMA article she says: Teens and tweens are drawn to Web sites that engage them on multiple interactive platforms, hold their ever-shrinking attention span, and give them a reason to come back. Wells names the following sites as teen and tween havens: uthtv.com, omnik.com, absolutepunk.net, …
Garage Philosophy Leads To Big Things
Mark Fletcher spoke about his experience starting ONElist and Bloglines at this month's SDForum in Palo Alto. I like his advise about doing it on the cheap. I am a cheap bastard when it comes to startups. With ONElist I was, you know, $55,000 got us through a million users. With Bloglines it was $200,000 from start to finish. It's so cheap to start and run these web companies, especially if you do it virtually. Like, …
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Spec Work Is Not Consumer Generated Media (It’s Expert Generated Media)
Consumer generated media is a phrase tripping off alot of tounges in newsrooms and boardrooms today. But when is CGM not CGM? Let's run some numbers. Firefox, the open source browser with 50 million users worldwide asked its base to offer up a broadcast quality TV spot. 280 spots came in. I'm not much good at math, but that's significantly less than one percent—a figure social media sites can count on to drive daily …
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Registered Users Is Only One Metric
Flickr founder, Caterina Fake, recently returned from her Bora Bora vacation. She came back ready to write. Upon considering the number of MySpace registrations, she had this to say: MySpace and Facebook are examples of services that enable communication and socializing. You can surf them, but surfing them isn't really the point. You don't really do the Facebook or MySpace thing unless you have friends, are a member, …
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Ego A Driving Factor In Car Purchases
It seems those crazy kids in Coconut Grove are inventing new ways to sell VWs on a daily basis. The new tool in the automaker's belt is a co-creation site called Ego Index, where consumers rate cars and everyday items for the ego they emit. For instance, anchovies, came in at 50, which is a neutral rating on a 1-to-100 scale. Apparently, anchovies emit no ego. Here's how a CP+B copywriter describes the concept: Each …
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Interative Talent Rising
JWT went out and found some big time interactive help—Colleen DeCourcy, chief creative officer at Omnicom Group's Organic. DeCourcy will serve as JWT's new chief experience officer, reporting to co-president Ty Montague. According to Ad Age: Ms. DeCourcy, 41, has worked in a multitude of mediums, beginning as a copywriter and moving into film editing, production and post-production as well as location-based events …
Burning Down The House
Neil Boorman, a literary Englishman, will burn all his branded worldly goods--including Jacobson chairs, Christian Dior shirts and a Louis Vuitton bag--on August 26 in attempt to rid himself of consumerism. Boorman will then offer a consumer packed good to the public in 2007, as his book Bonfire of the Brands will be released by Canongate. His torching, while dripping with irony, seems like great theatre, and grand …