Global sports brands like the Superbowl will also be looking at lower aud

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ience participation this year , even the NBA restricted to a smaller schedule. Only the premier league has managed the usual 200 mln plus audiences other than a disappointing Liverpool year for Stanchart, and the Top 3 moving down, viewership kept up nby new teams like QPR and our own Venky’s Blackburn.

Chennai of course will not be primary this year both Srikanth and Dhoni having stolen sponsor dollars with their non performance outside India and irreparably damaged the Superkings brand for some. There will still be Indians, Gayle force , unless he has retired, Royal Challengers and others.

Sponsors and ad buyers may also split budgets from the IPL 5 this year in favor of the Diwali F1 extravaganza and SET MAX might not hang on to list prices on the card for long. Last year the rates had jumped between 500k to 900k per 10 seconds, from 300k per 10 seconds in the opening year. Superbowl spots still retail for a $1 mln per spot

The latest edition of the IPL starts two months after Superbowl Sunday.

Also read our Superbowl opener for Marketers
Are you ready for Indy? | Superbowl XLVI | Social Media and New Markets http://bit.ly/villendy

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No after they won their award at Cannes for the Break up campaign, National Australian Bank have not really sat down idle. They have been busy running a contest which will form a basis for a future viral campaign with a slogan contest, getting the winner an ATM inside his house. If they don’t watch it, the Break up campaign ( see below) will soomn become a larger “Stick ‘em up” for their new found customers

NAB stick 'em up

On 18 July 2011, NAB tweeted about the ATM offer, and added a link to its application form. The contest winner will get $1000 in a NAB bank account, an iPhone 4 and an iPad 2.

I am sure there a re a lot of viral campaigns the end videos from the ATM home TV anchor will be compared too, most non charitable and their PR campaign next year could well be, No more fracas, please come back John!!! Li’l known cashcow.in destroyed our marketing dreams with this lead

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As this is a well timed wholistic review of social advertising, an update too many is already forcing me to change my headlines quickly to catch the right brands and the right market..Facebook’s own ad platform is delivering a 74% higher price in the second quarter over last year taking facebook revenues to nearly 3 times its Year 1 performance including the boost in volumes.

The platform already has four major markets defined in ad metrics measurement across US, UK, Germany and more. Twitter has continued receiving a dichotomy of value disinterest and PE investment overload as Biz and Ev finally put their mind to money after The Obvious corp’s good 5 years. But in the Social advertising category, Facebook is only one category, the other being social gaming , which though hosted on Facebook is likely to get its own brand ecosystem and its own advertising capture.

Social Gaming friendly brands go a lot for In game videos for their brands/ entertainment/movies and NEW PE funding for SupersonicAds ( a Facebook partner) underlines the same. Meanwhile zynga’s small wannnabe Crowdstar has picked up friendships with another video advertiser Jun group Note Page’s Google still does not figure in likely competition on the Social platform

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BREAK UP

BBDO Melbourne designed this Break Up campaign..Go BBDO

AS I see from here thee is just one Cannes Score card update and another AFAQs newscard that s publishing the result, wonder if any of you have caught the live blogs too..

NAB

BIG Cinemas

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• Another Break up play

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The latest Nielsen reports will probably confirm this and local Linked In honcho Hari Krishnan and Facebook ( International Growth ) Chief Javier ( Havier, as in horatio) try to spin it to the inevitable India’s domination of mobile and social markets. Before we do get to the unending hyperbole on the subject, most of what India partakes is free and in fact adds a new dimension to their social and professional life, which they are embracing wholistically as a group..

I would think that would be a fair series to partake going forward and keep my power blog active as free hold dominance attempts on the internet would spawn the required me too for google juice migrants to a facebook home page led,  internet based, device led lifestyle experience as they groom leaders into hot tubs of lard for a social orgy at these sites at Facebook and its allied digital world. It no doubt makes no sense whatsoever and as any “first out of the gate” inspired post writer and respectable leader will tell you, it is still more reason to do it and clear the air.

Linked In has become the bete noir of the professional Indian in that India now makes up 10% of its user base. Even at facebook. Indians make up 5% as local start ups easily merge into the partner landscape instead of inventing facebook all over again in Chinese. However as reports of Facebook losing ground in the United States surface, the reasons may be the same on both sides of the earth..As long suffering print and Tv media owners, journalists and brands have found out, users, readers or subscribers mostly stick around for a free ride till its exhiliriating climb and then leave you to attend to their menial chores like your mum, when it’s just not there.

However, always at work is the pressure of your peers having achieved social nirvana, so you register on Linked In.

Image via Wikipedi

Similarily, Linkedin is that social avatar provisioning for the Indian pro who does not want to get into a workplace where digital access is restricted and hence, looks at Linked in as a great opportunity to figure out what is meant by “social” without admitting any of his own limitations and portraying his “resume” as the flag of choice. The rest of it, in a more funny vein, when you are playing on Facebook after work..

This also means that this user is not paying for the ride, nor he is interested in soliciting or patronising the commercially sponsored elements. The small socially responsible group who feel queasy stare at mystery shopping nad group clubbing on the site with a mini social network triage becoming part and parcel of all recruited post 2003-4.

Thus someone in an HR job or at aconsultancy gets and keeps lots of these young pros in touch with each other and most just wait for the opportunity to kill a few of their contacts to make curry when they are moving jobs. Honestly, that is the Indian pro network and even at a worse rudimentary stage at super-senior levels where they even expect the others to know antiquated dinosaural practices over a network without a face and almost no communication , mystifying me and a small group of “social” users

Thus the Indian pro’s profile, though it is at the start of the race right now is that of mostly inactive, phage looking for each of his social comments to score a big fall somewhere to put it not too unflatteringly and the acceptable thing to say would be. “Yes my profile is on linked in, but..”

Enough of the rant though, next time we dig out the good stuff in people and hope that US citizens come back to Linked in not just as a stock but as a bonafide professional network. No one in India wants to look as if he is wasting time on facebook alone, esp if he is married or about to get into the vows business.

Image via CrunchBase

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This is not to ridicule the outcry against Apple and Google tracking their users’ locations (after all, Apple is also adding cloud based video services and the iPhone 5 may be much faster) but the location based services and local services like Groupon and the Google afterthought in the field are set to burn up the competition and create a mass momentum that may in fact propel a new set of social media and brand services that make it impossible to serve the customer without meaningful location data. This latter solution may even be preferred by those in the building that are entrepreneurs and owners of small businesses and trading outfits like food stalls, pizza companies that are really benefiting from the social media visibility of their brands/businesses.  Meanwhile Google is probably depending on location services as it scales Latam business to twice its size this year (just 2-3% of GOOG revenue)

As of now, four square is about to hit the $5 billion valuation soon as the pe funding round envisaged by 4sq looks at pricing it for $500 million.

In the latest sign of the Internet gold rush, location-based service Foursquare Labs Inc. is looking to raise fresh funds at a price that would value the three-year-old start-up at as much as $500 million, people familiar with the matter said.

That valuation could be a stretch for Foursquare, which gives users the ability to get deals or connect with friends by “checking in” wherever they are, but so far pulls in little revenue, the people said.

Chief Executive Dennis Crowley is leading the effort and would like to raise $20 million to $40 million

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703387904576279380019110022.html#ixzz1KRQ3hKVh

Image via CrunchBase

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Apple created revenues of $4.53 billion from the iPad in the quarter gone by and probably closer to $10 billion in the 4 quarters to come, the iPad is now busy on reviewing its design and the product margin , incl competition from Component suppliers Samsung and even RIM where the iPhone and iPad continue to together create a new space in global professionals looking for a sleek companion

Kindle, however, has introduced design changes more on the user interface, with Ad supported $100 Kindle a cute and worthy competition to all the noise in the tablet market esp as Amazon and Netflix models have a local captive audience which is not experimenting anymore. It has just gone ahead of your wildest imagination in terms of the catalog available on your Kindle with support from 67% of the libraries in the United States whose books are now available on rent on your Kindle. That I think is true market development from both competitors

Please respect FT.com’s ts&cs and copyright policy which allow you to: share links; copy content for personal use; & redistribute limited extracts. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights or use this link to reference the article – http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b8c840c6-6b75-11e0-a53e-00144feab49a.html#ixzz1K7fZ6GKz

Published: April 20 2011 19:22 | Last updated: April 20 2011 23:50

Amazon will let users of its Kindle e-reader borrow electronic books from two-thirds of US libraries as it seeks to broaden the device’s appeal in the face of competition from Apple’s iPad and rival tablets.

The world’s largest online retailer said that from later this year, customers would be able to borrow e-books from libraries and read – and annotate – them on a Kindle or any other device to which users have downloaded a Kindle app.

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But that does not mean we have found a way to fill the revenue gap, right! And a payment of just $180 million for Adriana Huffington’s effort..I know where this one is headed..

And by the way all known business and daily newspapers in the UK and the US behind a paywall… nary a subscriber run, just the same owner, mostly!! And print editions have already lost steam no end.

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Thestreet.com’s take on the Paywall characterisation of readers and visitors seems most apt

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While China continues to warm the cockles of the heart of many a luxury goods vendors/ retail chain and even super luxury accessories and auto brands, growing markets in them to the tune of 25% p.a making now a significant part of the global markets in luxury..the Americans are still getting a lot of attention from high-end goods retailers and cosmetics manufacturers. In the just gone holiday season teenage specialists a had scored pretty well in the shopping carts and maybe L’Oreal would thus even target the not so young kids that are seen splurging across US stores.

L’Oreal has committed itself to growth across the pond with its One Billion new consumers unlike the P&G guys targeting China and India. The Body Shop already has quite a few upmarket outlet locations in the US, pride of place in Chicago and JFK airports, and that big place in the Irvine sky, among others. L’Oreal in fact might not even push Lancome or its pro products matrix and Redken, with new CMO Speichert looking at white space opportunities

As quoted by Warc from the Adage Speichert interview: “We continued to aggressively spend media specifically. We’re now seeing a very nice kind of return on that investment,” said Speichert. “We very aggressively continue to spend on R&D as well, so a lot of the products that we are launching right now were fine-tuned in those tougher years.”

Print media, especially magazines, have typically generated considerable income from cosmetics, perfume and other brands keen to engage female shoppers, and Speichert stated this has delivered sustainable results.

L’Oreal is also in the middle of a novel endorsement campaign with blogger Michelle Phan undertaking to use the L’Oreal videos and the resulting videos getting 2-2.5 million hits per segment/clip

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If you can’t see the ad video go the eighth mile here.. http://wp.me/pBFdU-me

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Also on the cards a visit from the Bridgestone tyremakers to save Mr Beaver during the game show even as Pepsi max tries to rock the vote with cool contests for the superbowl ads copying its Doritos theme

I am looking forward to the Bridgestone spots..they are also the Official Tyre Sponsor of the Texas game

Mr Beaver is also on  a teaser

http://ahref=

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They co star in their new effort to “make the blue shirt cool again” as Best Buy makes another turnaround effort during the game

Real estate champion finds its research edge at the finish line

Go Packers! Go Jones Lang La Salle! Amazing what data availability for a region can bring out!!!

Information contained on this page is provided by companies via press release distributed through PR Newswire, an independent third-party content provider. PR Newswire, WorldNow and this Station make no warranties or representations in connection therewith.

SOURCE Jones Lang LaSalle

Firm’s Executive Chairman, Roger Staubach, agrees with conclusion that Green Bay will beat Pittsburgh this Sunday in Dallas

CHICAGO, Feb. 2, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Forget win-loss records, quarterback ratings and total yardage tallies: the winner of Sunday’s Super Bowl XLV showdown can be predicted most accurately by analyzing the prevailing commercial real estate climate in the opposing teams’ hometowns.

According to a historical analysis of recent Super Bowls by the Chicago-based commercial real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle, teams based in cities with a higher percentage of vacant office space have won the Lombardi Trophy nearly two-thirds of the time since 2000.

For instance, in 2006, office vacancy rates stood at 15.9 percent in Pittsburgh and only 10.5 percent in Seattle as the Steelers outscored the Seahawks 21-10 in Super Bowl XL. The same held true in 2005 when New England (18.9 percent vacancy rate in Boston) bested Philadelphia (16.1 percent) and also in 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001 and 2000.

While the last four Super Bowls have been more difficult to predict, Jones Lang LaSalle’s executive chairman, the two-time Super Bowl champion Roger Staubach, said he is confident that the theory will prove true once again this weekend.

“As a student of both football and commercial real estate, I can tell you that this vacancy rate hypothesis is absolutely the real deal,” Staubach said. “When it comes to picking a winner, you can throw everything else out the window.”

So what about this year’s matchup? As of Jan. 1, the office vacancy rate in Pittsburgh held steady at 12.1 percent (one of the lowest rates in any city around the country) while Green Bay reported vacancy of 18.9 percent, pointing to the likelihood of the first Packers Super Bowl title since 1997.

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“I have a confession to make, Wabbit! said I. to which the rabbit did not reply, But I have not spent that much time on the great XLV this time around as a lot of the injuries and the “wok” in other markets kept me away( a lot of that was lack of work – hint) It seemingly does not matter to anyone as it is Marvin the Martian taking on Nike Jordan amidst all the cars ( Check the Advantage Brands home at brands.advantages.us) and that drunk creäture bobbing ( if you take all the 5 Bud ads, the creäture would be the Bud can, which they can still animate if they want) its head in pride place.

The Superbowl seems to have sobered up with Go Daddy seeming inconsequential and not just Marvin the Martian but Marvel Comics itself bringing America’s family heroes to the couch in between all the 1st downs and turnovers which let Aaron Rodgers think if he has anyone left in the team to use his talent ( hint Packers vs Steelers) Of course the game might be tough with the Green Bay Packers working on their defense but the advertising has definitely got more heart in it. Avoid the viral stuff, is our last recommendation for this piece. Thanks Capt America fans for coming to the Superbowl.

Go Steelers!

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You must have noticed thru the two years of Advantage social / Advantage zyaada/ Advantage Brands our use of content systems from the blogverse has been incidental and for rebuilding social capital

Google in fact does realise that and does not list our analyses in blog pages, listing it in the main search results pages..one of the popular ones with both bing and google and Facebook being “Bank results season” others of course almost all business topics with Advantages.us before and after it. Twitterone has survived too. the purpose of the catcalls – to look for the needle in the haystack, the paying proposition…thence the title of this piece. Though bloggyish, this post also will not be a narrative of my travails and tribulations much so because that would at best be a paying blog/blogger and i am trying to harness the social web and the global financial markets with a bigger idea. I am of course catching the most picky topics so many brands have done exactly the things i liked or “asked” them to do and so did many sports rise in the social world so most of my readers do have an instant opportunity to become instant competitors when they come across the right words to launch their inner demon ( the good guy, the achiever) from the millions on offer. But the thornier question is to find the way to profits and greenbacks while creating and preserving profits and brands for you without resorting to the flailing tactics of the hitherto Wall Street champion, WSJ or even the Pearson media property the FT.

The digital media of iPad, Kindle or the web properties of Facebook and Twitter are closer to the utopia but even these cannot claim to have it good in that cradle of human consumption for the next two decades. Oreos and Mac and Cheese might still have a better chance than the digital business models in getting paying customers here in Asia. And there in, lies my pain..

For others who have the funding and the people to back the ideas, they might consider the following as essential requirements in selling services on this side of the sunshine line:

1. A value proposition that does not need anything more than a bare visit to the property to prove its worth. India and China consumers and corporate customers are very much concerned with the intuitive buy in and not reams of proposals and analysis

2. An ability to continuously deliver a paying surprise. Services products especially need to withstand the torment of time and patience and produce winners like clockwork, like your sports stars we’d rather buy a daily Venus Williams than a once an Olympics Agassi..

3. Find a paying club to back you. Individuals and Credit Card customers are unlikely to buy more than groceries or laptops, offices, resident associations and even midwives clubs are more likely to buy subscriptions, consulting services or even taxi services. ( fleets just have to charge lesser than a taxi to sign up, and they’ve hardly done anything else anywhere else in the globe)

The caveats are many and stay the same much because of entrants like the WSJ and Apple:

!. Most global services/ design brands end up looking at a premium/luxury niche alone in these markets – Great for profits but still not likely to tap even 5% of the Consumption club in these countries across the new towns, the boom towns and the always forever towns

2. Do a little soul-searching when you do your staffing..Most global services brands make more than a few costly hiring mistakes when they come in the open door and it is difficult to overturn these later..typically a lot of European brands could attest to such an experience ( and Kraft of course )

3. Go on a media binge – it pays. IT’s ok in the caveats, really. That is the lesson early advantage seekers may have learnt already. This market rewards public presence tremendously. Get good PR and make it work continuously. Buy more advertising, just to sell the name for a few first months and then for the services ideally. The caveat – these markets can be very suspicious of a name they have just heard and reward the competitor who irrespective of product or service quality is louder and more lucrative for the distributors

4. last but not the least, despite the lower likelihood of unemployment, the number of free hangers-on who will never write a word for or against you or actually analyse their own pronouncements before making them will stay in the high millions for every trusted advisor you sign here. WOM – what’s that?

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It gives one a nice smart winning feeling just talking about one of those age-old rivalries in Marketing esp after the touch and go ( mostly go, no touch with reality) viral attempts by big time brands like Amex and News Corp ( see Advantage Brands on the ugly viral mash )

We have earlier asked brands to concentrate on he social media focal point wholesomely as well, as most of our discerning readership would have in myriad statuses and local discussions always a nice point to be made). Lo and behold the ones that count have engaged in battle from the brands namely Pepsi and Coke have finally been competing head to head on rival social media platforms/ agents i.e. Foursquare hosting Pepsi promotions for Gym rats badges and the now popular SCVNGR hosting Coke challenges Zynga and Facebook would be happy to add such brand rivalries esp. if between the soapy suds of Unilever/Dove and P&G or Oprah( i know we have seen the last of her) and Conan or Jay Leno and Conan  or when Honda’s competitors grasp the chance to get on with it on Facebook as the auto brands revv up for a fight.

And yes, this is another strict warning to those of our colleagues still producing viral videos..Get a life, dude! (nope, that is not just swagger and flimsy, it is the real positioning statement Social media has made against the Viral mash that has dominated the notorious internet till date)

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For techie bashers though i guess the problem here is some arcane and ancient mariner support technologies like script and php that have created this problem for years in mapping software as well..but really new age new troubles and new innovations have never been reduced to as absurd as these:

Thanks to Advertising Age for the “scoop”

Nielsen disclosed today that its online measurement system has been under-counting unique visitors to the top 1,000 sites on the web by an average of 5%, the latest in a series of problems for the company.

Read Nielsen’s note to clients.

Adage: Nielsen can't count on facebook

In a note to clients today, the company said that social gaming sites were most affected by the latest glitch. The note did not say how long the under-counting had gone on; last week the company said problems had impacted metrics over the past three months, but sources told Ad Age that Nielsen knew about them far earlier.

Last week Nielsen disclosed it had been seriously underestimating the amount of time people spend on the web because its system was choking on long web addresses — those with than 2,000 characters — which have become increasingly common during visits to social networking sites like Facebook.

That was the single biggest factor in causing Nielsen to underestimate the amount of time people spend on the web by 22%. In better news today, Nielsen said it had successfully tested a fix for that problem and that the fix would be implemented for November data

Other known tech snarls are also around script, with Flash ads that spread like on reuters.com, carrying impactful brand messaging and activation mails or social media pushes that resembles the polar bears frostiness in welcoming thought ( like Coke )but then we could just get too tired thinking much about all these mere passing faults as facebook messaging rewrites email

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For my old readers (Twitterone.com) who followed the creation and battle of two sports superbrands, IPL vs Superbowl (NFL) it would probably be old hat that Aswath Damodaran has preened his feathers to distinguish the Brand Value as the value of that premium over the predilection to count every brand cost as brand. Mashable of course is having a grand run with it here

I agree it is much nearer to the word-science(Etymology for nerds) and definition of “brand” to look at it askance and demand if it can pay your electricity bill and as Prof Damodaran points out what other thing would last 75 years ( Top 3 out of 5 superbrands from 80 years ago did)

What we need on the social web however is some brands to connect the dots taking the idea from Facebook and Twitter to foursquare and xtranormal and even Googly You tube ( Watch our new Xtra Video Miniseries on YT here)  to thread together a brand story which can then go ahead to outlast maybe the Coca Cola’s that survived 75 years. And I think of course Coca Cola also will. At the heart of that is probably the “brand premium” for “SOCIAL” as loosely ascribed to the Social Web. Nevertheless even otherwise, if it is about empathy and collaboration the brand Coca Cola is yet light years ahead of Facebook. Hope we see the light?

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• The IPad and Your Brand: Six Things to Know (adage.com)

I'd go there tonight..for a taste of the ale with such good thoughts

My favorite Sam Adams pint may have survived the recession brilliantly but (and again thanks to bloomberg for letting me in on it ) there are greater marketing strategies afoot in the sector as the pint of beer goes the extra mile to lend a hand to locan artisans and handyman with microfinance loan. Featured in a blomberg usa series, the micro brewery in So Cal ( Oceanside Ale works  ) – also on Bloomberg’s facebook page, the small brewery is promoting itself with small loans for

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locals in their trade while the Ale fills the other evening of their life..

The Bloomberg series is sponsored by Chase and the brewery is  offering a tasting room at the dorm with Brewmasters’ Special Ale and a dozen other flavours..

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• Behind the scenes at the Samuel Adams brewery (news.cnet.com)
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Metrics are the one thing that can keep your dream alive. Esp if you are a newspaper in the face of an onslaught of new technology and waning interest in old tales..

Sounding upbeat on analytics definitely makes us a miniscule minority, but then if you read thru this NY Times copy, you can see what is behind the enthusiasm to read those boring graphs and irritating red dots. After all, getting to instantly correct something in your approach is a tangible win and gets results too.

Looking to the public for insight on how to cover a topic is never comfortable for newsrooms, which have the deeply held belief that readers come to a newspaper not only for its information but also for its editorial judgment. But many newsrooms now seem to be re-examining that idea and embracing, albeit cautiously, a more democratic approach to serving up the news, particularly online.

“How can you say you don’t care what your customers think?” asked Alan Murray, who oversees online news at The Wall Street Journal. “We care a lot about what our readers think. But our readers also care a lot about our editorial judgment. So we’re always trying to balance the two.”

Editors at The Journal, like those at other large newspapers, follow the Web traffic metrics closely. The paper’s top editors begin their morning news meetings with a rundown of data points, including the most popular search terms on WSJ.com, which articles are generating the most traffic and what posts are generating buzz on Twitter.

At The Washington Post, a television screen with an array of data — the number of unique visitors towashingtonpost.com, how many articles those visitors view and where on the Web those visitors came from — is on display for the entire newsroom. A red or green marker designates each data point, indicating whether the Web site’s goal for the month on that particular metric has been met. About 120 people in The Post’s newsroom get an e-mail each day laying out how the Web site performed in the closely watched metrics — 46 in all.

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The airline’s 25th anniversary campaign did not help it much but the company attributes that to the recession

Virgin Atlantic Airways is to nearly double its advertising spending this year on a global campaign due to start just weeks after the airline reported the worst losses in its 26-year history.

In a further sign of recovery that some advertisers are seeing around the world, the carrier founded by Sir Richard Branson will on Wednesday launch a £10m ($15m) campaign, its first global marketing effort.

Virgin Atlantic’s new campaign will focus on 13 of the airline’s most important markets, including the US, the Caribbean, India, China, Dubai and Australia.

The details of the campaign are for all to see in visual and print:

(campaign) The creative aims to capture the glamour, style and comfort of flying Virgin Atlantic Upper Class and the little touches of ‘Je ne sais quoi’ that set it apart.

The campaign first launched in the US at the end of May and is in the process of being rolled out across 32 key destination markets for the Sir Richard Branson-controlled airline.

Virgin's Flights of Fancy for the Premium 'je ne sais quoi' - This time in economic pink

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With RFID updating Facebook status and auto tagging of all the party photographs. This is really a brand’s dream! Now you know why you could have used more of Twitter..but the winner seems to be Facebook with the Facebook pages becoming a cult. Our brand page here at http://tr.im/advantage We could all use those wristbands

Coke Israel team doing a big favor to the Haifa labs there and putting MTV Miami nights to shame! coke Ireland also had a few bugs of its own trawling Facebook for brand value. Definitive an active lifestyle!

Among other recent successes, coke had achieved 86 million impressions when it launched itself as a keyword/trend on Twitter’s promoted tweets!

In just 24 hours, Coca-Cola’s first Promoted Trend garnered 86 million impressions and an engagement rate of 6%, according to the company’s Global Interactive Marketing Vice President Carol Kruse in an interview with The Financial Times.Following in the footsteps of Disney/Pixar, Coca-Cola is the second company to reach Twitter() audiences by advertising as a Trending Topic on Twitter.

The cost for this particular Twitter ad buy is said to be tens of thousands of dollars, but Kruse indicated that the cost was small relative to other ad buys and that Coke is pretty pleased with its first Promoted Trends experiment.

The company choose to run with its Promoted Trend campaign during Wednesday’s World Cup matches, a peak time for Twitter activity. The decision was a risky bet that could have yielded mixed results due to Twitter’s inability to keep the service up during World Cup online hysteria. Fortunately for Coke, its risky decision paid off

 Did you know that globally Coca Cola is the most well understood phrase in any language and beats no, yes or even Mamma! It is actually voted second after the word OK

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• Dear Coca Cola (merelyacademic.blogspot.com)

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Actually Apple re-wrote tech again in last week’s event and I still can’t deal with it. Because right now, we have to apply a wait and watch to any hardware technology based new marketing and lifestyle tools. With Facebook it was not a platform or a technology, even if there was, it was ubiquitous by its absence from user psychology. Steve Jobs, Apple, Ping, ABC and even the other networks that signed up with their largest shareholder’s hobby project, are more in the game of transforming the technology rather than Web 2.0.

Apple is usually more about design and Marketing whence both Ping and Apple TV ( which has till now been only a hobby project experimenting with a host of amateur video related features and owning the programming age of digital) are likely to be the talk of the town once they do get into their next phase as the friendly coaster in the living room to play with when fiddling around on iPhone or probably even a more refined choice of Apple gadgets for a marketing friendly and design friendly living room.

On the ebooks front, Kindle has been keeping its own too, so the war is still on the tech parts and user adoption is unlikely to ramp up to speed while it is so. i for one, don’t like my music to speak too much to me as it gets too intense and I’d rather it stays in the background even when it is my favorite tune. I am sure humans will never let tech invade their living room for tech’s sake.

That also leaves the question of Flash and Facebook connect for believers, after all Apple market share will only rise!

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• Silicon Alley Insider: Steve Jobs Isn’t On Ping…But These Apple Execs Are (AAPL) (businessinsider.com)
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This is where Bloomberg caught it

Honda Motor Corp.’s campaign for its new CR-Z car features the hybrid vehicle in some colorful roadside billboards that can’t be seen from a freeway.

The ads are on display in Facebook Inc.’s virtual game “Car Town,” as Honda advertises on the social-network site for the first time today. The game, which allows users to collect and customize cars, has 3.1 million users. It was released on Facebook two weeks ago by Cie Games Inc.

Brands are turning to social networks to reach an audience with leisure time on its hands and the patience to sit through branded messages. Walt Disney Co., Electronic Arts Inc. and Google Inc. have all bought games makers in recent months to benefit from millions of users signing up to play.

Honda joins the august company of Starbucks, Pepsi, P&G and not to forget Coke’s brilliant virality as brand spends on social media increased by two times their 2009 budgets and the resultant Facebook executives are trying hard to keep all the gaming revenues on board as well apart from being one happy property for all brands seeking to reinventing their digital self. Most social brand offshoots are a distinct stream of thought and social conscious hoping to merge into their brands mainstream value for a ‘new me’ that is more persistent. Meanwhile even in conservative markets interactive product placement times and budgets are also likely to jump from $3.6 billion in the US and $600 million in Europe. (Europe has new laws on Product placement as designated by the common market execs).

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• Honda boosts profits through virtual Facebook game (computing.co.uk)

Reuters reports

Customers would then “bump” their phones with point-of-sale devices in stores — actually they need only wave the phones near the devices — and their bank account data would be collected and their purchases completed.

Bank of America declined to say how many people would be involved in the pilot, and a company spokeswoman declined to comment on Visa’s involvement.

Visa spokeswoman Elvira Swanson said the Bank of America pilot was not larger than the company’s other mobile trials, but she said it could have a more powerful impact on the market than some previous pilots.

Unfortunately the pogram requires users to install new hardware on their smartphones, which does not sound like the smart thing to do for amenable users who would want to migrate to a non invasive lifestyle that does make paying and carrying digital id easy for them, no unwieldy wallets, no embarrasments at forgeting things at home / in the car.

We just finished connecting the dots on how the facebook’s like button is catching up as any brand’s main character. Having defended and hoped for FB and Twitter to make 30% of global budgets for brands, it was great to hear

One year of display ads and social apps, and Facebook’s commercial graph is skyrocketing. Here’s the Warc push posting FB COO Sheryl’s take as planning season gets underway for 2011

According to Sheryl Sandberg, the company’s chief operating officer, the outlay of several key clients has expanded at least ten times over during the last 12 months, and often doubled this rate of growth.

“Two years ago the big brands were experimenting with us. They started buying with us a year ago. Now, they’re going big,” she said.

“A movie studio last year that did three movies with us; this year, if they’re releasing 12 movies, they’ll do ten of them with us. A company that did one product launch with us; this year, they’re going to do half of their product launches.”

The cost of purchasing inventory has remained largely static, despite the fact Facebook’s audience stands at more than 500m netizens, Sandberg added.

Prices may rise as the site enhances its “value” to marketers, having leapfrogged Yahoo in terms of the number of display ads served the US, leading the sector on a share of 16% in Q1 2010, according to comScore.

The Chase campaign on Facebook. the like button shows 3 million subscribers!

Meanwhile, Unilever has also found an exclusive outlet for its brand spend innovation getting large inventories on the iPad platform for its bouquet and spending $300million in a multi modal deal with Time Warner, covering Online, print and TV. Sounds juicy, right! yup that’s the one led by the Mad Men spoof

Here’s the latest lifestyle research/ consumer research at Adage:

In a new study, Pew Research Center asked participants about household spending since the recession began in 2007. Via telephone interviews, nearly two thirds of respondents said they had cut back on spending, and only 6% said they had increased spending. In the same survey, 54% said they thought we are still in the recession, and 63% said it will take at least three years before their families recover from the financial effects.

It will be a couple of months before the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its 2009 data on consumer expenditures, but one of two things will happen: The Pew study will be upheld and there will be some obvious declines in consumer spending, or purchasing trends will continue to increase as they did in 2008 with the recession well in gear. That would show that, while people might want to or think they are cutting spending, in practice they’re actually spending more.

Spending growth peaked in 2005 with 6.9% growth over 2004′s average expenditure of $43,395, according to BLS data. Since then, it has dropped steadily to just 1.7% in 2008. But that was still growth. Broken down by age, only those under 25 and 35- to 44-year-olds dipped, and only by 0.2% and 0.4%, respectively. One of the age groups that really drives the economy, 45- to 54-year-olds, increased its spending a healthy 4.9%.

Luxury Goods sales did dip 20% in 2008 and 2009 and then they were the first to come back. If you try to understand the recession consumer, however, he has more extra time on his hands and seemingly less money that must last a little longer. He just spends whatever he can lay his hands on and in typical subscriptions/ regular items of foods and groceries as he thinks make his family ticket thru the bad times. His car still works fine. Her children don’t suffer. And everyone watches the same channels on Tv. Maybe that’s the lucky ticket that’s got all the global millions rooting for each other at the same time. And I am happy Indian companies are paying more taxes in the US if they employ more Indians..

Of course, businesses interested in volume sales like the model Walmart built or as is happening in all consumer categories in Australia right now, the key to the heart of the wallet and not some shavings off the top, is the deep discounts you can offer after the two months premium season for the goods is off. It is true for electronics categories, apparel categories and foods categories including the new Kraft mixes you might want to enjoy. I wonder if we can think this model for currencies also. Buy the dollars at their real value just this week…(My apologies if the weekend stuff got to you, relax, take a deep breath and get to that Mall)

Even for purchases like Insurance or for items that as a group increase Household savings, the same principles apply. New York Life actually increased market share during the recession and it is not MLM. Mid Market companies that invested in MLM have to rethink a simpler model that would intuitively be self sustaining as that model had inherent strengths during a recession.

The important things to keep in mind:

1) Brand investments are important at all times and should not overtly suffer in a recession. A droning level of noticeable brand activity esp as the social world is a really inexpensive and far reaching investment of goodwill
2) Consumers like discount, marketers like discounts and contrary to some opinion even brands like discounts. Look at McDonalds and $1 coffee, $1 breakfast with McCafes
3) Radio and outdoors have been ignored for no fault of the marketer ( okay, point taken)
4) Brand Sense, Tipping Point all say that research must start to try your instinctive hypothesis and not go by the number crunching. Go for the instinct the brand engenders
5) Sell to Moms or any special interest categories that can take charge of the cheerleading for you, Sue.(Glee, Sylvester Sue, defined as a shrew with an agenda, that only grew )

However, Twitter has a rather self styled calendar of its own, and even if these accounts are a breakthrough, they will be pronounced on their due date as such by Ev, Biz and Twitter

Here’s Louis Gray found a new twitter trail