Grown Up Thinking

On my latest trip to LA flying Virgin America, I decided  to power down after a few hours of emails and tune in to the TV offerings. I came across ‘Fly Girls’ a series which airs both on the CW Network and on Virgin flights. The series depicts a group of attractive, young flight attendants going to parties, flirting with in-flight boyfriends (IFB’s), and the usual reality TV girl drama you’d expect from 5 chicks living in a house together.

What I found intriguing is that ‘Fly Girls’ is essentially part advertising for the airline and part corporate recruitment. My bet would be that the number of job applications has increased since the show’s much-debated launch. Attracting corporate talent is always a challenge, and I’d imagine the airline industry faces this everyday. Being a flight attendant isn’t probably high on the list of potential careers for most young adults. But the possibility of being a Fly Girl and partying at LA hotspots (not to mention hanging with Sir Richard himself) may prove to be an enticing lure.

On a complete opposite end of the spectrum, the Army has faced their challenges with recruiting young people to enroll for service. Their solution?  Partnering up with Xbox and Halo 3 to sponsor a tournament and create a connection to in-game battles and real life combat. Through gameplay that simulates the experience of leading a team on the battlefield, the Army is able to create a connection point with teen males and drum up demand amongst new recruits.

So while you’re thinking of ways to make your corporation relevant and attract top tier talent, go beyond the traditional means and start looking at entertainment and new media channels as a way to show off your brand culture to the public and share what’s truly special about your organization. But make sure it fits your brand. For Google, a simple outdoor billboard appealed to their audience of geniuses with a simple problem to solve.  So don’t rush to setup a meeting with an MTV exec to pilot a show about your company.

Do consider new and unique ways to show how awesome your company is to the general public. If you work at a company that sucks, figure out a way to make it awesome, and then tell the world about it.

We all know that product placement is nothing new. It’s a multi-billion dollar market that spans across television, movies, music, sports and more. Whether it’s the Coca Cola cups on the American Idol judging table or the food on top of Joey and Chandler’s fridge in Friends, product placement is everywhere all the time. Sometimes it’s subtle and plays in to the storyline of a movie or TV show; other times it’s more obvious. In Lady Gaga’s case, it’s on the screen and in your face, and she doesn’t care if you like it or not.

She’s known for her eccentric outfits and imaginative performances. In fact, being over-the-top is what made Lady Gaga so famous. Now the artist is starting to be noticed for the blatant product placement in her music videos. And with over 50% of brands using branded content for awareness-based marketing, she is a marketer’s dream come true. In fact, Lady Gaga is the only recording artist to reach 1 billion video views across all online video platforms – perhaps making her blatant product placements the most valuable in entertainment history! According to Neilsen AIG, product integration is more likely to drive brand recall than other forms of advertising, so if all goes according to plan, I’ll never make a sandwich without thinking of Lady Gaga, and I’ll never see Lady Gaga without wanting a sandwich.

Maybe when I finish eating I’ll take a picture with my Poloroid camera, upload it on to my Beats laptop, listen to some tunes on my Hearbeats headphones and call my friend on my Virgin Mobile phone. Why? Because Lady Gaga made me do it.

In the fuzzy afterglow of the Chat Roulette frenzy of the past few weeks, I find myself thinking “what’s next”? Lucky for me, I don’t have to spin my wheels on that brain buster quite yet as two similar sites have already distracted me with their unique interpretations of the random chat craze:

RandomDorm connects college students on the prowl for some dorm-to-dorm interaction (only those with a .edu address need apply).
MyChanceRomance Billed as the “fun way to find love”, MyChanceRomance is a dating site with a Hot-Or-Not mentality that’s bound to give you an inferiority complex.

Not ready to move on from the original just yet? Don’t fret. It’s  still alive and well, even spawning it’s own Chat Roulette Missed Connections site (which I can assure you is comic genius in its own right).

The BEST bait and switch ever. Thank you, Heineken…

And the second best bait and switch. Thank you, Hot Chip.

Kickball, the alternative first Foursquare client for iPhone. (Our prediction= bigger than Tweetdeck).

My Famebook: another example of bringing the online world off. Personalize your own journal with 320 of your Facebook statuses (far cooler than that “Year in Status” update hogwash, we think).

On stealing and borrowing: two sides of the homage coin, from Creative Review and Ad Age respectively.

Unhappy Hipsters: a fun time waster (even for those of us *ahem* who live in Brooklyn).

CMYK Cocktail Contest: Droog & Tasteologie team up to celebrate design and mixology to raise funds for Food Bank of NYC. Tasting color for a great cause? Yum.

There are many among us who cherish the days when we get to indulge in a hearty breakfast of pancakes and syrup instead of our usual cup of coffee and too much to do. Well today is our day, because it is officially National Pancake Day according to IHOP, and the folks over at the famed food shop are taking a new approach to promoting it with a Web 2.0 spin!

For starters, IHOP enlisted Miss America 2010 to be the official spokesperson for National Pancake Day to support the nationwide promotion and tie-in with the Children’s Miracle Network. On the official National Pancake Day website consumers can share information via their social networks and sign up to receive celebrity wake up calls reminding them to celebrate with some pancakes. If you’re one of the 74,000+ IHOP Facebook fans you may have noticed that you were automatically sent to the National Pancake Day tab this morning while IHOP employees across the country took to their local IHOP Twitter accounts to spread the news about the promotion and were even triumphant enough to earn IHOP a spot in the coveted “Trending Topics” list on Twitter. Overall I’d give IHOP an “A” for effort, but a “B” overall for their Web 2.0 centered celebration. They’ve got a lot of room to make this a full-blown social media extravaganza, and this is a great step in that direction.

At some point over the last year many of us have realized that some of what we post on Twitter may not be what we’d like to share with all of our followers. Unfortunately for those in that situation, Twitter does not have privacy settings like Facebook that allow you to choose who can see what information that you share, so what do you do when you realize that your personal life is crossing over into your public life? The answer is simple – make a second account!

The first question you should ask yourself when doing this is, “Why am I using Twitter and what am I trying to accomplish?”. There are many reasons why having multiple accounts makes sense. You can segment your Twitter traffic based on your interests, focus content on different topics and develop larger followings across different fields. I will admit that I ran in to the same problem on Twitter which actually became more of a positive than a negative. Now that I have two Twitter accounts I can share personal content with my close group of friends and network with other professionals. In fact, I recently discovered that 53% of Twitter users have multiple accounts which is why Twitter management software like HootSuite and TweetDeck have become so popular.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Twitter was already developing a new platform to improve some of the organization and privacy issues that are plaguing many users- but until that day comes, I’ll have to keep up with my (not so) secret double life on Twitter. You can call me Bond… James Bond.

The new Vampire Weekend album, Contra, came out a few weeks ago. As a fan, I did what I always do… I downloaded it illegally. I didn’t even think twice.

Then a curious thing happened. One of my coworkers rushed to the record store to buy the very same album.  Huh? He enthusiastically explained the beauty of having something tangible, described pouring over the inset, the liner notes, the bonus poster that came in the sleeve. Having the album ensures that you listen to the tracks in the order the artist intended, he said, the time and energy involved in tracking down the record made it that much better. It all sounded very transcendental – something Penny Lane would wax poetic about in Almost Famous.

I can’t relate. At 22, I don’t think I’ve ever purchased an album. I got onboard the Napster train early on and haven’t looked back since.

All legal issues aside, is it possible that I’m missing something fundamental by skipping the pomp and fanfare of the record store? By downloading an artist’s tracks individually online, am I reducing the integrity of the music to a 99 cent commodity?

PS. Vampire Weekend, it you’re reading this – I’m very sorry. I owe you 12 dollars.

As we enter the “tear it up” 10s we should be in for a wild year in all areas of American culture- entertainment, technology, sports, and media. Since Twitter has become such a critical source for news dissemination, I thought it would be appropriate to share some predictions for 2010 in the form of Tweets:

1. @TigerWoods: feels great to be back on the course and winning again

2. @BarackObama: We never said we were out of the woods

3. @MTV: Ask and u shall receive! Excited 2 announce #JerseyShore renewed til 2015

4. @ESPN: SportsCenter in 3D premieres tonight- get ur glasses in today’s @USAToday

5. @Mashable: Facebook Announces Premium Account Service Offering $1/mo Subscriptions with Enhanced Functionality: http://bit.ly/19ksST

6. @The_Real_Shaq: #Italwaysfeelsgoodto hoist that trophy

7. @JamesCameron: Humbled by #Avatar passing Titanic as top-grossing film of all time

8. @AlGore: Don’t believe the hype, I am not running in 2012

9. @PerezHilton OMG! OMG! Tom and Katie are history

10. @NFLNetwork: 2011 lockout looms large for next season

11. @IMDB: Shooting for The Sopranos movie seen around Northern NJ yesterday

12. @VirginAmeria: Now offering @Skype seats for in-flight video conference in select “noisy rows”

13. @EbertChicago: Sex and The City 2: Two thumbs down!

14. @Gizmodo: The #SkiffReader is our 2010 tech device of the year

15. @JimJCramer: It is still not too late to get out of the dollar and into commodities

16. @CNN: 36 countries report internet outages for as long as 9 hrs as a global task force is created to identify what happened http://cnn.com

17. @LadyGaga: Just found out I’ve been selected by Richard Branson for Virgin Galactic’s first ride to space

18. @JimGoldman: Google discontinues #NexusOne citing lackluster sales

19. @APlusK: This tweet is sponsored by @Coca_Cola

20. @SergeyBrinn: We have officially ceased Google.cn. We recommend using @Baidu

What other tweets do you expect to see?

The XX Installation: Quote from Partizan director and creator Saam Farahmand-“Music videos are a 2D visual interpretation of a song. We are interested in creating spaces that exist as a 3D physical interpretation of a song or an album, and that is what we have created for the album xx.” A beautiful meld of music, technology and art that creates a “physical music video.” (via Creative Review Blog)

Levis’ DIY Closet: Simple. Smart. Surprising.

One Frame of Fame video: C-Mon & Kipski crowdsource their music video.

When I first downloaded Foursquare, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I mean, I’m already a Facebook and Twitter addict- how much more social media can a girl really need? Do my friends even care to know where I am at all times of the day? How often am I supposed to check in? Do I accept all friend requests or only people who I know? Do I really want complete strangers to know where I am?

After much thought, I came to the conclusion that everyone uses Foursquare for different purposes. Here are the five types of Foursquare users I have encountered:

The Cheater: Every Sunday night at 11:59pm EST the Foursquare leaderboard resets. Ever wake up on Monday morning and wonder how one of your friends already has 150 points? The truth is you probably need to get more honest friends, because this friend is a cheater.

The Hungry Tiger: Have any friends on Foursquare who check in at every single place they go- including every subway stop or convenience store? The friend may be classified as “The Hungry Tiger”, someone who can never get enough of Foursquare.

The Hot ‘n’ Cold: I have a few friends like this- those who can’t decide how they really feel about Foursquare. Sometimes they will check in and once they get a badge they quickly turn into The Hungry Tiger, but that rapidly slows down after about a week.

The Commitment-Phobe: This type of user (such as Melvin) has an account, but never uses it. Simple as that.

The Star Performer: This user in my opinion is the ideal Foursquare user. They check in at the appropriate places, such as restaurants and bars, yet refrain from checking in while simply purchasing a pack of gum at the deli across the street.

Given Foursquare’s rapid popularity, users are bound to encounter at least one of the above types. Some people even believe Foursquare could become the next Twitter. Keep your eyes open, folks- this is one social networking bus you won’t want to miss.