The Mr Youth Creative team was in good company Friday night. As guests at the One Show Interactive Awards at New York’s Terminal 5, we were both surrounded and inspired by an eclectic and talented crew of colleagues. Each year, the One Club recognizes the agency teams behind the most innovative and buzz-worthy advertising of the last 12 months.

Here’s our personal compilation of the “wow”-worthy winners that made us applaud hardest:
 
Kindling a community of composers…

“Sounds of Hamburg” | Client: Philharmoniker Hamburg
Agency: Jung von Matt, Hamburg
Award: Gold Pencil, Websites and Microsites: Services

Because at the end of the day “it’s just advertising”…

“Pink Ponies” | Client: john st.
Agency: john st. advertising, Toronto
Award: Gold Pencil, Online Films and Video: Self-Promotion – Single

An awareness-builder of a different kind…

“The Girl Store” | Client: Nanhi Kali (K.C. Mahindra Education Trust)
Agency: StrawberryFrog, New York
Award: Bronze Pencil, Websites and Microsites: E-Commerce

Comedic gold for the cause…

“Devin & Glenn” | Client: Overturn Prop 8
Agency: Furlined, Santa Monica
Award: Silver Pencil, Online Films and Video: Public Service/Non-Profit – Single

Crowdsourcing creativity to honor the Man in Black…

“The Johnny Cash Project” | Client: American Recordings/Lost Highway
Agency: @radical.media, New York
Award: Gold Pencil, Websites and Microsites: Social Networks/Community

Some other favorites:

“Fastball” | Client: Google | Agency: BBH, New York

“UNIQLO Lucky Counter” | Client: UNIQLO | Agency: Dentsu, Tokyo

“Pay With A Tweet” | Client: Innovative Thunder | Agency: R/GA, New York

“I Am Not An Artist” | Client: Elisava | Agency: Soon in Tokyo

“Nike+ GPS” | Client: Nike | Agency: R/GA, New York

“The Fun Theory Winner – The Speed Camera Lottery” | Client: VW Sweden | Agency: DDB, Stockholm
 
A hearty high-five to all of this year’s winners. Keep our seats warm.

According to a new Forrester Report, only 6% of 12- 17 year olds want to be friends with a brand on Facebook. This presents a major challenge, and opportunity, for brands when trying to interact with one of the most prized demo segments. The report goes on to state that the segment doesn’t think brands should be on social media and, if they do have a presence, should serve a passive role by listening and responding to their requests as they come up.

I say phooey. Well, to be clear, I think it’s incredibly important to listen to the segment and respond to their needs in social media but, more importantly, I think there’s fertile ground in social to proactively interact with them. I remember reading that Henry Ford once said something like “if I always followed my consumer research a car would have never been invented because they would have asked for a faster horse.”

I think the same approach should be applied to the 12 – 17 year olds in regards to how they engage with brands in social media. The challenge is determining how your brand can be relevant since, as we all know, all brands are unique. Some brands have an easier job than others – I’m talking to you Skittles – because what they offer is inherently sought after by 12 – 17 year olds. I mean, who didn’t like candy as a kid?

But for others, achieving relevance is more challenging which makes it that much more rewarding when you achieve it! And I’m not talking about the relevance from a marketer’s perspective. I’m talking about relevance from the 12 – 17 year old’s perspective which can be much different than the former.

In order to be relevant, gain Facebook fans and ultimately maintain ongoing interactions with this segment, brands must answer one very simple question: Why should I care about you, Brand XYZ?

Here are five ideas for how to achieve relevancy and make them care about your brand on Facebook.

1.       If humor aligns with your brand’s personality – USE IT. One time-tested approach that’s worked over and over with this segment is that they respond well to humor. This however, needs to be tied into your brand in a way that only you can use that humor.

2.       Add to the experience. This segment is primarily on social networks to stay connected with their offline friends and I guarantee that they’ll appreciate it if you help enrich that experience.

3.       Ask yourself “why do I think they should care about me?” Once you get that answer find a way to bring that to life while adhering to all the spoken and unspoken rules of social (that’s another post for another day) and this segment.

4.       Make their friends care. Cart before the horse, right? Well, kind of. But, if you can make groups of friends care than they will influence the rest. So, create ideas that micro-target groups of 12 – 17 year olds through interests that they might share.

5.       Get some FUN all up in here! Yes, it’s true they are primarily online to connect with friends but they also want to have FUN while doing it. Create a game for them to play – if done right, that will give you the ultimate level of interaction that all brand managers dream about.

Follow through with some of these ideas and you just might be welcomed into the exclusive 6% Club. Got any other ideas for how to reach this segment? Would love to hear them!

If 3,029,062 people “Like” Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook, could 18,976,457 people “Like” New York City? Rumor has it Mayor Michael Bloomberg just had a powwow with the world’s most popular dweeb to discuss pushing the Big Apple into the social realm (which is really the least Zuckerberg could do to redeem himself for that painful SNL cameo.)

The NY Daily News reports that while Big Mike has been somewhat vague about the details of the meeting, he believes “there’s a lot of potential” in NYC having its own Facebook page. Bloomberg’s even gone so far as to hire a Millennial to man the helm as Chief Digital Officer – 27-year-old Rachel Sterne (<< follow her!) There has been some criticism that Sterne doesn’t have enough experience for the position or its reported $115,000 salary, but I beg to differ.

What does her resume look like? Our new CDO is founder and CEO of citizen journalism site GroundReport, and was named one of America’s most promising social entrepreneurs by Businessweek, at age 25. Rachel’s also an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, despite the absence of her own graduate degree. AdWeek even claims she’s “a bit of a darling in New York’s digital scene“. So, what else do you want? Social and digital is a relatively new space for city government to play, and I believe it takes a fresh and eager mind to understand, embrace, and stay on top of it all.

Equipping the Big Apple with a social media presence will do more than give New Yorkers a greater sense of city pride, it could be an efficient way for NYC to both communicate and collaborate with those of us who live here. I’m curious to learn more about Zuckerberg’s plan for how New York can use Facebook, and what our new CDO will bring to the table. What’s your social media strategy for your city?

After uproar over Google Maps leaving some faces and private property captured in their Street View feature unblurred, and Google Buzz’s questionable privacy settings, some major international players are putting their foot down and demanding change. Most of us can breathe easy– Google has been working to address these repeated concerns.

Heads of 10 countries just sent an open letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt demanding that the internet powerhouse step up its game when it comes to protecting users. Overall, they say they want to see Google:

- collecting and processing only the minimum amount of personal information necessary to achieve the identified purpose of the product or service;

- providing clear and unambiguous information about how personal information will be used to allow users to provide informed consent;

- creating privacy-protective default settings;

- ensuring that privacy control settings are prominent and easy to use;

- ensuring that all personal data is adequately protected, and

- giving people simple procedures for deleting their accounts and honoring their requests in a timely way

So I have to ask, do you feel violated? What concerns do you have over Google’s privacy issues? Do you think the open letter is more whiny than it is warranted?

An hour-long high school dramedy series that’s a musical? Let’s face it: Glee initially had everything going against it. Time will ultimately tell, but skeptics be damned. This year’s Golden Globe winner for Best Comedy Series turned out to be a runaway hit that has yet to lose steam as it heads into the second part of its freshman season. Above all, the show’s writing is top notch by melding a perfect blend of edgy dark humor and a lot of heart. The talent of the young cast is undeniable. And Jane Lynch turns anything into comic gold. But producers were faced with some tough challenges right from the start. How to get people to actually tune in? Enter social media and a relatively risky gamble on an aggressive interactive marketing campaign.

First of all, Fox chose to debut the pilot episode months before its actual season debut in order to capitalize on its 20+ million captive audience from American Idol. They then utilized the down time to really gain traction online by engaging with their most passionate fans (or ‘Gleeks’). Currently, @gleeks has a nearly 50,000 person following on Twitter and almost 2 million fans on Facebook. Mix that with its very own YouTube channel with exclusive content, PR-worthy appearances (Oprah!) and even nationwide mall performances. Yep, everyone’s all abuzz over the little show that could.

Blurring the line between fan and fiction even further, Glee has since launched a national casting campaign for new characters to appear on the series. Fox also recently released an interactive “hypertrailer” allowing viewers to click and “fan” the show’s cast members on Facebook, who also participate live on-air in weekly re-run episodes (or “Tweetpeats”) much like the cast commentary on today’s DVD and Blu-ray discs.

So what’s so significant about Glee’s marketing strategy, anyway? At its core, it is truly a niche show. But a very enthusiastic niche crowd at that. And Glee is giving that very core audience exactly what they want: access and interaction. At a time when studios are shuttering unauthorized playback of content and guarding creative copyrights like a fortress, this show is practically shooting it across America through a t-shirt cannon. Whether it be the show’s music content (consistently charting week after week on iTunes) or capturing that “underdog” spirit in everyone, Glee has succeeded in truly crossing all media types, including a forthcoming iPhone/iPad app. That makes it one of the very first scripted shows to actually achieve results in reaching out to a young, digital audience with significant viral success. That’s definitely a social media coup to be gleeful about. I, for one, am proud to be a Gleek. Who’s with me?

Glee resumes its season on Tuesday,  April 13 on Fox.

In the wake of Haiti’s massive and devastating earthquake, we’re now bearing witness to the largest text-based fundraising campaign for disaster relief to date.

Countless compassionate individuals combined with the girth of our social media world have led to an outpouring of financial and emotional support for the people of Haiti. As of Thursday morning, the American Red Cross had collected nearly $3 million in donations through text messages.

Both the American Red Cross and the Yéle Haiti Foundation have set up “text to donate” services and have asked Twitter users to text a number to make a donation, which is then added to your cell phone bill. #Text, #Help Haiti and #Yele are currently among today’s top 10 trending topics on Twitter.

Text-based donations get aid swiftly to those in need- Yéle Haiti’s technology partners Mobile Giving and Give on the Go have even waived the typical two-week waiting period to deposit the donations. As a result, Yéle Haiti says they’ll have nutrition bars, candles, blankets and flashlights on the ground in Haiti this Friday. Many text-based donation services even let you sign up for tweets to see how their donations are being spent.

These past few days have truly been a testament to the power that technology and social media hold- and as a wise man once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

To donate $10 to the American Red Cross’s earthquake relief efforts, text “Haiti” to 90099.

To donate $5 to Yéle Haiti, text “YELE” to 501501.

Monday, the New York Times launched TimesPeople—a social networking add-on to its website the publication hopes will evolve the media giant into a more robust community of readers in a web-obsessed world.  Obviously a response to the increasing takeover of micromedia channels and alternative media sources, TimesPeople is NYT’s declaration that they’ve joined the party.  But having seen the new feature set in action—perched pleasantly atop nytimes.com—I have to ask: is this just 2.0 lipstick on a 1.0 pig?

Aside from some annoying user experience problems (cumbersome popups disrupt everything you try to read), TimesPeople appears to be a competent step in the right direction for the broadsheet.  Users create profiles and build networks by adding friends. While browsing the site users can then recommend stories which get fed into their social network via the embedded toolbar, creating a community of exchange and interconnectedness not unlike some of the Times’s newfangled competition. Currently in Beta version, TimesPeople seems a promising, if not desperate attempt to keep the paper relevant. Will it work? I think the answer for now is we’ll see.