I love this one minute spot…it has everything I think a viral advertisement needs.  First, it isn’t overbranded.  I think in order for a video to be successful (at least from a commercial perspective) it must only include product and brand mentions, not shove it in our face. Second, it’s not too long; one minute is just about the max that I would go these days in order to capture the most attention.  Third, and perhaps most importantly: it has a dog fish in it.

Disclosure: I am professionally associated with Volkswagen.  That said, I had absolutely nothing to do with this ad, I found it on YouTube randomly.  I wish I did though, it cracks me up! It also will probably give me nightmares.  Enjoy.

If you’ve been following me on Twitter for any length of time you’ve recently seen some funny updates like, “I’m at LAX Terminal 3″ or “I just became the mayor of Finnegan’s Wake on @foursquare”.  Some people know what this is, most do not.  These updates are being pushed over to Twitter from the new social network Foursquare, a service that I signed up with a couple of months ago.  I believe it is the next service to watch, and I want to tell you why.

First of all…I referred to Foursquare as a social network, but inside the business walls I’ve been calling it a “location aware ad platform”.  There are implications and advantages for both the average user as well as business, and I’ll break it down for both after a brief introduction.

I always get a lot of interesting looks from people when I wear a particular t-shirt.  It was made years ago by my friend Brad Abare who runs Church Marketing Sucks, a site dedicated to helping churches suck less in their messaging.  Brilliant stuff.  Brad’s take over the years is that The Church has a good message to share, but generally falls on their face when they try to deliver it.  They are overbearing and off mark, and tend to alienate those that they are trying to talk to. Does that sound like any company you know? I’m sure it does, just that statement “overbearing and off mark” makes me think of a half dozen organizations; I’ll let your imagination fill in the names, I won’t do so here.

As it relates to social media, I think a very common mistake that many companies make is doing things the same old way.   Especially with large brands, once PR, HR and a few corporate attorneys get their hands on the social media marketing plan it starts to look like…well, what they’ve always done.  Carefully crafted letters and press releases are posted in new mediums and are then called “social media”.  Let me make something perfectly clear: the use of a social media channel does not mean that you are in fact engaged in social media.

For social media to be effective, old ways must be shed.  No longer can you preach (pardon the pun, given the opening paragraph) to your audience about your product from a podium.  Filling your Twitter stream with an RSS feed that is only pushing content out isn’t enough, because the podium doesn’t exist anymore.  Instead you are in a social circle, with people all around, talking, questioning and interacting with your brand.  If you don’t engage in a personal and likable way, your brand is doomed to fade into obscurity on that channel.

“But that’s the way we’ve always done it”.  I know, I understand.  It’s hard to move into a new arena without HR, PR and William from legal looking over everything that goes out…but it’s going to be okay.  In fact, it’s going to be more than okay, it’s going to be liberating.  You will find that once you break the bonds of “that’s the way we’ve always done it” you will find new freedom with your brand and your messaging, and ultimately that will turn into a nice bump in revenue.

Of course there are guidelines for everything that is done publicly, but that is another post for another time.

Those of you that have been following my adventures for a while know that I put my heart, soul and mind into social media.  Since writing my own blogging platform a decade ago (the billion dollar idea that I never capitalized on…) to my almost-obsessive fascination with brand interaction on channels like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, I am constantly observing and strategizing ways to make the interaction and engagement between companies and customers better through social media. I have spent quite a bit of time over the last couple of years consulting businesses of all types and sizes regarding their engagement (or lack thereof) within these online communities.  From Fortune 100 companies that distribute hardware all around the world to non-profit agencies that are doing their best to make a difference in the world, I have worked with groups to lend insight, support, ideas and action to social media programs. Given all of that, I’m quite pleased to announce that I have taken a new role within the industry.

Another day, another phishing or malware scam on Twitter. It seems like these are happening entirely too often, and the reason is that people continue to ignore common sense. Very, very rarely will a site hijack an account of some type without getting input from the account holder. The scam du jour is a Twitter hijack attempt that asks for a username and password, and once received will not only DM your followers with a message, but will also post it publicly on your account. The message will appear as one of the following, or a close variant:

• hah, i think i seen u on here http://videos.dskjkiuw.com/
• this you? http://videos.dskjkiuw.com/
• lol this vid is funny. http://videos.dskjkiuw.com/
• haha check out this vid http://videos.dskjkiuw.com/

DO NOT FOLLOW THESE LINKS AND GIVE YOUR LOGIN INFORMATION!!! This page will take your Twitter login credentials and hijack your account.  As of right now it appears to only try to propagate itself by getting others to log in, but it could use your account for other reasons.  If you did receive this and you did “log in”, you must CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD IMMEDIATELY!!!

GroupM Search and comScore, Inc., (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, announced today the results of the first study ever conducted by comScore looking at the relationship between social media exposure and search behaviors. Conducted in tandem with social media agency M80, the study, “The Influenced: Social Media, Search and the Interplay of Consideration and Consumption,” reveals the dramatic correlation influenced discovery of brands through social media has with search behavior, including more lower-funnel searches and increased paid search click-through-rates (CTR). A white paper exploring the results and implications of the study is available on the GroupM Search blog, SearchFuel.

I think social media is amazing for many reasons, at the top of the list is the ability to turn online connections into real life relationships. I’ve experienced this many times, from tweetups to business meetings, and I marvel at how far we have come with technology over the last decade. Recently I wrote a post asking if there was a photographer in the San Francisco area that would be available to join me for an afternoon at Alcatraz Island with my kids, and advertised it only via my blog, Facebook and Twitter. I wasn’t sure what kind of a response I would get, and was surprised that I actually received over a dozen serious inquiries! Photographers from the very new to the very experienced got in touch with me, and all of them sounded great. I ended up picking Matthias Giezendanner from Matthias Photography, he sounded like he would really fit in well with me and the four kids, the pictures on his site looked great, and his bio really made the decision for me.

I love the show Mad Men, the character development is incredible and the behind-the-scenes voyeurism of a fictitious 1960s ad agency is riveting. For those of us in the marketing space, Mad Men is almost required viewing.

Sesame Street, a show that has been popular with kids since before I was born, recently did a fantastic take on Mad Men.  I love how they captured the feel of the show, with the exception of the mid-day boozing, smoking and womanizing. Take 2:15 out of your day to watch this great video, I think it will make you smile.