My Starbucks Idea

http://mystarbucksidea.force.comThis site is interesting to me on a couple of different levels. According to the home page, the purpose of the site is to “shape the future of Starbucks—with your ideas”. Sounds feel-good enough, doesn’t it? The site is basically a Web 2.0 take on the good old fashioned suggestion box with a hint of digg.com. Being the somewhat cynical person that I am, to me, the site screams “our sales numbers are on the [...] Continue Reading

The Bigs of the Blogs

The most popular places in the blogosphere, according to Technorati, as measured by the number of links to those blogs during the past six months. Icanhascheezburger.com was #10 on this list...what is it about comical pictures of cats that continues to keep the world enraptured?

1. EngadgetThis gearhead blog is in AOL's Weblogs Inc. network, along with Autoblog and Luxist.2. GizmodoGawker Media's top blog, the tech-centric Gizmodo tallied nearly 50 million page views in October '07, up 158% f [...] Continue Reading

Tis the season for viral marketing campaigns

Office Max has come up with not one, but a series of about 20 viral micro sites all with a quirky but entertaining holiday theme. On these sites, you can arm wrestle with a reindeer, dance like an elf, roast a turkey and much more.Several of the micro sites meet the requirements of a good viral marketing campaign; they definitely have entertainment value, allow the user to be interactive, are unique and most importantly, are entertaining enough that you would pass the message along to your fr [...] Continue Reading

Tequila or Vodka? Boxers or Briefs?

Russian models or Brazilian models? Life’s most challenging and unending debates are posed on tequila maker Patron’s new microsite.The site does a great job of carrying through the Patron brand and uses a simple Flash application that is easy and fun to use. It encourages user participation by allowing visitors to post their views on ever important questions such as “the party or the after party?”. One thing I would have liked to see was a question pitting the different Patron products a [...] Continue Reading

YouTube Launches Brand Channels

Following the MySpace model, YouTube is now allowing advertisers to promote their brands via a customized channel. Similar to MySpace, advertisers can work with YouTube to customize their channels after meeting pre-determined spending quotas.One of the first to take advantage of this new opportunity is Paris Hilton who is promoting her eponymous album: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=ParisHilton.

Let’s not let the whol [...] Continue Reading

Google and MySpace Sign $900 Million Search Deal

Google has just tapped into a a HUGE ad inventory source by signing a deal with the Fox Interactive Network to power paid search on all of the company's Web properties which includes the gargantuan social networking site, MySpace. Previously, Yahoo! powered search on MySpace.Google is so the Napoleon Bonaparte of the Internet. [...] Continue Reading

Nikon, Kate Moss and Flickr

So I was watching a movie at the theatre a couple of weeks back and all of the sudden, the screen was invaded by a gigantic nude (well covered in all the right places…or I guess wrong depending on who you’re talking to) Kate Moss. I was engaged but only out of curiosity. What could she be promoting? Soon enough, a close-up of the new Nikon Cool Pix S6 came on screen. What an interesting spokesperson choice, I thought to myself, especially in light of all the negative publicity recently surro [...] Continue Reading

the myspace phenomenon

We've had clients ask us recently about advertising on MySpace.com and there has been so much talk about the site recently that I thought I would address this as my very first RDI biz blog post.If you haven't heard of MySpace.com yet, you probably haven't heard of a little blonde pop star named Britney Spears either since I’m assuming that your cave isn’t wired for TV or Internet access. So, for you cave-dwellers out there who aren’t in-the-know, MySpace.com is the most popular social netw [...] Continue Reading