In maybe the most brilliant marketing move of the year, Old Spice has used their handsome, worldly spokesman to answer the tweets of Twitter users, both famous and ordinary. The insanely intelligent aspect of this is not the creation of additional, hilarious content to endear you to the Old Spice brand; rather, it's the combination of interactivity and getting more value out of their popular mascot than they initially intended. Old Spice must have worked hard to come up with the persona of the 21st Century version of the Old Spice Guy; why not extract as much value as they can while he's still popular?

The key aspect of all of this is that this is where advertising is heading. No, not necessarily toward buff, fast-talking dudes who stand eerily still; it's moving toward creating value. The value that the Old Spice Guy provides--in addition to his charm and good looks--is comedy. So far, every video that Old Spice has put out has been funnier than anything that the writers of Two and a Half Men have ever developed. In addition to being funny, viral and re-watchable, the videos are honest. They give no false pretenses about what they are, which is, of course, advertisements.

Even though many people lament the thought of living in a world saturated with ads, the upside is that the cream will rise to the top and those are the ads that will be emulated and improved. It won't just be about getting eyes on your ads in the future. With all of the capability of the Internet, people will begin to expect comedy, interactivity, value and more when jusdging whether a company will get their business. So, that may mean more ads to deal with but hopefully, they'll be half as good as this Old Spice campaign! [TechCrunch]

Kevin Rose (of Digg):

Justine Bateman:


Alyssa Milano:

With Google Me getting all the "buzz" recently (see what I did there?), I thought it might be a good idea to throw in my two cents regarding what this could mean for social marketing. If you get a moment, head over to Wpromote's search marketing blog and check out my new article called "Google Me & You: Taking Social Seriously." Thanks! [Wpromote]

Click on the image to expand.

So, most people (i.e. people like me) just assume that most machines run with hamsters running on wheels. A Ferrari has like, WAY more hamsters than a DVD player, for example. Well, I always thought that Google just had billions of hamsters and billions of wheels in a warehouse somewhere powering their operations. As it turns out, I was wrong. Check out this cool infographic to learn more about how Google works, from beginning to end! [PPC Blog]

The Facebook movie, titled The Social Network now has a trailer. It's a little low on visuals but the dialogue sounds like a cross between a horror flick and the movie Boiler Room. It's too early to tell if it's going to be good, but I'm betting that it's going to be a difficult sell to the American public. Keep in mind that Grown Ups  just made $41M this weekend. Maybe, the Mark Zuckerberg character should take a couple of shots to the groin once every twenty minutes to try and hold the viewer's attention. I know I'd pay $5 to see that. What's that? Movies cost how much now?!

See you on HBO, Zucks. [Valleywag]

Reports of Google's death are greatly exaggerated...

As you can see, even with Bing's $100+ million marketing effort and a couple cool tricks there are still valid reasons as to why people still prefer to use Google. [Reddit]

Edit: It seems that the user that took this image was in Germany. The US results for Bing are better than in this image. Still, I do prefer Google's layout!

Do you hate ads? I don't, but I also couldn't buy Scotch if not for ads, so maybe I'm the exception. That notwithstanding, I still appreciate the distaste with intrusive ads such as pop-ups, spam and in-video ads such as the Ads by Google that you'll find in YouTube ads. Of course, without these ads, YouTube would have little source for revenue and without revenue, YouTube might not exist for long in its current state. There are always two sides.

...except in this video! Watch as Ads by Google not only informs you of a great place to give your nails that European look but also helps Marshall Renegade save the princess--and the galaxy--from the evil Goroxxx!

PS: I now want a laser whip. [Gizmodo]

Look at that punim!

Congrats to Mothner for making the big time! Check out Mothner's article, "8 Ways to Optimize Video Content for Search" or just go to Wpromote for more information on PPC management and search engine optimization.

The economy continue to be up one day and down the next; some believe that the rebound is right around the corner, some think there is no shortage of bad times ahead. It's scary, certainly, but as far as online ad revenue goes, trending is still extremely positive. You can clearly see where the burst bubble took its toll on the online advertising business in late 2008 but it's reassuring to the folk in the industry (i.e. me) to see such a strong rebound. Q1 revenue for 2010 almost reached six billion dollars!

Now, if only the housing, credit and every other market could follow suit! [IAB via TechCrunch]

That basically rhymed... your welcome.

So, the man, the myth, the legend, Michael Mothner, a.k.a. "Big Boss Man," just made a bit of a splash on Inc.com with his article "8 Ways to Optimize Video Content for Search." If you wanted to learn some ways to give your videos some SEO firepower, this is the article for you! Go check it out and, if you want, link to it like I just did. If you do, there's an ice cream sandwich in it for you. Who doesn't love those?

You may be wondering why Mothner is nicknamed the "Big Boss Man" but is dressed like the "Macho Man" Randy Savage. It's a valid question but nobody but Mothner knows the answer. It's part of the reason that he's Captain of the Good Ship Wpromote. Respecognize. [Inc.com]

This marks the second day in a row that I didn't come up with the content for a blog post. Thanks to Wpromotesman Chris for sending this video.

Now, obviously, Chrome isn't really faster than lightning but doesn't this make you want to download Chrome and see for yourself? That's called great marketing! The real surprise for me wasn't that Chrome proved to be so darn fast, it was that potatoes were almost as fast! Potatoes are supposed to be lazy, not fast. If you call someone a couch potato, that's supposed to mean that they are sluggish layabout with no discernible direction for the day. Apparently, we've misjudged potatoes; they are almost as fast as the Internet!

So, the next time someone calls you a couch potato, take it as a compliment. Also, get yourself an egg cream at the malt shoppe because apparently, we're in the early 20th century back when people would refer to other, lazier people as "couch potatoes."