social-creature

Remember the whole hoopla going on when the characters from Mad Men up and started Tweeting? It was Fall of 2008, the  show was in its second season, and the controversy erupted when AMC started DMCAing Twitter into shutting down these “infringing” accounts. After a huge backlash, the profiles were un-suspended and the rest is [...]

This is a terrific initiative by Estee Lauder, seamlessly combining live + digital.
From AdAge:

The venerable Estee Lauder cosmetics brand has found a seemingly natural way to connect with social media: offering free makeovers and photo shoots at its department-store cosmetics counters coast-to-coast to produce shots women can use for their online profiles.
The promotion, which kicks [...]

Back in early 2006, Chevy tried to get on the whole “consumer generated content” bandwagon (or bandSUV, I suppose), with a website which allowed users to easily create their own “ads” for the Chevy Tahoe using provided video and music assets. In theory, the idea was to generate interest in the vehicle through user created [...]

If, sometime circa 2004, you were out and about at certain underground parties in the Los Angeles Circus scene, and saw someone wearing a particularly striking pair of pants (male or female), created from asymmetrical strips of leather sewn in a twisted, impeccably tailored way, like the trappings of some Mad Max forest nymph biker [...]

I had already joined the Circus scene when, in early 2006, I was consulting at Wong Doody and heard about a clothing company client they were working with called Edoc Laundry. The clothes had an intriguing concept: there were secret codes in the garments, which, if deciphered, would reveal clues to a mystery story. The wearers of Edoc [...]

Suddenly everyone wants Social Media.
While traditional media budgets have kept shrinking in the wake of the recession, according to recent Forrester Research, “53% of marketers are determined to increase their social media budget, and 42% will keep it the same, a total of 95% of marketers are bullish on social media marketing.” Just two years [...]

HBO has created a monster with the promotional campaign for True Blood, a new TV series from the creator of Six Feet Under, set to premiere September 7th.
AdAge (which has a nice little video about the campaign here, but no way to embed it elsewhere) explains:

While they’re only one part of the larger campaign launching [...]

While trying to track down a quote from Bret Easton Ellis’s The Rules of Attraction, I came across a LinkedIn profile for Sean Bateman. In case you’re not acquainted with Sean Bateman, one of the main protagonists of the Rules of Attraction, here’s his LinkedIn profile:

Sean Bateman

Student at Bennington College

Albany, New York Area

Education

Bennington College

Connections
[...]

In Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between Who We Are and What We Buy, Rob Walker talks about “underground brands”–lifestyle symbols created by independent entrepreneurs. In fact, I actually think it’s easier to think of underground brands as “independent brands,” (cuz what does “underground” really mean, anyway?) much like independent music:
In popular music, independent music, [...]