Michelle Obama unplugged

During her four days at last week’s Democratic National Convention, Michelle Obama posted a series of videos on YouTube in which she talks off the cuff about her various experiences there. Although quite short and fairly un-monumental compared to the appearances of the Clinton’s, Joe Biden, Michelle’s own convention speech, [...]

Love by Cartier — MySpace or TheirSpace?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what we really mean when we talk about social media. When is a marketer’s online activity truly social, and when is it not? An encounter with Cartier’s Love by Cartier MySpace page has given me reason to ponder.

In 2006, Cartier created the Love Charity Bracelet. [...]

TCHO chocolate and social marketing — what a combo!

Recently I was introduced to TCHO chocolate — not the actual product, unfortunately, just the brand — through a post by Ryan Jones on his blog m-cause. (Thanks Ryan!)
TCHO is a new, San Francisco-based chocolate company founded by former NASA software developer Timothy Childs — now “Chief Chocolate Officer” — and Wired co-founder Louis [...]

The wisdom of bloggers

As part of the series on blogger relations, Toby of Diva Marketing Blog just posted Part II entitled “A Successful Blogger Relations Strategy.” The post captures perspectives and insights of 99 bloggers who responded to an online survey about what makes a blogger outreach strategy successful. (Ninety-nine sounds so much nicer than 100. [...]

Twitter use and abuse

It’s exciting to see how new social media tools evolve, as participants discover new ways to use them, including commercial ones. Of course, commercial use of social media can be a bit touch and go. After all, the key word here is SOCIAL, and members of communities can get pretty prickly when marketers [...]