BuySellAds took a look at how ad execs have evolved over the last few decades in the infographic below. From playboys to social butterflies. BuySellAds portraits the evolution of the stereotypes that is hilarious and absolutely on point.

The entire infographic (courtesy of onlineschools.org) can be found after the jump.

In my opinion the RickRoll never gets old, altough I must admit that a frustrated sigh hovers on my lips when I’m desperately searching for a video and I keep getting RickRolled. I think it’s a fine part of our internet history that, albeit a little childish, will be passed on for years to come.

Source: Socialroadtrip

Click here to view the embedded video.

The technology has been created by Americhip and they are already working on new technology to be used in-print appealing other senses, such as smell.

I believe this new technology is much needed innovation in the print media. Although I still believe in the power of print chances are slim for print. Think of the succes of the Amazon Kindle, already topping analysts predictions with over 240,000 units sold since it’s introduction last year.

Video-in-print will give advertisers a combination of two worlds, video and print. Will it help print media? I believe so, but I do believe more innovation is needed.

Based in Mississauga, Ontario, Imax has struggled for more than a decade to be taken seriously in the film and finance capitals. Hollywood was turned off by Imax’s costly and clunky equipment for its large-format movies, not to mention the location of its theaters at science centers and history museums.

Investors have been even more cautious. Imax, buffeted by changes in ownership and regulatory inquiries into its accounting methods, has not turned a quarterly profit in three years. The company posted a $33.5 Million loss for 2008, an 18% increase over the previous year.

While few people were looking, however, Imax has transformed itself…

The company still has a museum arm — “Hubble 3D” is the next release — but most of its attention these days is on the multiplex. The company now operates 250 commercial theaters around the world, a 40% increase over last year. Box office sales from Hollywood offerings increased 90 percent during the first quarter, to $29.9 million.

Paramount Pictures will bring “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” to Imax theaters in June, while Disney has committed to exhibit five of its coming titles with Imax, including an adaptation of “A Christmas Carol” and a live-action “Alice in Wonderland.” Fox has big Imax plans for “Avatar,” a 3-D thriller from the director James Cameron that is to open in December.

“We had to jump up and down to get noticed by the movie studios, but we are now clearly part of the mainstream experience,” said Richard L. Gelfond, Imax’s chief executive. He and his business partner, Bradley J. Wechsler, chairman of Imax, bought the company in 1994 in partnership with the investment banking firm Wasserstein Perella, which no longer has a stake.

Imax’s expansion to the multiplex has not come without controversy, though. Some consumers have complained that the company has taken advantage of moviegoers because it has been installing screens in multiplexes that are bigger than the standard variety but much smaller than the ones Imax operates at museums. The museum-size screens are the ones most people associate with the brand.

The television actor Aziz Ansari (“Parks and Recreation”) railed against the smaller Imax screens on Twitter in May, setting off an Internet brouhaha that has spread to mainstream film journalists.

The film critic Roger Ebert wrote recently, for instance, that he agreed with those who complained about the smaller screens. He suggested that the company simply advertise the smaller multiplex screens as “new Imax.”

Mr. Gelfond said Imax had hired a consumer research firm to study whether consumers truly were concerned about the bigger-yet-smaller screens. Over all, he dismisses the complaint. “The blogger point of view on this is the minority one,” he said. “With transition comes change, and some people embrace it and other people feel uneasy about it.”

Imax is focused on charming Wall Street next. The company recently held a lavish briefing day for analysts in New York, prompting a flurry of positive research notes predicting that the company will swing to a profit for 2009. Pointing out that Imax trimmed its first-quarter loss to 6 cents a share compared with 25 cents a year earlier, Eric Wold, an analyst at Merriman Curhan Ford, wrote that it had finally reached “a turning point.”

In recent months, investors have started to notice. Imax shares closed Friday at $7.50 on the Nasdaq stock exchange, up from $4.45 on April 1. Analysts cautioned that Imax still had some troubles — including $160 million in debt coming due in December 2010 — and that some of the rise was attributable to a broader market climb.

How did Imax win over Hollywood? For starters, next-generation Imax projection systems, which rely on digital images rather than film, sharply lowered costs. Before digital arrived, a single Imax print of a major Hollywood film could run $60,000, according to Warner Brothers, compared with about $1,000 for a standard print. Imax’s digital prints cost about $500 each.

The movie studios also started chasing Imax as a way to improve profitability as the company formed partnerships with multiplex chains like AMC and Regal. (Imax typically shoulders the expense of digital theater systems, which cost about $500,000 each, while the chains pay to retrofit auditoriums, reconfiguring seats and enlarging screens.)

The Memorial Day weekend opening of “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian,” for instance, had a major boost from Imax showings, which accounted for about $5.4 million in ticket sales, or roughly 8% of the box office over four days. (Imax represented just 1.5% of the film’s total screenings over that period.)

Imax tickets cost an extra $2 to $4, a premium the company says is justified by the 3-D presentation, among other viewing enhancements.

“Studios like the Imax results, competing exhibition companies have realized it doesn’t cannibalize the standard-presentation business and consumers like the experience,” said Dan Fellman, president of theatrical distribution for Warner Brothers. The studio, an early Imax convert along with Sony, will release “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” in Imax on July 15.

Studios say they have started taking Imax availability into consideration when they plot release strategies. Because there are still relatively few Imax theaters, it is impossible to open two films on the superscreens at once. (Studios say there should be enough new Imax screens open by the end of next year to break that bottleneck.)

One notable holdout is Universal Pictures, which experimented early with Imax (“Apollo 13”) but was deterred by the exhibitor’s negotiating technique over “King Kong”; Imax wanted the movie as an exclusive. Universal and Imax said they were in talks about a collaboration in the near future, however.

Greg Foster, Imax’s chairman of filmed entertainment, says the company selects a film, whether a Hollywood blockbuster or a nature documentary, based on three criteria: Does it take people to a world they have never been before? Is there a “visionary filmmaker” involved? And does the film’s scope take advantage of Imax’s large-format presentation to “really immerse the viewer in the story and setting”?

Share us your thoughts on Imax… Top or Flop?

Source: New York Times

The “I want it that way” hit of the Backstreet Boys is parodied by Weird Al Yankovic in an excellent way.

What are tangible learnings for marketers? That viral videos and viral commercials can keep building brand equity for 1 to 2 years. Or even for 3 to 4 years. Or more.

So if you think virals and online entertainment are suited for campaigns only: think again! The power of the long tail offers brands many more opportunities. If you measure the viral commercials and gain insights with i.e. ViralTracker, you will even be able to create new and compelling online content strategies for the coming years.

This spoof eBay song is doing its 7th wave right now. Then the power peek of views will decrease for a few months and then it will grow organically to wave 8 and 9 in 2009. Who ever said audio virals were no branding tools?

Some stats about this song and “clip”. Talking about free publicity and never ending brand buzz.

# 5 – Most Discussed (All Time) – Australia
# 3 – Most Discussed (All Time) – Music – Australia
# 1 – Most Viewed (All Time) – Australia
# 1 – Most Viewed (All Time) – Music – Australia
# 1 – Top Favorites (All Time) – Australia
#70 – Top Favorites (All Time)
# 1 – Top Favorites (All Time) – Music – Australia
#53 – Top Favorites (All Time) – Music
#22 – Top Rated (All Time) – Australia
#14 – Top Rated (All Time) – Music – Australia
#22 – Most Linked (All Time) – Australia
#6 – Most Linked (All Time) – Music – Australia

How do you rate this song? And don’t feel shy: share other great spoofs with our audience in the comments.

The immediate goal the “Evolve” campaign is to reframe people’s perceptions about carrying and using condoms. Condom use is integral to all the other rational, emotional, and biological issues that define our sexual health. Does my partner care enough about me, or do I care enough about myself, to use a condom?

Trojan’s message is straightforward: the use of condoms is a positive signal of personal responsibility and an expression of respect and consideration for one another.

The campaign is supported by viral commercials and print ads. Pigs play a major role in the new campaign. The strong community driven Evolve campaign site has user created videos, a how evolved are you quiz and a widget, to be part of the movement.

Bay area based PR Agency Edelman, has created a digital press release with videos (do they try to build a buzz toolkit here?) but forgot to mention the Trojan’ Channel at YouTube.

Even this Trojan Man R&B song with a message sounds pretty cool.

Also Attention Shoppers is a sophisticated speakers message in a shopping mall. It’s spicy and will certainly ignite consumer dialogs about sexual transmitting diseases.

Most online videos have a strong call-to-action in the last commercial frame. Trojan certainly did it’s digital marketing homework. I’m curious how they are tracking the reach of the commercials outside YouTube…

But, two thumbs up for this campaign if you would ask me. I especially like the campaign website. How do you rate the campaign? Viral enough? And why hot or not?

Its amazing to see, how easy brands could actually score viral success, if they would be using viral videos more often in this new digital marketing era, were blogs, forums, social networks and video portals rule the online world.

But luckily TomTom has created their own viral commercial before. The viral video takes a bit long, but the end makes it worth watching.

Source: LaComunidad

Actually I feel some bonding with the Poetic Prophet, since I have been singing the social media optimization (SMO) song about a million times to brands and their traditional agencies the last 5 years.

What do you suggest? Should I also make a Social Media rap and play that song whenever I enter another boardroom or conference room? Always wanted to become a rapper but ended up being in social media marketing Ain’t life a bitch?

Are you into Search, also check the raps: Link Building 101, Paid Search 101 and Social Media Addiction.

Do you know other compelling marketing raps? You’ve just been invited to post the links below…

In this campaign you will see how the Counter Counterfeit Commission is dedicated to put an end to the victimization associated with purchasing a counterfeit MINI Cooper. The CCC cooperates with MINI and international law enforcement to pursue criminals.

But there’s one other crucial partner we need to recruit: You. We can’t do this without You. Educate yourself about the problem. Learn how to detect a fake. Know when you’re being hoodwinked.

Together, we can put an end to this appalling injustice. Together, we can make our streets genuine once again. Lookup MINI Cooper Counterfeit.

It’s a television ad for South African television broadcaster DSTV, which depicts a scene which is stereotypical Indian. A young, beautiful woman is hitched up with a big geek. But thankfully DSTV provides options, so she uses her TV remote to turn the geek into the perfect husband (but only after turning him into Elvis and James Bond first!).

I think this is a great example of a company understanding ‘new marketing’. First of all, their product offer diversity and options and the commercial plays into these two crucial elements of the company’s offering. Whether or not they actually provide what they claim (SKY does the same, but also charges an extortionate amount of money for it for example) is besides the point. The viral is funny, grabs the attention and gets the message across well.

Well done DSTV!

Click here to view the embedded video.