What a week! Between awards show cattiness, brand breakdowns and Internet shutdowns, there is no shortage of things to dish about. So let’s get right into all the latest online marketing news in a list we all know and love as our “Five Things You Might Have Missed.”
1.) Timeline App-valanche: In its short life, Facebook’s Timeline has been known for garnering a lot of resistance and headlines. We can now add apps to that list. Tons of blogs reported on the addition of Timeline apps this week because, love it or loathe it, Timeline is Facebook’s latest product and apps could be the next big thing in Facebook marketing.
2.) Lionel Richie, Free Speech Protector? This video from slick ad director Matthijs Volt may not have set out to say a lot about piracy and SOPA but by using dialogue from hit films (without permission) to recreate Lionel Richie’s hit “Hello” the video is the kind of thumbing of the nose the movement needs right now. Funny, brilliantly edited and released at a time of year when we celebrate film, this viral hit laughs at piracy laws and makes us smile, too.
3.) MINI is Red Hot and Social: The itty bitty car MINI has launched a giant Facebook campaign in which one of its cars is suspended on a hill by a rope with a Bunsen burner underneath, burning away at the rope. This crazy science experiment relies on Facebook page likes to release the car into the wild. Users who like the brand also get to check in on the car’s status.
4.) From Tart to Sour: This week, Pinkberry was the latest brand to hop onto to Twitter to put out a bad PR fire. Co-founder of the yogurt empire Young Lee was arrested after chasing down a transient and beating him with a tire iron. Company heads swiftly took to Twitter to state that Young has not been an active part of Pinkberry since 2010 and now serves solely as a stockholder. The company is desperately (and understandably) trying to distance itself from Lee, but given the amount of negative posts online, it might take more than a few tweets and a press release to make its image sweet again.
5.) Going Wiki-less: During the SOPA protests blackouts of Wednesday, many big websites shutdown services, and the most missed site had to be Wikipedia. Wiki withdraw proved how much we would miss uncensored unregulated information and the message was received loud and clear.
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