Social Shopper pioneer Collective Bias has iterated marketing messaging to new heights with a community of 1,400 influencers doing the heavy-lifting for brands.

“We believe that social shopper marketing is the evolution of shopper media, and supplants tired traditional media like FSI’s, retail circulars and digital display advertising,” said John Andrews, co-founder and CEO of Collective Bias. The company, founded in 2009 and headquartered in Arkansas, just received $10.5 million in funding led by Updata Partners to grow its platform where brands such as Tyson, Nestle and Smart & Final pay for their products to be covered by relevant bloggers who push that content across social media. 

Named one of America's Most Promising Companies in 2013 by Forbes, their proprietary Social Fabric community of shopping-centric influencers has an aggregate reach of over 50 million, as the company claims its bloggers have an average reach of 40,000.Continue reading...

For many parents, tiredly pouring the little pouch of mysterious dry ingredients that comes in your Kraft Macaroni & Cheese box into the pasta and watching the whole thing turn a scary orangish color is a rite of passage. There are some, though, who are alarmed (and awake) enough to try and put an end to it

Vani Hari mostly writes her Food Babe blog from North Carolina, but she recently traveled to Northfield, Illinois, to pay a visit to Kraft Foods HQ in Northfield, Illinois, on Monday and demand that the company stop putting yellow #5 and yellow #6 dyes in its food, as Hari noted in a blog post.

Kraft, of course, wasn’t backing down. "The safety and quality of our products is our highest priority and we take consumer concerns very seriously," a Kraft spokeswoman said in a statement, the Chicago Tribune reports. "We carefully follow the laws and regulations in the countries where our products are sold."Continue reading...

Dockers 2013 “Get Dressed Like You Mean It”

Dockers, the Levis Strauss brand of khaki garments and accessories, has been helping men get dressed since 1986, when "business casual" and "casual Fridays" came into vogue. While Dockers introduced a line for women in 1987, its core emphasis remains the sartorially-smarter male with belts, pants, leather wallets and shoes – all along with comfort and ease. 

When "metrosexuals" and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" urged men to spiff up, Dockers premiered its "Wear The Pants" campaign during the 2010 Super Bowl, the first Super Bowl ad offering an exclusive, limited time online offer for viewers with the hopes of skewing younger.

But now we're heading into 2013, and workplace attire has evolved (look at Levi's commuter line and even how streetwear brands like BAPE are office-acceptable — for creatives, at least), so Dockers is promoting a “Get Dressed Like You Mean It” social/video platform, one “designed to equip guys with a solid foundation of refined yet rugged wardrobe essentials that take the guess-work out of “what-to-wear” and “how-to-wear it.”Continue reading...

The 2013 Buick Encore is powered by a 1.4L turbocharged engine, has an EPA-estimated 33 mpg highway fuel economy, and standard six-speed automatic transmission with front-wheel drive. It also features personalized technologies well-suited to the desired demo such as Intellilink and QuietTuning with Buick’s first use of Bose Active Noise Cancellation. 

That's all well and good, but it's not very exciting to non-car buffs. So how to excite the social web with those features? Excite bloggers to become inspired by the brand and become social ambassadors, for a start. With 71% of Pinterest’s nearly 25 million users under the age of 45, (50% age 25-44), the “Pinboard to Dashboard” program has generated 17 million plus unique visitors, followers or users across Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and blogs.

“Knowing the Encore’s target audience spends a great deal of time online, and on Pinterest, we created a social strategy to reach them where they ‘live’,” said Lloyd Biermann, Buick Crossovers marketing manager. So In October, Buick selected 10 influential design, fashion and food bloggers to create pinboards on Pinterest showcasing how the all-new Encore speaks to their personal style and life passions.Continue reading...

As you may have caught on Facebook lately, Huggies is in hot water with Dads.

The issue: the Kimberly-Clark diaper brand's male-targeted social marketing campaign featuring real dads and real babies, which aimed for the funny bone but landed in the solar plexus. "To prove that Huggies diapers and wipes can handle anything, we put them to the toughest test imaginable – Dads," intoned a female voice-over in the videos ("Dad Test" and "Easy Chair").

Befuddled dads may have seemed like a cute way to make their point, but it (inevitably) irked parents. Consider that dads are increasingly stay-at-home caregivers, one out of three according to the US Census, it was no surprise that many of them took umbrage and took to social media to be heard.Continue reading...

In a first for the company, PepsiCo's Women’s Inspiration Network (WIN) has selected three web savvy women to serve as digital correspondents at major PepsiCo-sponsored events including South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) Festival, Aspen Ideas Festival, and BlogHer this year. Just don't call them mommy-bloggers.

“This is a first for PepsiCo and expands on our efforts to support female digital entrepreneurs by giving them insider access. We look forward to reading and watching their coverage,” said Jamie Stein, Director of Digital Platforms at PepsiCo.

The search began in August at the BlogHer 2011 conference with a nationwide call for women to share stories of inspiration on PepsiCoWIN.com. The trio of women hired will all receive a major boost in traffic to their respective blogs and businesses, as well as their personal brands.Continue reading...

“Yeah, 1983… 27 freakin’ years ago!” blogs Al Watts, ”Almost every news story about at-home dads asks, 'So you’re a Mr. Mom?' or uses 'Mr. Mom' in the title of the story or shows a 'hilarious' clip of Michael Keaton in the 1983 movie, Mr. Mom."

It's 2011 and everyone's still trying to figure out how to appeal to the legions of men who are stay-at-home care-takers and shoppers.Continue reading...

Grilled cheese sandwiches are an acknowledged staple of many children's diets. Disney is arguably the best-known kiddie brand on the planet. So it's only natural that the two should come together somehow.Continue reading...