During this year's Super Bowl game GE aired two ads — Building Something Big and Power and Beer — as part of the company's ongoing “GE Works” campaign. But the company's Game Day strategy wasn't just about what it ran on-air.

GE integrated data visualization, a.k.a. Big Data, to augment the social and digital elements of its Super Bowl campaign, turning to an emerging engagement tool to augment content marketing and messaging with the brand's vast stores of data.Continue reading...

Domino’s has gone public — not in the IPO sense, but by crowdsourcing ideas to improve the brand via a Facebook-based customer feedback intiatives it's calling Think Oven.

It's all part of the brand's two-year-old initiative to become more relevant and increase loyalty (and business) by engaging consumers (customers and non-customers) in its reinvention.Continue reading...

New York Giants Super Bowl champion Victor Cruz cut the ribbon today in a kick-off event for New York's Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, now gearing up to debut Fall 2012 collections starting Thursday morning at Lincoln Center.

There's also a whirlwind of virtual activity in what the HighLow blog calls "the most egalitarian" New York Fashion Week yet, including a Facebook invitation to RSVP to live-streams of the runway shows and join the conversation on Twitter via the #liverunway hashtag.

YouTube and Maybelline will once again sponsor a real-time YouTube channel that will bring 30 of the Fall 2012 runway shows to the world. The runway videos will also be archived at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week YouTube channel.

Cover Girl is partnering with Polyvore and the Fashion Institute of Technology on Polyvore.com/Live, which will see four FIT grads debut their collections to an audience of fashion insiders and bloggers: Lauren Bagliore, Vengsarkar “Ven” Budhu, Sergio Guadarrama, and Dana-Maxx Pomerantz.Continue reading...

President Obama has returned to e-commerce and haute couture with Runway to Win, a collaborative campaign merchandise fundraiser pegged to the kickoff of New York Fashion Week. As fashionistas rev up for the Fall 2012 collections, designers and Dem supporters have been rallying to raise money, chicly, for the president's re-election campaign.

The collection features patriotic clothing and accessories, moderately priced from $45 to $95, from top designers including Tory Burch, Rachel Roy, Derek Lam, Beyoncé and Tina Knowles, Marcus Wainwright and David Neville, Proenza Schouler's Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, Diane von Furstenberg, Narciso Rodriguez, Vera Wang, Thakoon, Jason Wu, Grace Tsao-Wu and Laura Kofoid of Laudi Vindi, Marc Jacobs and Tracy Reese.Continue reading...

Verizon is joining forces with Coinstar, the parent company of 35,400-kiosk movie rental service, Redbox, in a bid to grab a piece of the streaming video market away from Netflix, Hulu and Amazon — not to mention Facebook and YouTube.

The still-to-be-named Verizon/Redbox joint venture — a hybrid video download and streaming service offering rental of DVDs, Blu-ray titles and video games — is scheduled to launch in the third quarter. Verizon takes 65% of the limited liability company and Coinstar, 35%. 

Verizon will handle digital streaming and video downloads on demand, and Redbox will handle physical kiosk-disc distribution. The multi-platform service will leverage Verizon’s suite of video-enabled devices already delivered via FiOs for phones, tablets, smart TVs, PC’s and consoles.Continue reading...

Mobile was the big winner in the Super Bowl this year, as marketers and consumers seized the second-screen experience.

“Caring about eyeballs was your grandfather’s ad agency,” commented Dan Israel, Atlanta-based strategy lead for the mobile practice at SapientNitro, to Mobile Marketer.  “What matters today is how many people with smartphones can be gathered in one location at one time. The Super Bowl rules in this category.” 

This Super Bowl was a huge coming out party for Shazam, the mobile app that enables audio tagging to link to content and offers, which partnered with almost half of Super Bowl 46 advertisers, representing 1 million giveaways, this year.

Shazam linked to commercials by Acura, Best Buy (which offered $50 gift cards), Cars.com (which donated $1.00 per Shazam tag to charity), Bud Light, Disney (John Carter trailer), Fed Ex, GE, Honda, Pepsi, Teleflora, and Toyota to unlock exclusive content and coupons. Some of the offers:Continue reading...

Think you're witty on Twitter? We've got bad news for you. Twitter users say only a little more than a third of the tweets they receive are worthwhile. Most are not worth reading at all, while 25% of tweets are actively disliked, according to a new study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, MIT and Georgia Tech.

The new study (the aptly-titled "Who Gives a Tweet?") reveals some surprising data about the two hundred million Tweets posted globally on Twitter every day, and the factors that lead users to tune out or unfollow.

Twitter users participating in the study reported liking only 36% of overall tweets; actively disliking 25%; and having no strong opinion about 39% of tweets, indicating a waste of the tweeter and, er, tweetee's time.

The reasons cited for the 25% of disliked tweets: using too many hashtags; constant, boring updates about where people are (especially those "I'm at..." updates from airports, restaurants and other locations); and users who habitually complain. The most-liked tweets?Continue reading...

The Huffington Post is expanding its brand on video. The HuffPost Streaming Network will launch this summer with 12 hours of original video five days a week. With the goal of being "CNN meets YouTube" and a “never-ending talkshow,” HuffPo cofounder Roy Sekof will oversee the new video network , to which AOL is committing at least 100 employees exclusively, with current editors and reporters expected to contribute as well.

AOL paid $315 million to acquire Huffington Post in a deal that AOL CEO Tim Armstrong calls "the Super Bowl bet we made on Arianna." Now it's ponying up at least $10 million to take the HuffPo brand into video. With a goal of producing up to 16 hours of video programming daily next year, it's a clear play for increased ad inventory and stickier content.Continue reading...