Orangina has a new spokesperson, Bulby, a retro-meets-chic character evocative of Orangina’s iconic bottle that has represented the brand for over 75 years.

The campaign is designed to engage a new generation of Orangina fans by getting into the conversational mix on social media. Bulby's persona: he plays the trumpet, visits gallery openings and uses a smartphone to get the news as he leads fans on a journey created with Fortress Social Branding.

Users can check-in on the Orangina International Facebook Fan Page to download the HTML5 scroll app to receive free rewards, learn about the brand’s history and see ads from throughout the years before being redirected to Orangina’s wall.Continue reading...

Coca-Cola has long made happiness part of its brand DNA. Now extending that joy into social, the iconic brand's Happy Places photo app and social network is encouraging people to share their happy moments with a new photo-sharing social network, Happy Places, and a free mobile app to enable it. The launch comes as Twitter is rumored to be ready to launch a photo filter, a move that Instagram's CEO says doesn't scare him.

While the website's domain name was registered in June it's not yet activated, although its free iOS app was released November 1st, described as: “that place where you can upload photos of your happy moments, share them, and remember them any time you want. Take a picture or pick one from your albums, add it to your profile, and share that moment of happiness with your followers in Happy Places, or your friends in Facebook or Twitter.”Continue reading...

There is much misinformation being spread about #Sandy's impact on #NYC. You can get reliable info from @nycmayorsoffice, @notifynyc & us.

— FDNY (@FDNY) October 30, 2012

Emily Rahimi has emerged as a heroine in Superstorm Sandy’s wake. As social media manager for the New York Fire Department's Twitter account, she tweeted messages of comfort in response to New Yorker’s in peril from Monday night as the storm approached until 6 p.m. Tuesday.

"You could see the panic and fear in the words they were typing," said Rahimi to Firehouse News. "People were so scared they were reaching out to anyone they thought might listen. It really struck a chord with me. I tried to help them as best as I could."

As callers jammed 911 (despite Mayor Bloomberg’s constant plea to use 311 for non-life threatening issues), Rahimi responded to every tweet, “took their information and called our dispatchers myself to make sure they sent an emergency crew."Continue reading...

"Today, sustainability is sustainable at Walmart. The outside world recognizes our leadership and our ability to get things done," Walmart CEO Mike Duke has said. That's why Walmart launched The Green Room in January as a forum for NGOs, suppliers and consumers to learn and share sustainability-focused efforts.

To date, the microsite has garnered 164,254 unique visitors with nearly 268,807 page views, and close to 63% of traffic from referrals, 35% from Facebook alone. Now it's looking to Pinterest. Last month Pinterest users were invited to curate a pinboard of Walmart products and services that show what “living green” looks like, for a chance to win a $500 Walmart gift card in a contest held in partnership with the Mother Nature Network.Continue reading...

Social media monitoring has never been more necessary, or complicated. In the wake of acquiring Seesmic last month, HootSuite is getting more sophisticated — just as Twitter is clamping down on limiting third-party clients. HootSuite's just-launched Command Center, lets users monitor their social media mentions, publish and engage other users, all while analyzing and measuring results in one dashboard.

The goal, CEO Ryan Holmes tells VentureBeat, is “a hub where every social interaction can be seen, studied and spread.” That's the holy grail for marketers looking to wrap their bosses' heads around ROI (or some other kind of object) every time social media enters the conversation. 

A virtual ‘situation room,’ or ‘master control,’ HootSuite enables large enterprise companies to control all social activities real-time with dashboard views that include blocks such as, "Twitter Daily Retweets," "Twitter Follower Growth," and website visits.Continue reading...

The biggest misconception about Twitter? “That you have to tweet to use Twitter,” said CEO Dick Costolo in a "fireside chat" with Federated Media's John Battelle this week. Indeed, new research from Beevolve finds that 25 percent of Twitter users have never tweeted.

Costolo’s newfound celebrity on magazine covers, The Today Show, Charlie Rose, as well as a recent New York Times profile, is impressive for a brand that didn’t exist seven years ago. Now, it's up to an estimated revenue of $350 million this year and 140 million users, even as Wall Street and Silicon Valley mull over engagement and the "dark social" arts of social marketing. Twitter, meanwhile, is trying to get smarter about providing support and analytics to brand marketers grappling with the age-old question of demonstrating ROI.Continue reading...

"This morning, there are more than one billion people using Facebook actively each month," announced Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg today. "Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life." 

It took Facebook six years to hit the 500 million user mark and just two to double that in an unprecedented social media milestone which equates to the social behemoth reaching one out of every seven people on the planet. 

While fewer than 20% of Facebook's users live in the U.S. and Canada, they account for 48% of the $992 million in advertising revenue the network took in last quarter. “Facebook makes an average of $3.20 each quarter in revenue off its North American users, versus just 55 cents from those in Asia,” notes CNN. Now that it's public with financials revealing how it's really doing, it also just debuted (at #69) on Interbrand's annual Best Global Brands report.Continue reading...

Myspace is rising from the ashes…again. And if anyone can revive the original top social network, it just might be co-owner Justin Timberlake, with a little help from Facebook.

As the co-star of The Social Network well knows, back in 2005 MySpace (capital 'S') was the most popular social networking site in the world and sold to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. for $580 million, but as Facebook and Twitter moved into the space, MySpace floundered and News Corp. ended up selling it at a half-a-billion-dollar loss to Specific Media and Timberlake for $35 million in June 2011.

Now it's teasing the next iteration at new.myspace.com and a teaser video that highlights its renewed focus as a social, visual and music hub. The brand overhaul borrows elements from Pinterest, Tumblr and About.me in a full-scale relaunch planned for the fourth quarter. The most striking visual change is a horizontally oriented user interface, coupled with the promise of an even more laser-focus on music and Facebook integration.Continue reading...