Japanese clothing brand Uniqlo just tried something a little different on Pinterest: a social marketing/branded content campaign, the "Uniqlo Dry Mesh Project," that aimed to cut through ‘scrolling slumber’ with a simultaneous pinning event (some might say hacking) that animate the images in real time to catch users' attention on the social scrapbooking site.

A series of branded mosaics were posted simultaneously on Pinterest across multiple categories (such as "Geek"). As users scroll through their favorites they encounter the giant blocks of images that coalesce into a larger, branded mosaic that appeared to animate on scrolling down. Images of Dry Mesh T-shirts — which are designed to keep the wearer dry by wicking away sweat — created the mosaics. The result was certainly a visually arresting animation for an otherwise visually boring, mono-colored product.Continue reading...

Facebook is starting to migrate its "sponsored stories" (user-generated ads) onto other websites, starting with that of social game behemoth Zynga, in order to expand its marketing reach. And in another telling move, the social media giant is backing away from its philanthropic Credits program — launched with high hopes in 2009 as the virtual currency for the social network.

They're the latest steps by a social giant struggling to shore up its revenue model. The site's new partnership with Unilever on Waterworks, a cause marketing app that lets users donate online credits while revealing key ad targeting data, signals how Facebook is evolving its commerce platform in order to boost F-commerce opportunities.Continue reading...

As Facebook stock continues to live below initial expectations after the company's IPO, investors and marketers keep parsing the zeitgeist for signs of whether Facebook is gaining momentum — or losing it — in one important area that will determine the shares' future value and the ultimate fate of the company: paid advertising.

Three more big-time marketers have weighed in on that topic: Ford and Coca-Cola indicated this week that they intend to expand their use of the social network in advertising, while a Dannon USA executive told brandchannel that the yogurt giant isn't persuaded that Facebook advertising is a great idea.

Coca-Cola CMO Joe Tripodi commented at the Cannes Lions ad conference this week that Facebook ads probably drive its beverage sales. "If we can get 40-million-plus fans, or even some subset of them, talking positively about the things we're doing, ultimately that's a good thing for us," he said, according to The Wall Street Journal.Continue reading...

Social media usage in the United States is higher than in Europe, but high usage does not imply true integration as the social media approach is often disconnected from general company management. 

A digital gap is growing in the corporate world, as companies already investing will continue to do so whereas those not investing are not planning to do so. InSites Consulting, an international market research agency, this week released its survey of 1,222 managers and business owners from companies (+20 employees) in the US, Great Britain, The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and France. 

“Even though there is a clear digital evolution and pull among clients, there are still companies that are not convinced that they too have to go with the evolution. The risk for these companies is that, in a rather short term, they will miss out on an important target group in their market. It is time for these companies to observe, facilitate and join these conversations through e.g. consumer consulting boards or social media observation techniques,” comments Prof. Steven Van Belleghem, partner at InSites.

Key findings include:Continue reading...

As the issue of digital privacy persists, Sgrouples, which rhymes with “scruples,” is billing itself as the first privacy-centric social platform on the Web. Hence the tagline, "Privacy You Trust."

“We are the "Whole Foods" of our industry — the good conscience, doing the right thing, offering people what they really need and want - and we can be respectfully profitable by doing so. You don't need to serve people high fructose corn syrup to be profitable. Whole Foods understands that and so does Sgrouples. We don't need to spy and scrape. We are designed to serve and delight,” says Mark Weinstein, founder and CEO and digital privacy advocate.Continue reading...

The ‘Nokia Gift Machine’ is open for business at the Nokia store in Dubai's Mall of the Emirates.  How it works: Check-in on Foursquare to find its location and see what the machine offers, with instant prizes so far including movie tickets, chocolates, accessories and Nokia devices, which drop out of the bottom of the machine.Continue reading...

LinkedIn’s new Targeted Status Updates are designed to give some 2 million marketers with LinkedIn Company Pages the ability to deliver highly personalized, more relevant content based on several targeting criteria: Industry, Seniority, Job Function, Company Size, Non-Company Employees, and Geography, as detailed in the above video.

The feature quietly launched in April with a handful of customers such as Philips, which saw a 106% increase in engagement after running Targeted Status Updates in their daily communications.Continue reading...

Facebook has been having a tough time developing a robust advertising model, as the site's $10 million pay-out to charities involved in its "Sponsored Stories" push attests.

Bloomberg this morning picked up on last week's news that Facebook is developing Facebook Exchange, a platform (FBX) for real-time bidding for advertising on the site. Such a service would enhance advertisers’ reach to specific types of users based on their browsing history with prices based on cost per thousand viewers and spots sold via third-party technology partners.

The idea isn't so radical, or unexpected — as the Wall Street Journal points out, Google and Yahoo offer similar services to advertisers. But when it comes to FB's hyper-local mobile ad plans, TechCrunch says that Bloomberg read a little too much into remarks by Carolyn Everson, Facebook's head of ad sales, in an interview at the Cannes Lions advertising festival in France.Continue reading...