Ghirardelli Chocolate is launching a traditional sweepstakes promotion with a twist: Consumers are being asked to visit a website and compose a 75-character message about the "sweet little moments" when they enjoy Ghirardelli. The comments will then be streamed live on a special website. Comments entered between now and the end of April may also appear on a special billboard in lights in New York City's Times Square.Continue reading...

It may not have won Best Picture at the Academy Awards, but Avatar, the biggest box office smash ever, has helped to ignite interest in 3D movies. In fact, there has been a rash of 3D movies lately – and film studios are planning to release more this year.

If you watched the Academy Awards last night, you saw an ad for a 3D TV from Samsung. Now other TV manufacturers are getting ready to flood the US market with 3D televisions. Panasonic is hooking up with Best Buy, the leading electronics chain, to promote its 3D TV offering this month in 300 stores. Best Buy has agreed to show 3D videos on behalf of Panasonic in "exhibition corners" in 300 stores now, and 700 more stores by the end of 2010.Continue reading...

Sports and sponsorships go together like baseball and beer, but some relationships between brands and games are more complicated than others. Prior to the 1999 baseball season, for instance, Enron offered the Houston Astros $100 million for naming rights to the team’s ballpark for the next 30 years.

That deal – as well as Enron itself – lasted less than three years, and the Astros had to buy back the remaining time for $2.1 million in order to find a new sponsor. Though there’s no scandal attached, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) will also be looking for a new lead sponsor very soon for its tour.Continue reading...

Digital media is changing the branding game. The former conversation about brand promise, equity, and image has been replaced by a new discourse about building platforms, proving utility, and interaction/ entertainment buzz.

The first Internet banner ad appeared in 1994; in 2000 advertising first appeared on Google.com, and a few years later the first Tide commercials showed up on YouTube. Today, people are “friending” the BK king on Facebook – marking a steep trajectory as the arena for brand building has shifted from print and TV to the multidimensional, 24/7 real-time media of digital.

Historically, brands reflect the media milieu: logos are predominant in print, jingles in radio, taglines and image in TV spots. But the advent of digital tools has brought a mash-up of data, messaging, and functionalities – and all bets are off. Strategic decisions about branding are no longer defined by technology… or past performance. Digital branding deals with behavior.Continue reading...

WTF? Exactly.

A new brand of jeans named WTFJeans aims to change conventional denim styling and cater to the specific needs of the modern gadget-carrying fashionista. The jeans boast specially located and sized pockets to fit various devices, from USB memory sticks to iPhones. Utilitarian for sure, but does the brand have a (fashionable) future or is it stuck in a gimmick? Continue reading...

E-grocer Fresh Direct has created an iPhone app especially for New Yorkers. (As if city dwellers needed another reason to stay in their homes for food delivery.) It was designed after executives learned that half of the online grocery store's consumers owned the Apple phone – Blackberry users need not apply.

Available to current Fresh Direct users, the new feature tracks and stores previous purchases made on its website through a company-made database. “We’re using the customer’s own shopping behavior to give them a better experience,” said CEO Rick Braddock.Continue reading...

“We live an increasing amount of our lives on-line, but what happens after we are gone? What will happen to all our photos, blogs and social network accounts? Until now our digital identities have lived on without us, leaving our loved ones powerless to control them or wind them down. Webwill is a new service to change that, putting you in control even in the afterlife.”

This first iteration of Swedish startup MyWebwill.com gives users the ability to edit their online profiles after they are gone: deleting accounts, editing status, removing blogs, and even emailing last messages to family and friends. Social media experts anticipate a new digital phenomenon: More and more people will use online sites to dispatch messages to one’s "personal village"… even from beyond the grave.Continue reading...

Virtual currency company gWallet is launching an extension of its service called the Brand Bar, a new way for brands and developers to monetize social games. The bar will appear at the top of the screen on all games it’s installed on, allowing players an opportunity to earn virtual currency which can be used in-game.

To access similar offers in the past, users would have to pause and exit the game, or go through a series of steps that significantly detracted from game play (only two to four percent were willing to do this, according to company estimates). Another difference is that gWallet works directly with brands – as opposed to adopting an affiliate leads model – to create branded video campaigns.Continue reading...