“Verge culture,” as in young, digital, influencers and brand-savvy hip youths, is poised for a social media guerilla takeover — if Karmaloop TV has anything to do with it.

An offshoot of the Karmaloop.com retail site, KarmaloopTV.com is an online video-based network that's vying for broadband and video-on-demand distribution in the US. It aims to be a full-blown 24-hour cable TV network, and is now pitching cable and telco TV operators that it can help them “reclaim” the 18-to-34 year old audience that lives online, on digital, on mobile and on social.

In a similar vein to Vice TV, it aims to offer an in-depth look (and insights) into global street culture. The website also features exclusive interviews with designers, brands, artists and musicians — musician/producer Pharrell Williams signed on as KarmaloopTV's creative director in May.Continue reading...

In honor of today's kickoff game for the NFL's 2011 season (go Packers!), we invite you to watch the stupendously awesome video, "One More Yard."

It features Paul Cunningham, a former photo editor for Major League Baseball who (lovingly) makes and sells artisanal footballs (and baseballs, naturally) on his Etsy shop, Lemonball. Even if you don't like football, you'll love this video.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is how you add value with branding ... and tell your brand story with video. For inspiration about how a video like this could help your brand, check out one of our new favorite blogs: F**k Yeah Made In USA.

With the spring/summer 2012 Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week shows getting rolling in New York, here's a viral video that's timely and trending on YouTube.

To promote the grand opening of Westfield Stratford, a behemoth of a retail shopping center in London, The Viral Factory created this promo to showcase "100 years of East London style in 100 seconds."

The video delivers just that - decades of fashion in a zippy 100 seconds that's a delight to watch. Check out the photos below for stills of each decade's fashion.Continue reading...

The Hulu mission, “to help people find and enjoy the world's premium video content when, where and how they want it,” and “to create a service that users, advertisers and content owners unabashedly love,” has a yen to expand. Undeterred amidst domestic bidding acquisition battles in the U.S., Hulu has just launched a subscription service in Japan (at hulu.jp), the company’s first international foray. 

Japanese subscribers will have access to thousands of U.S. television episodes like 24, Bones, Criminal Minds, Desperate Housewives, Fringe, Grey’s Anatomy, Gossip Girl, Heroes, LOST, NCIS, Private Practice, Prison Break and Ugly Betty; and hundreds of feature films like Pirates of the Caribbean, Armageddon, Men in Black and more.Continue reading...

Madres y Comadres is an eight-part original Spanish-language miniseries from Kmart targeting Hispanic mothers and the unique challenges they encounter raising a family in America and remaining true to their Hispanic heritage, as seen above, housed on a dedicated YouTube channel.

With Hispanics now the largest minority in the U.S., the webisodes are humorous and sensitive to the prevalence of extended families in the culture, hence the title: 'Madre' meaning mother, and 'Comadre,' her female confidantes.

Evocative of a 'telenovela,' the scripted episodes tackle issues such as a heartbroken mom who discovers her son is trading homemade tamales for tuna sandwiches at school; a son from a Spanish-speaking home who gets a ‘C’ in Spanish and an ‘A’ in Chinese; a mother whose daughter really wants a sleepover, a practice not popular with Hispanic moms.Continue reading...

It's interesting to see the different ways that artists handle copyright infringement and illegal downloads of their music.

Metallica sued Napster over people "sharing" their music, a band who is clearly against piracy. Radiohead pioneered a "pay what you want" deal to download an entire album in 2007, and tweaked that with its latest release. Music labels and artists, meanwhile, are constantly swatting down YouTube videos on copyright issues, while file-sharing sites are constantly being shut down as new ones pop up.

One band who not only doesn't mind the copyright issue on YouTube, but actually rewards fans for it, is blink-182.  On August 2nd they released their first single ("Up All Night") in eight years, and the video (above) has already had more 200,000 views. The catch? The video is comprised of footage uploaded onto YouTube by fans, whose amateurs videos illegally used ... blink-182's music. Why did they do it?Continue reading...

"Big City Farmer," above, tells the story of a Chinese farmer named Gao, whose garden is near a coal-fired power plant in Shanghai — but the air and soil are clean enough that his crops flourish, thanks to innovative technology from Siemens, as revealed only at the very end.

Siemens A.G., a global power in electronics, electrical engineering, energy and healthcare has built a reputation since its founding in 1847 for innovation and service, and Peter Löscher, the 12th C.E.O. in the company’s history, sent a clear message to his 405,000 employees in 190 countries when he took over the reins.

“The culture of the company was actually formed over a long period of time, through longevity of leadership. So for me the important thing was to come in and say Siemens doesn’t need a revolution. We will go for an evolution but with speed, speed, speed,” said Löscher, in an extensive profile in The New York Times.

The brand is also going for an evolution with heart, heart, heart — via small stories of real people, relaying the impact of the brand on everyday lives.Continue reading...

Jim Farley, Ford’s CMO, created quite a stir this week at an auto industry confab in northern Michigan when he told reporters that he had called his counterpart at General Motors, Joel Ewanick, to apologize.

For what, pray tell? For making a few choice remarks about a rival — specifically, General Motors.Continue reading...