Tag: MARKETING

Share In July, MySpace revealed it was working on a sparkling new site redesign, in the hopes that a new look would give the social network a boost in traffic. Instead of throwing in the towel and wallowing in self pity, however, the once-proud site is taking another shot at online relevance -- with a new logo. The logo, which was unveiled at Friday's Warm Gun Design conference in San ...

All right, dudes. There's no need to get upset, or overly excited, just because your significant other or love interest just posted on Facebook that she "likes it on the dining room table." The recent trend of "like it on . . . " status updates merely serves as an attempt to get your little boxers in a wad, and -- most notably -- to promote and celebrate October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month. ...

Deal-hunting baby-makers, listen up! The wacky and incrementally expanding discount site Groupon has just launched a new dating service called Grouspawn, with an insane marketing ploy. If you can prove that you used a Groupon coupon on your first date, and that said date eventually resulted in a child, you could get a $60,000 grant for the little one's college tuition. Groupon CEO Andrew Mason ...

Netflix's high-profile Canadian launch attracted a sizable crowd of enthusiastic consumers yesterday. As it turns out, however, many of the "consumers" who showed up for the Toronto event were actually paid actors. As the Globe and Mail reports, the online video rental and streaming company has now admitted to having paid extras to show up and "play types, for example, mothers, film buffs, ...

Consumers may be willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money on tickets to 3-D movies, but, according to a new study from Nielsen, they're a lot less willing to drop hard-earned cash on actual 3-D glasses. As USA Today reports, Nielsen's study, titled 'Focusing on the 3DTV Experience,' involved 425 people, each of whom was given a pair of glasses to watch 30 minutes worth of 3-D television. ...

Old-school graphic designers -- like the inimitable Milton Glaser -- have long poo-poo'd software that relies on templates and algorithms to achieve in seconds what used to take hours and days. Well, you fans of the hand-set type, your Antichrist has arrived in the form of Creative Artificial Intelligence (CAI), a new software out of Paris that completely automates the ad-production process. ...

Here at Switched, we try our best to refrain from taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. But, when said misfortune involves a game as odious as 'Mafia Wars,' we really can't help ourselves. This is Zynga, after all, the same game producer that unleashed the pestilence of 'FarmVille' upon the world -- and made untold millions in the process. Forgive us, then, if we couldn't hold back a smile ...

Advertisers and retailers have been looking for new and unique ways to leverage the recent influx of GPS-enabled smartphones in attracting customers and gathering important information about their shopping behaviors. Foursquare introduced some new ideas, but retailers wanted to take it a step further. Enter Shopkick. The new app turns shopping (and violating your privacy) into a game that, ...

Drug maker Novartis recently found itself on the receiving end of a tongue lashing from the FDA for misusing the Facebook share widget on its website. The company used the widget to promote its leukemia drug Tasigna, but, unlike traditional advertising would, the Facebook promotion "fails to communicate any risk information associated with [its] use." All marketing materials for drugs are ...

Brazil -- land of caipirinhas, Carnival and one of the world's highest crime rates per capita -- will be a bit more like the world of 'The Running Man' starting next week. In one of the scariest advertising schemes known to us, Unilever's detergent line Omo will be placing GPS devices in select boxes of suds throughout the country. According to Advertising Age, "consumers who buy one of the ...

Bad news, Evil Corporations: Twitter tweeps aren't your shills! A study by digital marketing agency 360i reveals that only a sliver of consumer tweets forward branding messages. It notes that "more than 90-percent of tweets originate from consumers -- and only 8-percent are authored by marketers." Conversely, only 12-percent of all tweets mention a brand. (Click here for the full PDF report.) ...

Techcrunch reports that Yelp has been quietly experimenting by offering local deals to users in a select few cities. In a bit of misplaced hyperbole, the site claims that "Yelp Gears Up to Take on Groupon." But is that the case? No, we don't think so. Yelp reported back to Techcrunch that it had indeed run "a short test in Sacramento" for Papillon Salon. But Yelp also noted that it has "hosted ...

Walmart, America's largest retailer and the world's largest corporation, will be placing radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags on the jeans and underwear sold in its 3,750-plus U.S. stores beginning next month. The removable tags will be used to monitor inventory losses and shelf stock, but some people are less than happy about the prospect of carrying around a tracking device in their ...

In its never-ending quest to make every move and every flick of the mouse publishable, broadcastable and comment-worthy, Facebook is now letting users comment on the "like" button. (Imagine, if you will, an endless tunnel of commenting; someone comments "ZOMG" on your cat post, someone else "likes" the comment, someone comments on the liking of the "ZOMG," and you wind up with an infinite ...

The New York Times, our favorite text of culture snobbery, published an article yesterday entitled "Orchestras Seek BFF by Cellphone Texts." Despite the curiously nerdy headline, the piece was about concert-goers who are disturbed by the fact that orchestras and their attendant marketing teams have realized that these things called cell phones can be used to advertise their brands. The article ...