An ad made by Audi to promote its electronic car concept e-tron, which appears to send up Toyota’s accelerator problem, has become a YouTube sensation with 500K views.
Audi admits, in a report by Brandchannel, that they did make the viral called ”Toyota lawnmower recall’ but that it was released in September, before Toyota’s recall of some eight million vehicles worldwide.
The Toyota related title was allegedly added by an anonymous party more recently.
However, Audi does have a history of competitive advertising and recently took aim at BMW with ‘Friendly Competition‘ in which Audi capitalises on independent comparison road tests that found in their favour.
Our guess is the headline is the work of some online wag, part of a long tradition of advertisements being deliberately adapted or taking on a comic dimension in the light of new events – Tiger Woods print ads a recent example.
Twitter has announced its number of daily status updates or tweets has now passed 50 million, closing in on Facebook’s claimed 60 million.
Announced on its blog, Twitter describes the exponential growth of the service since it began:
“Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second.”
According to a report by RJ Metrics last month, while Twitter is adding accounts at the rate of 6.2 million per month, only 17 percent of these are active each month.
Law firms in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. have filed a class action lawsuit against Google Inc, alleging that Google Buzz service shared personal data without the consent of users, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The suit has been filed on behalf of one Eva Hibnick from Florida – chosen to represent the proportion of 31.2 million Gmail users who are unhappy with Buzz.
Hibnick’s lawyers reportedly accuse Google of breaking laws in relation to legal communications with the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act alleged to have been contravened.
The lawsuit reportedly asks for an assurance that Google, which says it has not yet seen the lawsuit, will not repeat Buzz More »
The first episode of the latest series from HBO, the esteemed makers of shows including The Sopranos and The Wire, is premiering on YouTube prior to its network launch on Sunday.
‘How to Make It in America’, starring Bryan Greenberg (One Tree Hill), Eddie Kaye Thomas (American Pie) and rapper Kid Cudi, follows the escapades of two twenty-something New Yorkers trying to ‘Make It’ in the fashion business.
The YouTube marketing approach for HBO follows the success of ‘The United States of Tara’ which launched online last year, notching up more than 500,000 YouTube views on its first day.
YouTube is believed to be actively pursuing deals with programme makers while cable channels are seeing the potential for social media promotion of new releases via YouTube.
Sadly the pilot episode is blocked on UK YouTube so here’s the trailer instead:
A new report from Forrester and the Association of National Advertisers shows 77% of marketers increasing spend on social media in 2010,
Social media therefore tops marketer’s adjusted spending agenda, followed by web advertising, SEO and email marketing.
The determined march towards new channels emerges in the context of a TV advertising study that shows 62% of marketers think TV advertising is less effective than it used to be.
19% go as far as to predict the 30 second TV ad will be dead within 10 years.
Marketers are also looking closely at online video as an alternative to TV, 46% saying they will move spend into this area. More »
The dramatic rise in new media use by marketers has been captured by Junta 42 in new research that shows social media use up 500 percent since 2008, with blog and video use more than doubling.
Over the same period, use of email newsletters has declined slightly, along with that of whitepapers and cases studies.
The survey of 259 marketers also found that marketers expect to allocate a third of their budgets to creating content in 2010, up from 11% in 2009 and small businesses spend twice as much on content as large ones do.
IAB research, released yesterday shows that senior marketers believe PR is the first port of call when planning social media campaigns.
In their survey of 80 senior marketers, the IAB found that while social media falls under the marketing umbrella, 33% said that they thought social media to be primarily a PR discipline.
The three other disciplines marketers thought might be involved in social media were customer services (16%), research (12%) and IT (7%).
On the basis of this, the IAB recommends marketers set up social media teams made up of those disciplines they believe should be involved in social media, the make up of which will vary from sector to sector. More »
Pope Benedict XVI has spoken about the importance of new digital channels in an address on the Vatican’s YouTube channel.
In a sixty second clip, he urges followers to make use of “the resources made available by the digital age in which we live” describing it as “the urgent and unavoidable task” in the build up to The 44th World Day of Social Communications on May 16.
On his Pope2you website, the Pope’s Facebook, iphone application and YouTube channel, ‘The Vatican’ are evidence of his enthusiastic adoption of new media, though he is not yet on Twitter.
While Coca-Cola has issued guidelines for staff on how they should represent themselves and their company online, Manchester United has taken the Orwellian approach of removing its players from social mediasites altogether.
In a post on its website on Friday, the club announced that none of its players maintain personal profiles on social networking sites.
“The club wishes to make it clear that no Manchester United players maintain personal profiles on social networking websites,” said the note posted on ManUtd.com. “Fans encountering any web pages purporting to be written by United players should treat them with extreme scepticism. Any official news relating to Manchester United or its players will be communicated via ManUtd.com.” More »
An ad made by Audi to promote its electronic car concept e-tron, which appears to send up Toyota’s accelerator problem, has become a YouTube sensation with 500K views.
Twitter has announced its number of daily status updates or tweets has now passed 50 million, closing in on Facebook’s claimed 60 million.
Law firms in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. have filed a class action lawsuit against Google Inc, alleging that Google Buzz service shared personal data without the consent of users, 
The first episode of the latest series from HBO, the esteemed makers of shows including The Sopranos and The Wire, is premiering on YouTube prior to its network launch on Sunday.
A new report from Forrester and the Association of National Advertisers shows 77% of marketers increasing spend on social media in 2010,
IAB research, released yesterday shows that senior marketers believe PR is the first port of call when planning social media campaigns.
While Coca-Cola has issued guidelines for staff on how they should represent themselves and their company online, Manchester United has taken the Orwellian approach of removing its players from 