Penny auctions have been getting plenty of buzz, as some users are getting incredible deals for things like iPads and cars, while others are complaining that they aren’t winning the auctions. Here’s an article where penny auctions are explained. If you’re going to play, you have to understand the system. Research penny auction tips and come up with a strategy, but remember that not everybody wins . . .
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The shift from old media to new media is accelerating, and now more companies are using bloggers to help deliver their brand messages. Here’s an interesting example from Vaseline.
If you’ve been complaining about dry skin on the Internet, Vaseline may have heard you. With winter just around the corner, the brand is announcing a new advertising campaign for its Vaseline Intensive Rescue skin cream product, sold by Unilever. The campaign represents the first time Vaseline has used crowdsourcing to find product spokeswomen.
“The core of the idea here is to find women where they talk about this problem,” Anne Jensen, the senior brand building director for beauty care in the Unilever personal care division, said of the company’s decision to the scour the Web looking for women who were talking about their dry skin.
Vaseline worked with the New York office of the agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty on the campaign to restage the brand with things like new packaging and product improvements and to find women bloggers who could represent the campaign.
“Most Vaseline campaigns are rooted in real stories by real people. That’s what makes it authentic,” said Ashley Bekton, group business director at Bartle Bogle.
The agency worked with a subcontractor to crawl the Internet for conversations around words like “dry skin,” “lotions” and “skin issues,” and to scan blogs and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook for conversations people were having about those topics.
The company ended up selecting three bloggers who will write about their experiences and be spokespersons for the brand. Interesting stuff.
At least the approach is methodical. Some companies think they can hire a couple of interns to run Twitter and Facebook and all will be well . . .
Here’s a good video about financial scams, which are now going beyond the Internet to the mobile world as well. Be careful of smishing, which is a new scam where you get a text and a prompt to call. Don’t follow the link!
After years of dealing with the crappy Explorer browser, it was a relief to switch to Firefox several years ago.
Now Firefox is starting to suck as well. I routinely get a notice that says “The URL is not valid and cannot be loaded” when I hit a link ot try to go to a site, even though everything is fine. Close the box and try again (sometimes several times) and the link works fine.
Can somebody please fix this? It’s annoying as hell . . .
With the advent of Facebook Faces and the ability it gives the social media behemoth to track the location of a user via their iPhone, it seems only a matter of time before several things start happening. First came the break-ins as intrepid thieves learned that certain users were out of their homes. Suddenly, it seems obvious that for every new application under the sun, someone is plotting a devious usage of that technology. Other crimes might be enabled, or deterred, by new technology.
Is that utilitarianism limited to hackers and identity thieves? As the technology improves, it seems obvious that even large companies would use it to their advantage. In this case, the iPhone’s GPS capabilities make it a potentially unwitting partner in causing you some futuristic feeling grief. In time, as Facebook Faces manages to track its users’ locations to the square yard of the Earth’s surface, more than thieves will have their day.
An example would look like this: your auto insurance company, long your friend as they utilize social media, tracks your driving down the freeway on a road trip. Suddenly you decide it’s time to show your pal the full acceleration capabilities of your new car. Stepping on the gas, you’re quickly driving at well into triple digit speeds in the middle of nowhere. There’s not a soul to be seen, especially not a state patrol cruiser.
But eyes could be watching you through the GPS capabilities in your phone. And when they notice that you’re moving across the desert at 130 plus miles per hour in a 75 mph zone, something unusual happens. A few days after your return from the road, you get an email from your insurer. You’ve been dropped. No explanations, no begging for leniency. Ultimately, you’ve been seen in the commission of a major violation. You didn’t get away with your crime this time.
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