AllThingsD » campaign

Viral Video: Dove's "Real Beauty Sketches" Web-Only Commercial Sets Off Debate

Kara Swisher — Wed, 01 May 2013 07:43:12 +0000

It’s impossible to watch this Web-only commercial from Dove, called “Real Beauty Sketches,” and not have a reaction.

The shorter version has already attracted close to 30 million views on YouTube. It’s part of Unilever’s long-running advertising campaign to focus on real-looking women over idealized models for its Dove line of skin-care products. This takes it a step further, with a sketch artist making pencil portraits of various women without seeing them, but listening to them describe what they look like. The artist then made another drawing based on descriptions of people who have just met them.

Guess which one is more attractive? It’s a pretty devastating and very manipulative reveal, with the tagline: “You are more beautiful than you think.”

The campaign has attracted both fans and critics — it sure hits home, whatever side you are on — but you should judge for yourself if it works or not:

Belly Now Aims Its Loyalty Platform at National Enterprise Businesses

Kara Swisher — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:00:43 +0000

Chicago-based Belly said it was rolling out its customer loyalty and marketing platform to larger national enterprise clients. The startup has been aimed at the consumer market and smaller businesses since its launch in 2011, focused on increasing customer engagement, driving repeat business and helping attract new customers. Belly said it has been working with 40 national chains representing more than 500 current locations, using a system that includes a tech platform, an in-store tablet, analytics and marketing, as well as helping clients do email campaigns, social media integration and other mobile marketing.

Lerer Ventures Hires an Obama Electioneer to Run Its Incubator

Peter Kafka — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 17:01:05 +0000

If you worked on Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign, you got to spend the end of the year basking in praise for the tech-savvy operation’s exploits.

Then you had to get a new job. So Ashley Arenson moved from Chicago, where she spent a year-plus as Obama for America’s “Director of Integration and Innovation,” to New York, where she’s now general manager at Soho Tech Labs.

Soho Tech Labs is Lerer Ventures’ in-house incubator; the notion is that the investment firm will use it to play with ideas that could become companies at some point, using a limited amount of capital.

So far, Labs has hatched Rebel Mouse, a buzzy publishing system that lets people and brands create a “social front page”; CasaHop, a social travel company that shuttered yesterday; and Emogo, which hasn’t launched yet but has something to do with avatars (that’s Arenson’s Emogo up right).

Arenson says Labs is working on several other projects, and her task is to help would-be entrepreneurs get their projects in shape to ship, and raise a bona fide seed round. And to help connect them with the incubator’s resources, like a board that includes BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti and a tech team that’s scattered around the world.

The role is similar to the one she had at the campaign, she says, where she worked as a conduit between its technologists and veteran politicos. “Day in and day out, the job was to identify challenges, and identify people who could help me solve them,” Arenson says. That’s a nice summary of startup life, too.

Wikimedia Raised $25M So Far in Annual Wikipedia Fundraiser

Kara Swisher — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 00:51:02 +0000

The Wikimedia Foundation said it had raised $25 million “in record time” during its ninth annual yearly Wikipedia fundraiser, with 1.2 million users donating. The San Francisco non-profit operates Wikipedia online encyclopedia and uses the funds to keep it ad-free, as well as “maintain server infrastructure, support global projects to increase the number of editors, improve and simplify the software that supports our projects, and make Wikipedia accessible globally to billions of people who are just beginning to access the Internet. The campaign runs through the end of 2012.

Unpredictable, Agile, and Short

Lauren Wilson — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 07:57:14 +0000

Campaigns are serious tests of your creativity and foresight. They are unpredictable, agile, and short — an 18 month, $1 billion, essentially disposable organization. Hackers can thrive in an environment like that, to a point where I’m not sure anyone else really can. Everything is over far too quickly to get boring.

– Scott VanDenPlas, lead DevOps for Obama, in an email to Ars Technica about the relative IT efficiencies of the Obama and Romney campaigns

A Political Storm as Conservatives Rage Over Lena Dunham's "First Time" Video for Obama

Kara Swisher — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 17:20:35 +0000

Perhaps it is entirely no surprise that HBO’s Lena Dunham — whose frankly sexual cable television series “Girls” is a huge hit — has caused a wave of controversy with a new campaign video urging the reelection of President Barack Obama.

It’s titled “Your First Time,” and Dunham — in her typical ironically clever hipster tone — coyly talks about voting as if you were losing your virginity.

Says Dunham in the video: “My first time voting was amazing. It was this line in the sand — before, I was a girl, now I was a woman. I went to the polling station, I pulled back the curtain, I voted for Barack Obama.”

To be fair, this is much less racy than any five minutes of “Girls,” but you can see the problem for some.

Thus, since it was released via the Obama campaign, the edgy video has been decried by conservatives in no uncertain terms, such as this posting on Twitter from John Nolte, editor at large at Breitbart News.

Here is his tweet, which was like many:

How could a president with two, young blossoming daughters release an ad as disgusting as this –> youtube.com/watch?v=o6G3nw…

— John Nolte(@NolteNC) October 25, 2012

Oddly enough, the conservatives’ most beloved President — Ronald Reagan — once made a pretty similar joke: “I know what it’s like to pull the Republican lever for the first time, because I used to be a Democrat myself, and I can tell you it only hurts for a minute and then it feels just great.”

Dunham, who is now tweeting from an international vacation, does not seem to care much what anyone thinks, as you can see from her reaction tweet below:

It tickles me to no end that while my twitter feed was blowing up with conservative hate I was literally hanging out in a pile of bisexuals.

— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) October 26, 2012

Here’s the Dunham video, so judge for yourself:

I am also adding Hollywood writer/director Joss Whedon’s pretty caustic spoof about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and zombies, which will surely bring a second round of criticism:

TrueCar CEO: Disrupting the Car-Buying Process Nearly Drove It Out of Business (Video)

Tricia Duryee — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 16:00:22 +0000

Many companies believe they can disrupt an existing offline business by offering consumers lower prices over the Internet.

It’s a playbook that Amazon has used for years, and more recently, companies like Warby Parker have been getting recognition for offering prescription glasses online for hundreds of dollars less than brick-and-mortar stores.

But Scott Painter, TrueCar’s founder and CEO, says he knows what it’s like to drive prices too low.

The company started off providing leads to dealers that were willing to offer the lowest prices on a car. While great for customers, it often meant a loss for the dealer. At first, Painter wasn’t terribly concerned, adding that he has always been interested in “sticking it to the man.” But after learning the hard lesson that the dealers were his partners — and there’s actually not that many of them in the U.S. — he altered the business to be more dealership-friendly. Today, it operates more as an intelligent Kelly Blue Book service that provides pricing transparency to customers by tracking all car sales in the U.S. TrueCar collects a flat rate from the dealer when one of its customers buys a car.

Up until last year, the Santa Monica, Calif., company was profitable; revenue was doubling every year for seven straight years. But in late 2011 everything changed. A nationwide advertising campaign, highlighting customers who saved thousands of dollars on their car purchases, got car dealerships to wake up to the fact that TrueCar’s service was resulting in cars being sold at a loss.

What happened next nearly buried the company.

Within 90 days, TrueCar’s dealer network had shrunk by one-third to about 3,200 dealers, and it went from making a profit to losing $40 million in the first six months of 2012. Due to requests by industry trade associations, regulators started looking into whether TrueCar’s methods violated consumer protection laws, and in many cases it was found guilty, requiring it to tweak its operations in several states. ”We were on death’s door,” Painter admits.

While the company’s old model was very profitable, he now says it wasn’t going to pencil out in the long term. It created a situation in which dealers were blindly competing on price. “It wasn’t sustainable,” he said. He’s since restructured the business to focus on providing price transparency by tracking and publishing data based on actual car sales.

As you can see from the video below, Painter can talk about the company’s dreariest days with a sense of detachment, a sign that the worst is already behind him. It helps that, since last year, TrueCar has raised $50 million in additional financing as a buffer while it pulls off the transformation. Painter said dealers are starting to sign up for its services again and he expects the company to be cash flow positive by the end of the year.

Additionally, it is planning a new — much less controversial — advertising campaign that will kick off on Nov. 15.

[ See post to watch video ]

How Many Techies Does It Take to Reelect a President? T4O Launches "Innovator Series" Videos for Obama.

Kara Swisher — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 13:00:06 +0000

A large group of tech luminaries — including LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, Path’s Dave Morin, JLab’s Judy Estrin, Dropbox’s Drew Houston, Craigslist’s Craig Newmark and Box’s Aaron Levie — are part of the launch of a series of online videos today aimed at talking up U.S. innovation and, in the process, touting the reelection of President Barack Obama.

The slick “Innovator Series” of about two dozen videos comes out of Technology for Obama — or T4O, for short — and plans to feature daily short interviews with entrepreneurs and tech execs. Along with touting the need for innovation, the group talks about their “personal lessons of success and failure,” which then sidles politically into “their views on why they believe President Obama is the right leader for increasing innovation and moving the country forward.”

The patter is in that vein, such as this quote from Hoffman:

“Innovation is our key differentiator in terms of competitive business model of the U.S. in the world. We need to continue to attract the best people to build interesting businesses, products, services here.”

CNET co-founder and former CEO Shelby Bonnie, who recently joined investment firm Allen & Co., did most of the interviews for the T4O effort.

“Each of us was looking at what we could do and found that this group had a deep-seated belief in the importance of innovation and ability to innovate in this country,” he said of the video offerings, which were shot mostly out of the Obama campaign offices in San Francisco. “The consistent theme we wanted to get out is that President Obama gets that and believe in innovation.”

No word yet on what GOP geeks — such as Hewlett Packard’s Meg Whitman or Cisco’s John Chambers — are up to for former Gov. Mitt Romney — but until then, here is a sizzle reel of the T4O interviews:

[ See post to watch video ]

Obama Adds to Online Presidential Milestones With Reddit AMA

Eric Johnson — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 12:00:17 +0000

In only a few election cycles, political campaigning online has changed dramatically, a fact underscored by President Barack Obama’s “Ask Me Anything” Q&A on Reddit Wednesday afternoon.

President Obama is not the first well-known name to do an AMA on Reddit, which has hosted guests ranging from Bill Nye the Science Guy to Larry King to (infamously) actor Woody Harrelson.

With apologies to Larry King fans, though, he is easily the most powerful and influential person to do an AMA, and one of only a few American politicians (a group that includes former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, who stopped by before his little Twitter scandal).

President Obama already has a strong track record with the Web, building a groundbreaking online campaign in 2008 that arguably secured his edge over competitors in both the primaries and the general election.

Only 20 years ago, a political campaigner reaching voters as President Obama did Wednesday would have been completely unusual. In 1992, the University of Southern California harnessed the pre-Web Internet to print out candidates’ speeches and position papers and distribute them to students.

The White House didn’t have a Web site at all then. In 1994, the Clinton-Gore administration debuted this official site, which looked like this by the end of Clinton’s second term.

By 1996, all major presidential candidates had at least some presence on the Web, posting static collections of speeches, position papers and so on.

However, despite a budding audience for news online, researcher Rita Kirk Whillock found that the Internet “did not have a significant impact” on former President Clinton’s re-election, with less than one percent of voters saying they got most of their political information online.

President Clinton won that election with a more than 8 percent lead over Republican candidate Sen. Bob Dole. And as the Senate Web site boasted, his 1997 inauguration was the first to be streamed live online.

With increased political activity online (not to mention an election without an incumbent in the race), the 2000 presidential campaign did not live up to watchers’ expectations for how candidates would use the Internet.

Perhaps the biggest tech story from that year was Sen. John McCain’s supporters contributing $2.2 million online to his Republican primary campaign.

(In 2008, in contrast, President Obama raised more than 200 times as much — or $500 million — from his online backers.)

Later that year, former President George W. Bush coined the term “Internets,” and there was much rejoicing. While he was in office, though, Bush’s footprint online was much smaller than that of potential rival politicians such as Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who raised twice as much early campaign money online as the Democrats’ eventual 2004 nominee, Sen. John Kerry.

Dean’s not-quite-successful use of Meetup.com to rally voters around his candidacy in 2004 foreshadowed President Obama’s more fruitful run at the White House in 2008.

By then, the social Web had come into its own, and his campaign used my.BarackObama.com to drive not just donations and rallies, but also online word-of-mouth buzz that propagated through supporters’ social networks.

It wasn’t until after President Bush left office in 2009 that his online profile went up slightly. Although he has kept fairly quiet in his time out of the Oval Office, he went on YouTube in 2010 to thank viewers with an “inaugural address” for his Facebook page.

At the same time, The Wall Street Journal also reported that Bush had joined Twitter. But even though Twitter rolled out the ability to verify celebrity accounts as authentic the year before, @George_WBush was never verified. Not that it matters, though, since Bush has used it just four times and didn’t tweet at all for more than two years.

Today, that sort of Web silence would be irresponsible for a major presidential candidate. As have many Republicans, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has found success on Twitter. But he’s still losing the numbers game, with fewer than 950,000 followers versus more than 19 million for President Obama.

Still, Romney hasn’t shied away from the Web in other arenas, pouncing on Apple’s mobile advertising service iAd, and attempting to announce that Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan would be his vice-presidential nominee via a campaign-branded mobile app.

Images: Obama, Official White House Photo by Pete Souza; Romney, Maria Dryfhout / Shutterstock.com

However, President Obama’s AMA — not-so-coincidentally timed during the Republican National Convention in Tampa — puts him out in front of the Internet popularity contest. As with his oft-derided online petition platform for the White House, what he said on Reddit doesn’t really matter. The act alone of reaching out to potential voters on Reddit (which served more than two billion page views in December) and other online communities is now imperative.

That’s because the Internet, for better or for worse, has become the new town hall for politics that many over-eager futurists said it would be in the ’90s. At long last, it’s now a place where current and future candidates have to stop, even if they don’t want to.

So the question is not if Romney should fire back at his rival’s Reddit stunt, but rather how he should do it. Control of the now-crucial online conversation is President Obama’s to lose.

They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don't They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.

Kara Swisher — Sat, 05 May 2012 16:33:02 +0000

Earlier today, Yahoo’s persistent thorn, activist shareholder Dan Loeb of Third Point poison-penned another letter to the board of the Silicon Valley Internet company, demanding that Yahoo fire its new CEO Scott Thompson, as well as director Patti Hart, over bizarre inaccuracies related to their academic achievements.

“Permitting Mr. Thompson and Ms. Hart to stay with the Company after apparently violating the Code of Ethics sends a message to all Yahoo! employees that a different set of rules applies at the top,” Loeb wrote.”[Yahoo must] terminate Mr. Thompson for cause immediately given his demonstrable unsuitability to remain Chief Executive Officer and a director of Yahoo! and accept the resignation of Ms. Hart for similar reasons.”

And while many across the blogosphere — including some very clever tweets — called for his head tout de suite, that’s just not going to happen.

At least for now, at this early point in a controversy over Yahoo filing legal documents that misrepresented Thompson’s long-ago degree from Stonehill College.

In a nutshell: Thompson does not have a computer science degree, as he had maintained he did in public bios for almost a decade, a falsehood that mysteriously seeped into documents Yahoo filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

That’s bad news for Yahoo, for sure, on many levels, but moving against Thompson at this moment is not likely to be the answer — for the short term, at least.

That’s due to many reasons, that I like to think of it as three hopelessly complex puzzles that need solving pronto.

The What-Did-Yahoo-Know-and-When-Did-It-Know-It Question

There is no question the first thing Yahoo’s board needs to do is a thorough investigation to determine how a borked bio could proliferate so widely and for so long.

Most importantly, Yahoo will have to reveal if Thompson actually gave them this incorrect information, as he aggressively lobbied for the then-open CEO job.

As I had previously reported several times, Thompson cold-emailed a Yahoo director — Intuit CEO Brad Smith, as it turns out — despite not being on the list of potential candidates. Thompson was then shuttled over to Hart, who was running the vetting process with the help of headhunting firm Heidrick & Struggles, and hired within weeks.

Oddly, sources said Thompson never filled out the required informational papers for the job, nor did Heidrick conduct the normal background check on him. Instead, another forensic firm Yahoo hired did the work.

If it turns out Thompson gave any of them the bad bio info, it would be quick curtains for him.

But if Yahoo’s board members obtained his info on their own, the next key query would be how no one at Yahoo — especially its legal and compliance staffers, as well as outside help — managed to catch the problem during the vetting of Thompson.

Here are some good questions to start with:

Who put a faux computer science degree on Thompson’s bio in the first place, why and when did it happen?

Where did Yahoo get the inaccurate information?

Who was in charge of checking Thompson’s academic record for Yahoo?

And, who checked the work of the checkers?

The problem is made more complicated, because correct information was easily available in the SEC filings of eBay for years, since Thompson was head of its PayPal payments unit.

While the resume information was indeed wrong on eBay’s Web site and on numerous bios of Thompson for years, how did eBay legally get it right while Yahoo did not?

That calls into question the expertise of the company, its directors and those they hired to make sure execs were completely on the up and up, a task they clearly failed at.

If rank incompetence is the reason, which it looks like it might be, expect certain board members and other Yahoo staffers to go, along with anyone who helped in the Thompson vetting, or lack thereof.

Unless, of course, the gang-that-couldn’t-shoot-straight actually did shoot straight and some one at Yahoo found out about the educational discrepancy before the new CEO was announced, but declined to fix it.

While sinister, such a scenario is not entirely implausible, given how much pressure Yahoo was under at the time to hire a CEO quickly, due to Loeb and his looming proxy fight.

If any evidence were to surface that this was so, it is curtains all around, which would rain the kind of disaster down on Yahoo’s Sunnyvale HQ that would make Loeb’s attacks look like a Nerf battle. Instead, it would be “The Hunger Games” — except that no one survives.

The Chaos-in-Sunnyvale Conundrum

Which brings us to the profound implications of Yahoo jacking its second CEO within six months.

While it’s easy to yell “Fire the CEO” on a crowded Twitter, it’s simply not so easy in practice.

How long did it take Yahoo’s lugubrious board to figure out Carol Bartz needed to go? A … long … time. (And, she had a CS degree!)

More to the point, Thompson — and his not-so-merry band of consultants from Boston Consulting Group and, this week, McKinsey & Company — has only just completed a massive layoff of 2,000 employees and a jarring restructuring of management.

He’s also in the early stages of rolling out a new and decidedly still-squishy strategic plan to top execs (also just this week), along with working on some other key initiatives.

That includes renegotiating its search partnership with Microsoft; noodling around on a possible deal with Google; contemplating the sale of a variety of assets; and — oh, yes — trying to take on social networking Godzilla Facebook over patent infringement.

Busy much?

But, most importantly, Thompson is now the umpteenth Yahoo CEO to be working on the never-ending talks with its Asian partners over selling back a piece of the company’s lucrative stake to them.

While Yahoo CFO Tim Morse and head lawyer Mike Callahan are the point men on the deal, the lack of CEO would be an issue in the now-proceeding again talks.

This is a sale that must — and I underscore must — get done and soon, giving Yahoo much-needed breathing room and a whole lot of cash to fork over to increasingly disgruntled shareholders.

So, expect Yahoo to try to milk that deal for all it’s worth in the coming week, in order to give the appearance, at least, of positive forward momentum.

And, like it or not, Thompson has to play a key role in it getting done.

Thus, the likelihood of wait-and-see over point-and-shoot on Thompson is higher than you might think.

That’s especially true given four members of the board are leaving within six weeks and have either or are in the process of being replaced by new members.

Then, Thompson will be their problem to solve.

Again, no small thing, since the old crew — led by feckless Chairman Roy Bostock — is not likely to want to end its appalling tenure with yet another disaster.

Such a move would further tarnish the legacy of its outgoing directors, although I am not sure how it could be any more sullied, given their consistent record of one bad decision after the next.

What do I really think? I think this cursed board will maintain its 100 percent score of doing the wrong thing at the right time.

It could be a different case with the new directors, of course, who all seem pretty sharp and not as easily impressed by a record of failure.

They will surely be monitoring Thompson carefully, as will employees, who have taken to internal message boards with a rage not seen in a while over the resume debacle.

Their morale might be one uncertainty impacting Thompson’s fate. If a lot of key employees continue to bolt Yahoo or those remaining more loudly express their disdain for the bio antics, the new directors might listen.

The Whatever-Loeb-Says-We-Won’t-Do-Till-Later Head-Scratcher

Which brings us back to Loeb, whose noisy campaign to grab seats on the Yahoo board has certainly hit home this week.

And, though Yahoo likes to ding him a lot, since he started his campaign of terribly entertaining investor terror, a lot of what he’s been calling for has happened.

That includes a major flushing of the board — with five longtime members, including co-founder Jerry Yang, going, going and gone.

In addition, Loeb brought pressure to slow down some questionable deals, from Yahoo’s PIPE dream to a tax-free spinoff in Asia in a deal only an accountant could love.

He’s also — though they try to deny it — got the Yahoo directors in the dangerous habit of reacting to him, rather than playing their own game.

While the Yahoo board has resisted any deal with Loeb (pictured here), blaming him for rejecting their kind offers of settlement, it is he who is setting the tone more than Yahoo.

And that tone is of alarm and trouble and chaos at Yahoo.

That’s not going to work to convince other Yahoo investors to back his cause — in fact, Loeb has a decidedly uphill battle to win his proxy challenge — he has still scored a direct win with the bio relevations.

So far, though, Loeb has not sunk Yahoo’s battleship, so it is unlikely the board will acquiesce to his latest demand of Thompson being fired by noon on Monday.

Maybe it will eventually, or maybe it will just scold Thompson or maybe it will do nothing at all.

All that is an unknown — a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, with a lot of managerial incompetence thrown in. And that, most of all, is the sad definition of today’s Yahoo.

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Viral Video: A Pit Bull Is Delicious!

Kara Swisher — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:44:45 +0000

Here’s the full video of President Barack Obama from the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.

It includes the terrific joke he told — riffing on the one Sarah Palin used in the last presidential campaign, about the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull, and referring to the recent spate of stories of him once eating dog.

Worth the watch:

To Mitt: Here's Your Digital Etch A Sketch

Lauren Goode — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:29:03 +0000

A remark made by one of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s advisers has sent online shoppers — and investors — into an Etch A Sketch frenzy.

In case you’ve missed the sandstorm, Eric Fehrnstrom, a top Romney adviser, said on Wednesday that if Romney wins the GOP nomination, the campaign will “hit a reset button” to take on President Obama in the fall.

Fehrnstrom then added, “It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again.”

While Romney’s rivals have pounced on the comment — Newt Gingrich’s camp has even created a SketchyRomney app — Etch A Sketch fans have pounced on the venerable toy, buying it in droves on Amazon.com.

Politico reports that sales of the 1950’s relic shot up more than 2,000 percent on the e-commerce site, while Ohio Art Company, the maker of Etch A Sketch, saw its stock hit a 52-week high yesterday, before closing at $9.65, more than double its Wednesday closing price of $4.

Here at AllThingsD, we say: Why go for the plastic version, when you can play with a digital Etch A Sketch on your mobile appendages?

That’s right: Campaign platforms, errant Twitpics, awkward remarks — all erased with the shake of an iPad.

It’s a politician’s best friend.

For iPhone, there’s Etch A Sketch Premium, from Freeze Tag, Inc., a company that makes casual games for mobile devices and personal computers. It costs just 99 cents (or about 0.000001309367724577594 percent of the $75,609,012 Romney has raised to date).

Unlike the physical Etch A Sketch, users of this app can change the color of the toy’s frame, choose from a color palette when drawing, use predrawn shapes or a background (like Hangman), and share their drawings with friends via email, Facebook or a photo album. As with the original Etch A Sketch, you simply shake it to erase it.

But a smartphone screen is just too small for this kind of app, and the knobs of the Etch A Sketch appear to be cut off at the bottom. You can use your finger to draw, but that seems like Etch A Sketch sacrilege.

Fortunately, there’s an iPad app from the same company. This one costs $2.99, and is the real deal.

The Draw Something addicts out there can share their Etch A Sketch iPad drawings with friends over Wi-Fi. Or, users can draw alone, add photos from a photo album, use colorful stamps, share through Facebook and even access an iPod song library to set sketches to a soundtrack … like, maybe a campaign soundtrack?

For Android devices, there’s a free version of Freeze Tag’s Etch A Sketch with ads; and a 99-cent version without. There’s also the 99-cent Etch-a-Doodle app, which replicates the Etch A Sketch experience.

Those who would rather pay a more visible homage to Etch a Sketch can check out these retro red covers for mobile devices.

And if you’re feeling really ambitious, you can attempt to make a Kinect-a-Sketch, as these guys did, as seen in the video below:

(Photo courtesy of Flickr/The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis)

Viral Video: Hollywood Loves Obama Again

Kara Swisher — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 08:09:55 +0000

This has got to be the mother of all political ads — directed by Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim, narrated by Tom Hanks, and lasting 17 minutes — all part of the campaign of President Barack Obama.

Plus, “The Road We’ve Traveled” video was posted right to YouTube upon its release.

It will be interesting to see how it will be received, and if it will work. The Washington Post is calling it a “docu-ganda,” noting that it cost $345,000.

What do you think?

Viral Video: Best Worst Sarah Palin Imitation

Kara Swisher — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 08:17:01 +0000

Here’s Andy Samberg from last week’s “Saturday Night Live,” trying his very worst to channel Sarah Palin in the absence of Tina Fey. It’s related to HBO’s recent original movie, “Game Change,” about the 2008 presidential campaign. Palin, who was the GOP VP candidate, dismissed the highly rated cable show as “Hollywood lies.”

Whatev, but this is funny:

HomeAway Hopes Golden Globes Ad Can Fix Super Bowl Blunder

Tricia Duryee — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 14:00:13 +0000

HomeAway hopes its new commercial, airing during today’s Golden Globes broadcast, will make its Super Bowl blunder a thing of the past.

The new campaign — set to the tune of “Let’s Stay Together,” by Al Green — is much more tame than last year’s ad. The 30-second spot focuses on creating family memories around campfires, swimming holes and hiking trails; memories that often can be made in or near homes — not in hotels.

HomeAway, which operates vacation-rentals marketplaces, including HomeAway.com, VRBO.com and VacationRentals.com, went out on a limb for its Super Bowl commercial last year. If the point was to generate buzz before filing for its initial public offering, it was a success.

But the Austin, Texas-based company ended up having to yank the ad after drawing criticism over a particularly disturbing image: In the commercial, a doll — which was obviously not a child — was thrown against a wall to demonstrate how cramped hotel rooms can be, compared to more spacious rental houses.

The updated — and more subtle — campaign will air in select markets during NBC’s broadcast of the 69th Golden Globe Awards. Following its debut, the spot will air on the Travel Channel, the Food Network, HGTV and other special promotions, including the Grammy Awards on Feb. 12, the Academy Awards on Feb. 26 and the “Survivor” finale.

Second time’s the charm?

Viral Video: "Game Change" (Or the Latest Sarah Palin Impersonation)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 11:22:53 +0000

The ever-bickering crop of current Republican Presidential nominees dragging themselves to the first Iowa vote in the coming weeks almost makes you wish for a true political character to liven up the proceedings.

Or some nostalgia for the last go-round, which is definitely present in this trailer for HBO’s upcoming adaptation of “Game Change,” the lively book about the 2008 campaign, featuring the always telegenic Sarah Palin.

The former Alaska governor is played this time around by Julianne Moore, who really looks and sounds like the GOP VP candidate.

You betcha, she does:

Digital Marketing Start-Up Thismoment Raises $7.3 Million From Sierra Ventures

Kara Swisher — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:30:58 +0000

Thismoment, the San Francisco-based digital marketing platform provider, said it has raised $7.3 million in its first institutional venture round from Sierra Ventures.

Before this funding, the company raised $4.25 million since 2008, when it was founded as a content-sharing Web site.

The company, which serves brands and agencies with its Distributed Engagement Channel platform, said it is aimed at “managing content, conversation and creative assets across earned, owned and paid media channels.” That means marketing “initiatives across Facebook, YouTube, brand sites, rich media ad units, mobile devices, tablets and digital outdoor placements,” as well as a platform to manage these social marketing campaigns.

Sierra’s Mark Fernandes will join the board. Other investors include private equity firm Fenway Partners, as well as well-known digital execs Shelby Bonnie, Jason Hirschhorn and Mika Salmi.

Thismoment said it will use the new funds to expand operations in the U.S. and also add them internationally.

Exclusive: Yahoo Overhauls Marketing Unit -- The Internal Memo

Kara Swisher — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 15:48:58 +0000

Yahoo is drastically rejiggering its marketing division, according to an internal memo sent today to employees from its Chief Marketing Officer Elisa Steele, in a move that seems to leave her future role unclear.

Steele was brought to Yahoo over two years ago by now-fired CEO Carol Bartz — whom she had been very close to — and charged with turbocharging and reorganizing the unit, which has never been strong.

While Steele certainly did overhaul the marketing department, some of her efforts, such as Yahoo’s pricey “It’s You” advertising campaign, have not worked out. And, largely due to the ongoing turmoil at the company, its brand has suffered under her watch.

The changes, which appear to be at the behest of Steele (though you never know at Yahoo!), will shift the major marketing functions back to the regions of the Silicon Valley Internet company from its current global centralized one.

“I believe we now need to bring marketing decisions, marketing talent and marketing budgets closer to the customer — and into the regions that depend on these critical plans,” she wrote. “We need to further link our marketing strategies to revenue growth, sales objectives and overall accountability.”

Since Steele took over the marketing department at Yahoo several years ago, she has been moving those powers to a more centralized system.

No longer.

In the internal memo, which I obtained and is embedded below, Steele outlines the shift, which will remove a lot of that control of marketing from the HQ and out to its business units.

Steele said in the email to the marketing team that she will remain at the company as CMO for now, although seems to indicate that she is also evaluating her future role.

“My current role as CMO on CEO staff is unchanged,” she wrote. “However, whatever I decide to do next for my career is my choice — and I’ll think about that on my own timeline.”

Sounds like an eventual departure to me, with Steele trying hard to stress she was going out on her own motor, even though giving up contro of big parts of your unit is unusual.

In any case, Steele obviously is betting now that on-the-ground control of marketing will help improve things for the beleaguered company. Here’s the memo:

Team,

It is critical for Yahoo! to grow faster and become more agile. We need to make decisions to accelerate the Regions’ growth plans around the world, and Marketing plays a crucial role in helping develop, support and execute these plans. We’ve built an integrated marketing machine that is an asset to help the company grow now and into the future. When we assembled a global and centralized organization in 2009, we took the opportunity to create best practices, establish consistency, deepen domain expertise, enhance functional capabilities and innovate for one of the biggest brands in the world. And, in the past 12 months, Global Marketing took home dozens of industry awards for marketing leadership in integrated consumer marketing, digital marketing and event marketing – including the acclaimed Cannes Lions, a Clio, a Webby and IAB Awards. Our Marketing achievements have been broad, deep and well recognized.

Now that we have this strong capability, it is time to leverage it even further. I believe we now need to bring marketing decisions, marketing talent and marketing budgets closer to the customer — and into the regions that depend on these critical plans. We need to further link our marketing strategies to revenue growth, sales objectives and overall accountability. Therefore, I want to put the marketing programs and tools we’ve developed right with the Sales and Audience teams responsible for the business outcomes.

It is with this in mind that I recommended a marketing reorganization plan to align to these objectives, accelerate decision-making and simplify roles. The plan centers on decentralizing the current global team into 2 types of specific teams:

1. Regional Marketing: Our regional marketing teams will move to report directly to the Regional leaders in Americas, EMEA and APAC.

2. Corporate Marketing: Our strategic brand, communications and marketing services teams will remain centralized and report into HQ.

This was my proposal to Tim for the best interests of Yahoo! today, and I am glad he agreed with my thinking. I really hope you will endorse and support these changes, too. Yahoo! needs your help and expertise to insure this important next phase is successful.

I want you to know how proud I am of your achievements and contributions. I also want to thank you for the incredible support you have shown me over the past 2.5 years in the current organization. It’s been an amazing brand adventure and working with each of you has been a great source of satisfaction.

My current role as CMO on CEO staff is unchanged. However, whatever I decide to do next for my career is my choice — and I’ll think about that on my own timeline. First, I will work with Tim, my peers and all of you to ensure a smooth transition — and that is my focus for now.

We have a meeting scheduled with the marketing leadership team on Monday and I can address any questions you may have about this transition.

Thanks,

Elisa

Apple Brand Ascendent, While Yahoo's Is in Marketing Retrograde

Kara Swisher — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 12:55:01 +0000

Yahoo — which has been trying to right itself after a series of missteps and an ever-weakening business — took another direct hit yesterday, as it got dinged in a high-profile annual survey of the Top 100 global brands.

According to Interbrand’s “Best Global Brands 2011,” Yahoo dropped 11 percent in brand value — calculated as $4.4 billion — in the year in which it fell from No. 66 to No. 76.

Way to go, Yahoo marketing! I think that pricey “It’s You” advertising campaign might not have worked.

Meanwhile, Apple broke into the Top 10 list for the first time, vaulting from No. 17 to No. 8, rising 58 percent in brand value to $33.5 billion.

Other tech companies did pretty well in the Interbrand poll — which is the gold standard of the state of brand health with consumers — especially compared to Yahoo (whose brand value high was in 2007 and which is now back at 2001 levels).

For example: IBM kept its No. 2 spot, with brand value rising eight percent; Microsoft fell three percent, but maintained its No. 3 place; Google stayed at No. 4, up 27 percent; and Amazon rose 32 percent and reached No. 26 from No. 36.

Even troubled companies prevailed over Yahoo’s twin declines: Hewlett-Packard held on to its No. 10 slot, with brand value up six percent; Research In Motion dropped only five percent and two slots, from No. 54 to No. 56; and Nokia fell from No. 8 to No. 14 and saw its brand value decline 15 percent.

Most interesting, perhaps, about the 12-year-old survey: Six of the Top 10 brands are tech companies.

Federated Media Buys Lijit Networks

Kara Swisher — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:00:16 +0000

San Francisco-based Federated Media Publishing said it has bought Lijit Networks, a smaller online advertising analytics and tools firm.

The price for the Boulder, Colo., start-up — which was founded in 2006 — was undisclosed, but it has received just under $29 million in venture funding from firms such as Foundry Group. Federated said Lijit would continue to operate independently, “but in conjunction.”

In an interview yesterday, Federated CEO Deanna Brown said the buy was to round out offerings for its clients and to better compete in a world where most of the online ads go to the top five players.

“I am excited we can give both publishers and advertisers more tools for engagement and monetization,” she said.

Federated, which lost big social-media news site Mashable earlier this year, also benefits from increased scale and inventory of sites.

Lijit CEO Todd Vernon, who will become EVP of technology at Federated, said that it was ever more important for ad-focused firms on the Web to “deliver the entire stack.”

“Lijit has a core competency in the media business, and combined with FM’s best-in-class sales force, we can offer everything needed to do effective online campaigns,” he said.

Here’s the official press release:

Federated Media Publishing To Acquire Lijit Networks

Combined Entity Will Power More than 77,000 Independent Publishers Across the Web Via Comprehensive Advertising, Analytics and Reader Engagement Tools

SAN FRANCISCO, October 4, 2011 – Federated Media Publishing, which powers the best of the Independent Web, today announced the acquisition of Lijit Networks, Inc. Lijit is a leading provider of advertising services, audience analytics and reader engagement tools for online publishers of all sizes. The combined entity will reach nearly 300 million global unique visitors according to Quantcast.

Lijit, headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, will continue to operate independently but in conjunction with the rest of Federated Media Publishing. Lijit CEO Todd Vernon and COO Walter Knapp will take on corresponding EVP of Technology and SVP of Platform Revenue responsibilities at Federated Media Publishing and will report directly to Federated Media Publishing’s CEO, Deanna Brown. Additionally, Lijit board member Seth Levine from Foundry Group will join the Federated Media Publishing board of directors, effective immediately.

With the addition of Lijit Networks’ existing publisher relationships, Federated Media Publishing will now reach more than 77,000 online publishers and nearly 15,000 expert communities, making it one of the largest companies to power publishing on the Independent Web. The acquisition vastly expands the combined company’s inventory of sites, offering premium advertisers improved scale and reach.

Publishers Will Profit and Flourish

Lijit helps publishers more thoughtfully interact with and better understand their audience by providing analytics and engagement tools that build deeper relationships, lengthen time on site and increase page views. These robust and actionable audience analytics and reader engagement tools leverage intent, behavior and demographics to help publishers of all sizes increase revenue and better engage their readers.

Additionally, the combined advertising services provided by FM and Lijit will give publishers of all sizes a revenue stream that complements existing sales efforts and helps grow and monetize their website businesses, no matter what the size.

Advertisers Can More Easily Analyze and Engage

The combination of Federated Media Publishing’s premium online advertising and conversational marketing programs and Lijit’s proprietary data collection tools will empower advertisers to better understand user intent, contextual relevance and demographic information. And by leveraging the combined entity’s extensive publisher relationships, advertisers will have unprecedented scale on the Independent Web.

Introducing Programmatic Buying to the Independent Web

Programmatic buying is one of the fastest growing trends in digital media and the introduction of Lijit’s robust RTB exchange will equip media buyers with one of the largest platforms available. Over the next few months, Federated Media Publishing and Lijit will develop a series of private exchanges that will highlight leading independent publishers. These exchanges will allow brands to engage active, passionate consumers found in highly conversational online communities and publications, while delivering premium CPM rates via FM’s conversational marketing programs.

Quote

“The Lijit Networks team is just as passionate and committed to powering publishers as we are at Federated Media Publishing and that was a crucial element to this decision,” said Deanna Brown, chief executive officer, Federated Media Publishing. “Our combined relationships, proprietary tools and conversational marketing services will be invaluable to publishers and advertisers alike.”

“Federated Media invented how to leverage authentic voices and engaged conversations that exist in the Independent Web,” said Todd Vernon, founder and CEO of Lijit Networks. “The combination of the two companies is a game changer in the industry that unlocks new opportunities for both companies and our combined publisher network.”

Exclusive: Efficient Frontier Buys Context Optional for $50 Million

Kara Swisher — Wed, 04 May 2011 16:15:53 +0000

Online performance marketing firm Efficient Frontier is acquiring San Francisco-based social marketing software and services start-up Context Optional, the company said.

While terms of the deal were not revealed, sources said the price was $50 million.

The purchase of Context Optional is the first acquisition for Efficient Frontier, which has grown from a start-up that focused solely on search engine marketing to now including display and social media campaigns.

The move is a significant sign, said Efficient Frontier CEO David Karnstedt, that social has become a key part of the advertising ecosystem and an end-to-end solution is important to marketers.

With the purchase, for example, he said advertisers will be able to run Facebook ads all the way through to managing their brand’s fan page and help with both acquisition and retention.

“Our heritage is that we were early in optimizing search engine advertising for clients, so we wanted to expand our efforts exponentially with Context Optional, since social is different than search,” said Karnstedt in an interview yesterday with BoomTown. “We want to help advertisers interested in social media keep engaged and regularly returning customers.”

Context Optional was founded in 2006 and competes with other start-ups, such as Buddy Media, Involver and Vitrue.

Here is the official press release from Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Efficient Frontier:

Efficient Frontier Acquires Context Optional to Create the First Comprehensive Solution for Social Media Marketing

Unites Leading Advertising and Page Management Platforms to Maximize Social Marketing Impact

Sunnyvale, Calif.–May 4, 2011–Efficient Frontier, a leading global performance marketing company, today announced that the company has acquired Context Optional, a leader in enterprise social marketing solutions. The acquisition expands Efficient Frontier’s social media offering which will combine the company’s advertising campaign management and optimization with Context Optional’s page management platform. This marks the first unified solution for managing and optimizing Facebook fan acquisition through to fan retention and engagement. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“We are excited to offer marketers a complete solution for capitalizing on the growing social marketing opportunity across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn,” said David Karnstedt, Efficient Frontier’s CEO. “Social media marketing is more than just the initial contact with the customer and requires both compelling experiences and an ongoing dialog to realize the full potential of the interaction. The acquisition of Context Optional will create a unified platform for marketers to manage all of their social media touch points with brand enthusiasts.”

Efficient Frontier’s platform manages ad campaigns across search, display and social media, enabling customers to acquire audiences across multiple channels and optimize for better results. Context Optional’s Social Marketing Suite of products is an enterprise solution for brands to engage and retain audiences across Facebook and Twitter.

By aligning acquisition and engagement strategies, the combined company will be able to deliver a seamless and measurable user experience by integrating advertising and social marketing content. Brands will be able to more efficiently target audiences based on social engagement insights and continually refine their Facebook application experiences to better match their audiences’ interests. Efficient Frontier will also be able to provide integrated analytics to provide a more complete view of performance including virality.

“Efficient Frontier is a leader in digital marketing and our respective clients are asking us for a comprehensive solution to both acquire and build relationships with their customers,” said Kevin Barenblat, Context Optional’s Co-Founder and CEO. “This combination is recognition that social media is now indeed a powerful marketing channel in which brands are significantly investing. “We’re excited to be the first in the market with an integrated, enterprise solution to enable brands to effectively scale their investment in social.”

Viral Video: Czech President Pen Caper (and Inevitable Facebook Campaign)

Kara Swisher — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:10:11 +0000

A video of Czech President Vaclav Klaus sneakily pocketing a fancy pen at a signing ceremony has, of course, continued to rack the views on YouTube.

And–also, of course–there is now a Facebook campaign to send him more pens.

Klaus, who does not seem to get the profound silliness of the Internet, has declared that pens are for the keeping when it comes to official duties.

All true, but his stylus caper looks pretty hysterical when set to music, as it was by this Czech television news program:

Viral Video: Foursquare's Dennis Crowley Is Character Approved

Kara Swisher — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 07:05:55 +0000

Recently, Foursquare was selected for an “award,” as part of an advertising campaign for USA Networks, whose motto is “Characters Welcome.”

On its Web site, “USA Network’s Character Approved: Honoring 12 Cultural Trailblazers” is described as “innovators in their field who influence our opinions, our style, and our view of the world.”

Now, a commercial featuring co-founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai is in heavy rotation on the cable television channel–what can BoomTown say, except, “NCIS” rocks, and thus, I have had to endure the ad 67 times so far!

In fact, it’s actually kind of sweet and awkward, as the pair try to explain the social geo-location service to the masses.

Enjoy:

Thank William Shatner as Priceline's Stock Price Negotiates a Five-Year High

Tricia Duryee — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 19:09:36 +0000

Priceline’s shares traded at a five-year high today, nearly tripling in value over the past year alone.

The company said it is performing well, as deal seekers around the world–from North America to Western Europe to the Asia-Pacific region–look for deals on hotels and rental cars, specifically, and benefit from improvements in the economy.

The company’s stock is trading at $463.33, up $6.32 a share today. A new 52-week high was hit yesterday, trading at $459.57 a share.

Yesterday, Priceline announced it entered its fifth straight year of its well-known advertising campaign, featuring William Shatner–a.k.a. “the Priceline Negotiator.”

Shatner is portrayed as a James Bond-like character who will stop at nothing to obtain the best travel deals and maximum savings for Priceline customers–although he does silly things along the way, too, like watch a gorilla wrestle a scrawny man.

Shatner will be joined in the campaign–created by Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners–by new sidekicks Naomi Pryce and the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

The Norwalk, Conn.-based company will release its fourth-quarter and full-year results Feb. 23.

Expect the focus to be on growth.

Priceline is forecasting total gross travel bookings to jump year-over-year by 36 to 41 percent, with most of the growth coming internationally.

International bookings are expected to jump by 54 to 59 percent vs. minimal growth in domestic gross travel of 5 to 10 percent.

Annual revenues are forecasted to jump by 31 to 36 percent, and gross profits are expected to soar by 49 to 54 percent.

As a close competitor to Priceline, Expedia.com hit a 52-week high of $29.85 back in September, but has fallen considerably since, to trade around $21.69 a share.

Yesterday, Expedia relaunched a new price-savings campaign called ASAP: A Sudden Amazing Price. The promotion will offer two discounts a day on hotels and other items of up to 50 percent, aimed at both sides of the country.