Archive for June, 2008

If you’re old enough to remember obsessing for a summer over who shot J.R. Ewing—or, for that matter, who shot Montgomery Burns—then you’re primed and ready for this season’s cliffhanger: What’s with Yahoo! and that search ad deal it just signed with Google? more

About five years ago, the Hard Rock Hotel Las Vegas realized it had a bookings issue. Guests were arriving for the weekend on Friday but leaving for home on Sunday, making Sunday evenings around the rock-music-themed lodging and casino kind of a snooze.

Not to mention a cost sink, because beverage sales fell off along with room bookings. The hotel realized it needed to figure out a way to keep some guests over Sunday night and to bolster those revenues. more

If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of a thousand virtual Allen wrenches driving those weird screws and locks into a thousand ghostly Ektorp sofas and Leksvik coffee tables.

This is the day that IKEA brings a selection of its actual home-furnishing inventory into the virtual world of The Sims 2, the life-simulation game that has sold more than a million copies worldwide since its launch in 2000. more

Game maker Nintendo could possibly be sitting on the biggest buzz marketing hit since Diet Coke met Mentos. But as of now, the company is denying that it’s Nintendo’s underwear-clad sitter we’re looking at. more

His campaign for the White House is just now shifting into high gear, but Sen. Barack Obama is already a winner… in Cannes, France.

That’s where his Obama Mobile messaging campaign won a 2008 Mobile Messaging award in the non-profit or public-sector category. The accolade was one of five awards handed out by research firm Informa and the mobile industry group 160 Characters at this year’s Global Messaging Conference. And it went to interactive mobile firm SinglePoint and mobile content and platform provider Distributive Networks for the part they played in putting the Obama campaign so effectively onto his supporters’ handsets. more

Know what a “splash stick” is? If not, chances are good you will soon.

Literally, it’s a small wand of molded green plastic with a cap at one end. The stick fits into the slit opening of a plastic coffee lid, seals it and lets you walk down the street without fear of the telltale signs of the morning commuter: those splashed little droplets of coffee on shirt, skirt or pants.

Figuratively, splash sticks may be the future of Starbucks, a multi-billion-dollar brand that’s looking to reconnect with its customers. more

A number of releases have come out recently about Hispanic marketing account wins or appointments, and that led me to thinking about a question I honestly don’t have the answer to yet. When brands target their interactive marketing at a Hispanic audience, how well do they do in fulfilling that audience’s online needs? more