“It’s such a distancing medium that we work in, in television,” said American Experience executive producer Mark Samels. “You put all this work into something, and then it goes into this black hole, the ether.”

Earth Days is a 102 minute film about the origins of the American environmental movement. The documentary, directed by Robert Stone, has been on a film festival and 40-city theatrical tour for the last year, and will soon be having its television broadcast premiere.

April 11, 2010 will mark the first time a major broadcaster has introduced a full-length documentary on the social networking site. A new social screening application created by Brand Networks will feature a “customized video player, integrated with a proprietary poll system and Facebook’s comment box,” according to Brand Networks founder Jamie Tedford.

With no limitations on how many people can participate, PBS is hoping that fans will post questions and interact with the filmmaker and producer in real-time. Fans will also be able to restrict their comments to others who are watching the presentation or make them visible in their news feeds.

The program draws and average of 4 million viewers an episode on television, so there is no telling how many will be logging in to view the social version, however since promotion began on March 3 more than 2000 people have invited friends to join the event.

Operators of third-party websites will be able to integrate some basic Twitter functionality without requiring their community members to navigate away from a page to the profile at Twitter.com.

The Twitter blog states that people will be able to “follow a New York Times journalist directly from their byline, tweet about a video without leaving YouTube, and discover new Twitter accounts while visiting the Yahoo! home page.”

Rather then having to implement API’s, interested sites will only need to drop a few lines of javascript to integrate @anywhere. Initial participating sites will include Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, eBay, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, Yahoo!, and YouTube.

With the Facebook Connect platform already dominating this space, Twitter will have to play a little catch-up with the @anywhere platform. The company has said that this is just the beginning of features Twitter users can expect.

Future announcements regarding the platform will come from the @anywhere Twitter account, as well Ryan Sarver, platform/API programmer for Twitter has promised more details at the Chirp Twitter developer conference April 14-15, 2010.

A brand ambassador is someone who represents your brand in a positive, fun or creative way and carries the mission and messaging of your brand out to the public. Today’s brand ambassadors rely on social networks and user-generated content (UGC) to engage participants, and can exist is some ways you may not have thought of.

Campaigns from now and going forward have introduced many forms of brand ambassador, however here are a few that you may not have thought of:

Brand Ambassador Wanted
OK - you may have guessed this one. The ambassador for hire. This type of ambassador have been making headlines as of late. Mommy bloggers and the iJustine’s of the world have a large following and are trustworthy voices to direct messaging to the masses. Not only are they fun, but they usually offer an inside or more relatable peek into a particular brand.

Employees
People who already work with my product or service, WHAT?! That is so simple - it’s mind blowing. Employees work directly with what you are trying to sell and can offer some of the best advice, insight and emotion. My only advice is to ensure you have that social media policy in place first. Always be prepared.

You, silly.
Executives are perhaps the most qualified to act as brand ambassadors for their products. They are the most enthusiastic and passionate, as well as having the most experience and perhaps connections. UberCEO released a report this past summer regarding the ’slacker’ attitude that many of the fortune 100 CEO’s have toward social media. This, in my opinion, is a huge oversight.

Social media takes resources, time and thought. All true. Social media ambassadors sell. Also true. You have a good reason for not employing any. False.

Who are your best brand ambassadors? Leave us a note, and share your thoughts.

The project aims to crowd source the future of the Thierry Mugler brand and has the ability to become whatever its participants want. By enriching the dialogue between brand designers and participants the company hopes to boost creativity and bring the Thierry Mugler brand into the new frontier.

A large part of the content is user-generated and uses standard moderation tools to administer the site, while other content is provided by leading and creative personalities and original content developed by Thierry Mugler, all on the topic of Womanity.

Participants can upload comments, video or photographs and are able to tag their content with a colour of their choice which best describes the mood of their post. Visitors can then access content through a particular mood that suits them at that moment. Each piece of content is completely sharable across social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

While the concept of sharing content from everyday users, professionals and designers across one platform is a nice metaphor for the definition of womanhood and the aesthetic of the site is visually pleasing the objective is not exactly the most innovative platform.

Capitec Bank is a South African retail band which provides affordable, accessible and simplified banking with personal service. The banks underlying philosophy is to use innovative technology to drive down costs, to increase accessibility and to simplify daily essential banking for its customers.

With less then a decade of existence this award has proven Capitec Bank as one of the major players in the South African banking market which has mainly be dominated by traditional banks. To leverage this the company is looking to produce one print ad or concept and one online banner ad or concept that will explain what the Great Brands of Tomorrow report is, what it means to be included in the report, to communicate that Capitec is one of the world’s greatest brands and to thank all those who make it possible.

This creative brief is time sensitive as production of all advertisement to be fun through local regional newspapers and on news, financial and business websites will be put into production on March 19, 2010.

The brand has provided the Global Brands of Tomorrow report, the press release and the company logo to help participants develop their mock ups and concepts. An example of a past advertisement has also been provided to better understand the straightforward, cheeky, and simple yet smart tone of the brand.

All briefs are due on the Idea Bounty website by March 18, 2010 with the winner being announced the following day. The grand prize winner will receive a $5000 award.

Participants can register with Brickfish, the leader in social media marketing and upload a photograph of your customized and unique prom look and include a description of how the look will Rock the Prom. This is only the first round of the contest which runs from March 4 to April 16, 2010. Looks should be created by indulging in luxurious Neiman Marcus gowns and accessories.

The first round will be judged by a panel of Neiman Marcus representatives based 100 per cent on visual aesthetic and will see 50 finalists move forward. While the second round running from May 3 to May 17, 2010 will also be judged by fashion director Ken Downing and a Teen Vogue panel who will evaluate each submission based on creativity, relevance, audience support and viral influence.

Rock the Prom sponsors will also take into account the public member voting. Individuals may vote once a day, every day throughout the duration of both phases of the contest. Entrants may only vote for their own entries once during each round.

The viral activity surrounding each submission will also play a factor into determining a winner. Those that get the most attention online, either through the use of the Post to Website of Embed tools on Brickfish.com to spread word of submission on varying social networking sites.

Three prizes will be awarded for the Rock the Prom contest. The best look will win a $1000 Neiman Marcus gift card. Second place best look will win a $750 Neiman Marcus gift card plus the winner’s entry may be featured in a Teen Vogue issue. The final and most popular winner will be the most viral of the finalists entries and will receive a $500 Neiman Marcus gift card.

Bubbly was created by Bubble Motion, a mobile and social application firm based in Silicon Valley and Singapore. Its first product, BubbleTalk was a person-to-person voice messaging service that sends mobile audio messages instead of SMS. Bubbly has been dubbed the voice-based Twitter.

“Along came the social-media boom and we started to play with a lot of social-media applications,” said Tom Clayton, Bubble Motion’s CEO. That led to the idea of audio messages going not just to one person, but to a much larger audience of followers.

The service is free to sign up and follow friends and family or even a favourite celebrity or musician. Posting the message is free, and once the message has been recorded and sent out, all users will get an alert. If users chose to listen, they pay for the airtime, and messages currently have a cap of one minute.

Bubbly has not officially launched, but the service already has an estimated 500,000 users and media networks are beginning to show an interest as well. The BBC has already signed on and is experimenting with the service as a way of disseminating breaking news.

The current model is focused on mobile-savvy markets such as India, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Brazil where many have access to cellphones but far fewer to the Web.

The company hopes to “grow to hundreds of millions of users through viral and word-of-mouth marketing with very little, if any, marketing spend,” said Clayton. “In each country we have a different strategy, but a lot of it is around entertainment and sports [celebrities].”

“If people are interacting with our brand every day, that’s fabulous marketing,” said Carol Kruse, Coca-Cola’s vice president of global interactive marketing. “Word-of-mouth is one of the key drivers.”

The soda maker has added over 1.5 million fans this year, growing from 3.5 million in January to 5.18 million now, making Coca-Cola’s page one of the top Facebook fan pages in the world. After taking ownership over from two fans who built it Coca-Cola now uses its page to drive charitable causes, create buzz around events and engage its consumers.

Coca-Cola’s most recent social projects have included its Super Bowl commercials and the offer of “virtual cokes” to raise money for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, as well as Expedition 206, where fans are following three ambassadors chosen by fans travel everywhere the product is sold.

“When you’ve got brand managers, everybody wants to own the brand,” said Kruse. “But we don’t own the brand. Consumers do.” Executives at Coca-Cola are careful not to push the brand too aggressively or mess with the Web’s ethos of individuality, and as such takes down less than one per cent of postings on its fan page generally due to pornographic, racist or sexist content. The brand even says that competitor material is welcome to stay up on the site, in the interest of authenticity.

We may not be too happy about it,” said Kruse. “But we let it go.”

The technology may have changed but the emphasis on building relationships and enlisting brand ambassadors stands the decades-old practice of good branding and real-world selling. Customer engagement increases the intent to purchase.

The integrated engagement console is built on Adobe AIR and taps into conversations that are happening on multiple platforms giving clients the ability to track, measure and engage with sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, forums, Google Buzz, news sites and more.

The console can be customized by breaking conversations into stacks by broad or targeted topics and the workflow feature allows you to tag, assign and route posts to team members. Take real-time to a new level by viewing the efforts of your company internally to more efficiently collaborate and respond to clients or customers. As well, companies can now put conversations into context with the ability to view entire social media profiles and interactive history.

This console replaces existing platforms by streamlining all of your social media feeds into one place and is specifically built to help companies engage and monitor the conversations happening around their brands.

While Radian6’s new console is still in private beta until April, many will argue that this is a competitive space in which other start-ups already reside. Scout Labs, PeopleBrowsr and HootSuite for example all claim to measure and manage social media. From what I can see Radian6 is absolutely the most supped-up and efficient version of engagement and monitoring and the only issue large scale businesses will have is the people power to manage all of that important data.

In March 2010, Beck’s will be launching a new packaging label on its bottles and cans globally. The new look has changed subtly over the years, demonstrating that it is a brand that remains true to the values it promotes.

To support the global launch Beck’s has introduced a viral video competition through the Poptent community to give fans a chance to promote their favourite beer in a hip and entertaining way.

The video is targeting 21-29 year old’s and help raise awareness of the packaging change, and most importantly the message that the product is still the same great Beck’s. Videos can run a maximum of 60 seconds in length and must comply with the Beer Institute Ad Code as well as all of Beck’s rules and regulations.

Alcohol brands take greater precaution when approaching social media and user-generated content (UGC) as they run a high risk of returning inappropriate content and must follow an entirely different set of rules when it comes to advertising. To use this method is not only bold, but it certainly does not follow the trend.

One video will be selected by Beck’s and will receive a one-time usage fee of $5000. XLNTads will also select three editors’ choice awards and will pay out awards totaling $2000.