A new Nielsen study reports that the citizens of the United States of America are furiously masturbating to the new Wendy’s girl.

“We think these results came from two factors,” said Jim Wendell, a spokesperson for Nielsen. “First, there’s the pent-up sexual tension: Americans had been trying to masturbate to commercials starring Dave Thomas and his fat ass daughter for over 50 years and failing. It’s like dropping filet mignon into a pack of hyenas.”

“The second factor is that she’s just an exquisite piece of ass,” Wendell continued.

Nielsen reports that Wendy’s has had to remove life-size cutouts of the new Wendy’s girl from dozens Wendy locations after mass bouts of public masturbation broke out. In one instance in Clifton, NJ, the police were summoned but merely proceeded to rub one out upon arrival.

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The team shares what they wish they had known when they were starting out, moments in their career they’re proud of, and stories of early mentors who gave them valuable advice that helped advance their careers. It’s somewhere for new creatives to come for wisdom and advice, as well as something more established professionals can lean on when they’re running low on inspiration.

Interviewees come from across the creative fields, mostly advertising, design, media, technology and production. The first ten videos include appearances by DDB New York CCO Matt Eastman, Collins CEO Brian Collins, and JWT Executive Creative Director Sarah Barclay — among many others.

“Agencies rarely do enough to guide creative folks,” explains Mat Zucker. “Yet I’ve always found that people at every level are hungry for wisdom from those ahead of them.”

Grateful for the help he’s received along the way, Zucker sees Hindsight as a way to pass on wisdom and experience to the next generation. In such a competitive field, where people are often reluctant to share their personal insights, they’re sure to appreciate it.

Hindsight Career Project Trailer from Hindsight Career Project on Vimeo.

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Watching daytime TV for a change, I discovered that the scariest place on TV isn’t True Blood‘s Louisiana, Wisteria Lane or even (trendy Game of Thrones reference coming) Night’s Watch and The Wall. The most terrifying place on my remote control is The Lifetime Movie Network on a Thursday late morning.

I was innocently watching an Ashton Kutcher-Michelle Pfieffer vehicle, “Personal Effects” (two sad, pretty people connecting awkwardly over loss), when during the many commercial breaks, I noticed the advertising all tapped fear to promote solutions:

Most Lifetime films are already scary, sexy and sad. Both the movies and commercials follow a similar gut-wrenching plot of impossible circumstances only to end on a note of shiny optimism. You’re left feeling that there always is a way out. You’ll get back on your feet. You’ll get him back for what he did. Your home and family are safe. You’ll never date another creep. This is a great deal. That stain will be gone. Free shipping. It’s all very American.

The idea of patriotism cheered me up. Then, just when I was feeling out of harm’s way, came a promo for another Lifetime movie: “Broken Trust.”

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With just a few hundred participants, far more intimate (and elite) than SXSW, it was a well-curated series of lectures around businesses that disrupt our culture. The publisher provided a link to the lectures, so I thought I would share a few of my favorites. If you browse among them, several of the speakers are worth watching, including executive editor Thomas Geotz who opened by sharing WIRED’s criteria in how to spot the future. Right after, there’s an all-star line up of Netscape founder and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, Dick Costello of Twitter, and Yancey Stickler of Kickstarter. Stickler was humble yet proud about Kickstarter, Costello was hilarious about Twitter, and Andreessen took the wind out of the myth of the bubble. James Dyson later talked about his company’s engineering culture. Interviewed on stage, Dyson provocatively said that he doesn’t believe in brand (although having once worked on their business and following their strict guidelines, I’m not sure if I completely believe him).

Many were thought leaders who I didn’t know. Mary “Missy” Cummings is a former Navy pilot who moved to MIT and covered progress in robotics. Another conversation around breakthroughs you might like is when New York editor Jason Tanz interviews Sebastian Thrun of Google (and Stanford), especially around 8:06, when they show a film with a demo of the Google self-driving car.

I’m optimistic about who will take gold at The One Show and about the industry’s revitalization in general. Even the word “disruption” itself seems increasingly popular. Agency TBWA/Chiat/Day just announced a new consultancy built around its long-running “Disruption” marketing approach. At one of its divisions where I was a creative leader, I got to work with “Disruption” and found it both powerful and simple to solving tough problems in a fresh way. We should enjoy this type of thinking challenging the status quo. Products talked about at the Wired conference and innovative marketing celebrated during Creative Week are more connected than ever and both intentionally seek to do new things—fearlessly.

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Although I was unable to land a copywriter job directly out of college, I did get an secretarial job in a big New York agency’s creative department. Perhaps the only path more classic would have been to start in the mailroom. Working for six creative directors, my responsibilities included included answering phones, filling out expense reports, making travel arrangements, and manually pasting up TV storyboards frame-by-frame. This last task helped me learn about TV narrative but since this was pre-everyone on computers, I can’t even explain how much I cringed every time someone had a minor change; I’d have to re-tape every single frame all over again.

But I loved my job and the folks who mentored me. Several would give me real writing assignments or let me sit in on presentations. I returned the favor by fetching low-cal lunches, making friends with their spouses, renting them red Mustang convertibles for shoots in California, and occasionally rounding up their taxi receipts. As much as I thought it was silly for me to answer their phones, I was insulted if they ever did do something themselves.

Still, I had to keep my ambitions to be a copywriter top of mind. One thing I did was turn my administrative job into a creative job. I put out a monthly newsletter for our group, the first issue promising “News You Can Use From An Assistant You Can — But Shouldn’t —Abuse.” In four pages, it covered recent campaigns my bosses did, observations about the conservative office (“What dark wood paneling in the conference room says about being modern”), personal horoscopes (One of my creative directors was obsessed by astrology) and a reminder them to all to do their time sheets (“Your time is so valuable everyone should make money off it”). I also did trend reports, research, and any writing assignment they’d give me whether it was jokes for a radio script or headlines for a coupon ad.

My manager Maureen cautioned that I still had to wait for a junior copywriter spot to open up. Then I could audition with my portfolio against outside candidates. I’d have an inside edge, of course, since everyone knew me — well, except the person who mattered: Ted, the head of the Creative Department.

Ted thought my name was Marc.

I saw on a calendar that Professional Secretaries Day (now Administrative Professionals Day) was coming in April and decided to pull a stunt to get the boss’s attention. On behalf of all the secretaries, with help from a senior art director, I’d run my own ad campaign. It’d be a series of posters based on iconic secretaries and how one should appreciate them.

The first had a photo of then-Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger caught lying about the Iran-Contra affair: “A Trustworthy Secretary Is Hard To Find.” The second was of Susan Ruttan, the secretary on the TV Series L.A. Law, with the headline: “Some Secretaries Earn $5,000 a Week. You Could At Least Pay Yours A Compliment.” The third was the most timely, using the recent death of the famous racehorse Secretariat that was all over the news. Under a photo of hundreds of flowers at Secretariat’s tombstone were the words: “What Does It Take for a Secretary to Get Flowers?” Each poster also ended with the tagline: “Say Thank You To Someone Important.”

Late at night, I hung posters on every floor, but especially along the walk from reception to Ted’s office. This, in advertising, is known as a targeted buy.

Around 10 a.m., Ted’s assistant summoned me to his office.

I was nervous. I didn’t know what Ted was like. He wore cowboy boots and was tall and used foul language, but what would he think? On my way, Maureen intercepted me, warning there had been complaints. I lurked outside Ted’s door until he motioned me in. The head of human resources was there along with the head of the secretarial pool. Damn, I thought, am I going to get fired?

“Mat, you did this campaign, right?” Ted asked, holding up a Casper Weinberger poster. His mustache blocked his expression.

“Yes,” I said. Turning to the H.R. folks, I could see they were not happy.

“He should have gotten permission for this,” complained the head of the secretarial pool, a matronly woman who only yesterday had told me her nephew was “A gay like me” and thinks it’s terrific the times we are in.

“A few of the girls are upset,” she said, which caused the room to flinch in a post-Mad Men era. “It makes them look bad, asking for attention.”

Ted squinted and put the poster down. “Well, I think it’s damn funny,” he finally said. “Especially the one about the dead horse. We should be encouraging this type of thing.” He winked at me and let me go back to my desk.

I passed Maureen’s office, and she looked up from her desk in anticipation. I gave her the thumbs-up sign, and she smiled back.

I felt good. Good about Ted, good about the agency, good about myself. And when I entered my desk area, I felt even better. There were three or four wrapped gifts, several cards — and from my creative directors, a dozen yellow roses.

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But like Cannes Lions and The One Show Festival, SXSW Interactive (the newbie to music and film, which overlap with it) is too big and too important to casually dismiss. This year, SXSWi included big name speakers such as Al Gore, Jill Abramson of The New York Times, Danah Boyd of Microsoft, and Frank Abagnale (remember Catch Me If I Can?) as well as regular, less known people who may have created your favorite website or app. And if you’re a young, tiny startup passionately toiling away in isolation most of the year, it’s a unique opportunity to learn and connect with like-minded folks and even your personal heroes. Maybe people with money too.

1. New stuff. I am sure I could read more tech blogs back at home, but from both formal presentations hallway conversations I picked up dozens of web sites and apps about which I didn’t previously know. For example: GigWalk (quick jobs in your town for companies); Hackpad (collaborative note taking); and Unroll.me (email filter and bundle system — I got an invitation to the beta. Love it).

2. Shifts in the talent market. One of the themed tracks I followed was The Future of Work. In “Serial Monogamy” Dan Finnigan of Jobvite talked about the disposable worker, and with career mobility, how recruiters are more important than ever. He observed that employers are less interested in how many jobs you’ve had but what your experiences have been. I believe in this, hoping we all build a ‘portfolio’ of stories that we amass over our career and can talk about. I believe we each should add at least one juicy experience to our CV every year.

3. Talks beat panels. Panel discussions like Planned Parenthood’s case study of crisis communications weren’t very informative or surprising, but in-depth interviews such as Gawker Media’s Nick Denton was. Interviewed by Anil Dash, Denton defended gossip, calling it “news you actually want to hear.” He also gave his view on how comments need to evolve on his network of sites, with the goals of increasing the quality even if it restricts the volume. More responsibility needs to be shared by the contributors and climate has to be protected for clear-headed debate. “How many of you only want to have a conversation with people who agree with you?” he asked the audience. In response, Dash mused, “That sounds like San Francisco,” poking fun at the city’s humorless zealotry. Some 15-minute talks also were productive, such as “Open APIs: What’s Hot? What’s Not?” where I learned that hackathons can be companies test out their API’s and apparently, REST Is hot, but SOAP is not. I know what an API is and their importance, but I don’t know squat about programming languages behind them. Probably a good conversation starter in my next developer meeting. Another fast-track session was on creative leadership by Sarah Nelson of Tapir and Tine. I’m a punctuation fanatic, so among the gleanings that stuck with me:

Business is about ! and . Creative is about ? and , #creativeleaders are translators between them.

That made a lovely tweet, which every attendee did with anything wise or catchy.

4. Who was there. Who wasn’t. Walking around sponsor and non-sponsor tents and parties, my husband Bryan Fuhr, who also works in the business, wondered: Where’s Facebook? The social network behemoth was apparently sitting this one out. Google, on the other hand, not only had a rented a house nearby for parties, but rented FOUR houses in a neighborhood to demo various products (including maps and Android) and host cocktails. I saw a lot of industry folks and friends I hadn’t seen in awhile, although too many were New Yorkers who I could have seen back here anytime. The most notable presence, to me, was the demographic makeup of the thousands of attendees. You might not be surprised by the 20:1 male to female ratio at a technology event, but what was depressing was the homogeneity of the folks on stage and in the audience—aside from Baratunde Thurston, it was mostly white guys. Leaving as the music festival was starting, I noticed much more diversity emerging. Someone more qualified to talk about this will hopefully rail against the white bread problem. Wait, in Salon, someone did.

5. Storytelling. There were at least six sessions with the word story in it. Content is finally hitting its stride and new platforms let us tell stories in different ways, but the word is getting so overused and diluted it’s going the way of utility, platforms, dashboard, innovation, guru and awesome. Video, on the other hand, is among favorite things to talk about and create, and I enjoyed a refresher (and reality check) at “The Viral Myth”, led by former colleagues Rob Davis and Jeremy Sanchez. Using science as well as art, they led us through how to develop video for success from the very beginning (tapping search for insights, naming your channel), even before you develop the idea.

6. The food wasn’t that great. People rave about Texas barbecue and Austin food, but I must have very different taste or am too spoiled by Danny Meyer’s Blue Smoke restaurant in New York. I went to a few decent dinners with my husband’s Havas crew as well as Flintstone-size BBQ ribs at famous IronWorks with colleagues from my former company, but wasn’t that impressed with the food or wine scene. The only gastro highlight for me was many, many beers (the local Lone Star brand) without food with colleagues from my team when I was at R/GA. As you many know from my other posts, I have many allergies but luckily not to this lighter beer, so thank you Austin for not killing me.

Crowded conferences such as SXSW definitely have operational issues. Lines to pick up your pass on Friday afternoon, for example, stretched to two hours for many of us, forcing us to miss several sessions we wanted to attend. Spread over multiple locations and hotels, too many of us were turned away from sessions even if we arrived early. If SXSW wants to be this big and accept everyone who buys a ticket, they need to figure out how to run it better. Maybe, um, use technology to measure and manage capacity? Parking lots are starting to do it surely the brains and community of SXSWi can. Next year, if I go, I think I’ll attend more of the geeky tech sessions and less of the marketing/brand stuff, too full of TWAK (things we already know). After all, what’s special about SXSW is the technology, film, and perhaps what we missed entirely: the music.

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On the one hand, conferences are a chance to glean wisdom from real (or alleged) experts in the field. We don’t, after all, have enough time or money to do formal education and training, so nowadays we create blogs, pass links on Twitter, and post our presentations on Slideshare. We rely on each other to stay current. These acts, however, don’t really solve for depth and context. What’s personally profitable about in-person events is that they can help you get to know the people behind sophisticated thoughts and the frame of reference from which they came. Plus, if you don’t get out much, it’s good face time.

Through a more skeptical lens, however, trade conferences can be bitter and expensive disappointments — perhaps in the lack of wisdom shared, in the presentation skills or preparedness of the panelists, in the shameless self-promotion of a company sponsor, or the cardinal sin of tacky shwag distributed.

To me, the most dismaying is being subjected to what I call TWAK — Things We Already Know. I don’t mean hearing people colorfully package the latest theories with fresh takes or elegant graphics—that’s helpful and can be validating— but when I shlep a few hundred miles or take a day out to hear a guy in a suit say that social media is “really big now” and “has really changed everything” and that it’s a—wait for it— “revolution” I pull out my iPhone and take back my one asset available when trapped in a conference room: my attention. Now the speaker doesn’t know if I’m retweeting their brilliance — or bored out of my mind, checking my Facebook wall. It’s usually the latter.

So with a balanced set of (no) expectations, I registered for several sessions during last week’s Social Media Week 21012. Three years young, Social Media Week is remarkably global and well organized and works hard not to waste your time. You can watch sessions from home on your PC via Livestream, or attend talks for free in more than 20 cities around the world. Several agencies and media companies sponsor ‘hubs’ around different themes like, in New York: art & culture (Hearst), advertising & marketing (JWT), business innovation (Bloomberg), health & wellness (Saatchi & Saatchi) and global society (Big Fuel).

On Monday, I first attended social consulting firm Dachis Group‘s talk at Bloomberg on measuring your brand’s social performance. Jeff Dachis had founded pioneering web dev agency Razorfish, so I was curious to see what his talk would be like. (I also wanted to see Bloomberg Media’s office, which was as slick and modern as I had hoped.) A charismatic and eloquent speaker, Jeff talked about big data and the opportunity for brands to now do ‘performance brand marketing’ — a clunky phrase, but poignant in that the social web offers more than pure performance marketing we’ve been used to in digital marketing and something more useful than pure brand marketing we’ve been seasoned in through traditional channels such as TV and print.

Jeff’s firm has a Social Business Index in which you can plug brands into and see how well they do internally and externally tapping social channels. After Jeff spoke, a related session from Dachis Group started set up in a workshop format, seemingly to help people learn about designing outcomes for social media efforts. Probably a big issue at companies struggling with how social media investments can actually pay off. At our tables of 10, we were handed worksheets to sketch out sample outcomes and then were supposed to, well, I don’t really know — I left. The session had jumped a shark for me or perhaps I just felt trapped in someone’s self-conscious exercise like the trust game or an awkward icebreaker in which you’re asked to share a humiliating moment from your past. So not feeling like I needed a primer on writing objectives — and definitely not wanting to “share” with the room —I unapologetically snuck out at my first chance. A friend who stayed let me know that several others jumped right afterwards as well.

On Tuesday, I visited social media agency Big Fuel on 23rd Street to hear my buddy Joseph Jaffe be interviewed by Jon Bond, the agency’s CEO. Joe, who’s a three-time author of provocative and timely texts, has launched a new innovation agency called Evol8tion. He spoke about how brands too often move from “lilypad to lilypad” of shiny social media objects and gave a good plug for one under-appreciated channel: podcasting. But Joe’s bigger point, and a foundational principle for his new business — was about how brands can and should take much better advantage of technology upstream (note: his URL is even startupsforbrands). Jon and Joe didn’t make us share any personal goals or secrets, just questions if we had any.

Not officially part of Social Media Week’s lineup, but to contrast experiences, I was a judge on Monday night at BrandSlam, a entrepreneurial workshop developed by Alona Elkayam of 321Takeoff. Startups submit to Alona their brand challenge, and she gathers about 30 folks from various fields and agencies to work on creative and marketing ideas to tackle the one she thinks the most people can learn from. Highly productive, and a boon to the lucky business whose brand challenge was workshopped, we all got to see half a dozen innovative ways to tackle the same problem. Perhaps I’m just more attuned to hands-on learning (or maybe simply being in control as a judge), but I left inspired, informed and most of all hungry to do create more ideas myself — which, to me, should be the point of any industry event.

Final note: Next month I’ll be at SXSW in Austin, so expect a full recant of the above or just more detail.

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With so much talk about the impact of small business on the economy, it’s tempting to look at how Main Street businesses — especially storefront retail — market themselves in this environment. How they creatively pull you and your wallet inside the store. Some interesting approaches:

An errand transformed into an experience. Among the 30 nail salons in our Manhattan neighborhood, Dashing Divas has the most tempting promotion posted in their windows. “Girl’s Night Out” offers complimentary Cosmopolitans for you and a friend when you come in for a manicure or pedicure during weeknights. Insightfully, and boosting sales during a normally quiet period, the idea positions getting your nails done as a social activity. Now I haven’t had a proper manicure since my brother’s wedding, but I’m always ready for a Cosmo.

Noisy stunts. Some businesses put their people on the front lines of it, like one I first saw as a Cannes Juror last year. The CEO of PAUSE sound systems in Sweden drew tons of attention by literally swallowing a mini-microphone to become a “Human Jukebox.” A stunt, sure, but a big one that got him publicity he couldn’t afford to buy and customers flocking into his store. The store was deliberate about it as well. First, in an online video the CEO explained what he was going to do and when he was going to do it. Then, inviting press, bloggers and customers to witness it, he swallowed the microphone live. Afterwards, customers could take turns and literally deejay through him. Who wouldn’t go in and see this? Who wouldn’t want a great sound system?

Behind the scenes, big players pushing. A fairly new trend in storefront retail pull is the behind the scenes push from larger partner brands such as credit cards. MasterCard, for example, created a Priceless app that suggested stores in your neighborhood. I downloaded the app and used it only once, probably paying cash at a place I already knew. Not sure whether it was worth all the effort. The biggest hit, however, is the much lauded program from American Express, Small Business Saturday. During the holiday season, American Express heavily promotes the idea of shopping at small businesses for a rebate credit on your monthly statement (and the feel-good pride of having supported your very local economy). Obviously, this is great PR for the AmEx brand, and two years running, it’s been a boon for merchants to whom AmEx drives bodies through glass doors. Some stats and sources claim 100 million customers turned out for it — including President Obama.

Technology levels the playing field. Small businesses used to rely on being found through the Yellow Pages. Now it’s all about review sites like Yelp, targeted advertising such as Facebook classifieds and, of course, organic search. The challenge for all-important search is that many businesses can’t afford to stay on top of or lack the expertise internally. Small businesses are however tapping technology, especially for promotions. FourSquare promotions (i.e., check-in and get a coupon) are fairly easy to set up for a business and redemptions are often easy and cheaper than a complicated mail-in coupon program that one would have done ten years ago. I checked-in it at my local Pinkberry and saw $1 off, although the first cashier wasn’t sure what to do with it and to call over a manager.

Partnering with friends. Creative Kingsley Harris tweeted to me how he admires the joint promotion by West Elm and Etsy’s of a handmade holiday market inside West Elm furniture stores. While West Elm is certainly not a small business, the idea is a modern combination of digital commerce and brick-and-mortar stores collaborating with a shared agenda. Small businesses can easily join forces and do stuff like this.

Differentiation among fierce competition. Like in many cities, New York has an explosion of pharmacies and banks every twenty feet. Having fought the real estate battle, now they have to battle for bodies. Pharmacies like Duane Reade are now selling fresh food and installing ATMs. And full service banks don’t use toasters and free checking anymore to attract customers, but regional banks like TD Bank are using convenience, opening extra early like 7.30am, staying open seven days a weeks, and making a game out of converting loose change into bills

Admiration for sales promotion. In between traditional and digital advertising jobs long ago, I worked at a boutique promotion agency in Manhattan. I had come to help build out the agency’s advertising offering and, for me, it was my chance to be co-creative director of a place (I believe in always taking a job that’s got something good in it for both parties). Our clients were brands such as Nathan’s Famous, Johnnie Walker, Guinness Stout, Maxell, and Newport cigarettes. While digital had taught me the importance of response via clicks, here I learned tons of new things about marketing that they don’t teach you in most traditional agencies: the importance of distribution channels and distributors; how sweepstakes and contests work; and of course, the enormous role of seasonality. Never thought I’d learn so much about Christmas floor displays for liquor (including designing them in summer) or how a contest gets you quality and a sweeps gets you volume. Sure we did campaign ideas, but every project had to tactically pull in customers immediately or they flopped —and flopped fast. Our campaign for sentimental favorite restaurant chain Nathan’s Famous, for example, was called “Stop by a Smile.” We creatively took it to the airwaves and billboards for media, but it was also punctuated by the brand’s best-working promo at the time at the end of the spots and on in-store signage: Two hot dogs for two bucks. Talk about pull with, well, bite

Promotion is certainly changing. What’s notably changed is the vacuum within which sales promotion used to operate. Stores would do whatever they did and only current customers and passer-bys would see it. Word of mouth was manual, brought up at the dinner table or over the white picket fence. Incidentally, this was also true of direct marketing; you would only see what you got in the mail. Now, blogging, especially content-hungry community sites, talk about things they see or hear about. Tom’s Shoes, as everyone knows, donates a pair of shoes for every new pair you buy and new platforms like Groupon and Fab have modernized the experience of coupons. Public relations is now inexorably linked with promotion.

Maybe you’re not clipping the Sunday circulars anymore. Maybe you’re worn out from coupons via email. But if you want to be a modern marketer, my advice is to have a Cosmo, get your nails done and be ready; pulling people into stores isn’t going anywhere but everywhere.

The post Modern Promotion at Retail: Come Inside. Please. appeared first on The Faster Times.

1. Imported From Detroit — One of the year’s first campaigns, with a two-minute version of Eminem in the TV spot debuting during the SuperBowl, is still among the best from the entire year. It dramatically restaged the Chrysler brand, and simply took my breath away. Of course there’s a t-shirt. It’ll be fun to see what Chrysler keeps doing with it, including digitally. I suspect with jobs the biggest cultural and economic issue going on, we’ll also see much more Made in USA types of advertising and content.

2. Sustainability — Green has gone from side street to Main Street in marketing, and will be even more important for brands in 2012. I’ve been working lately with OgilvyEarth, our sustainability practice. When done right, it embodies the company from the inside out. It’s never just marketing a message, but authentic storytelling of company beliefs and behaviors which customers expect — and reward. You can read a ‘Red Paper’ on it called “Mainstream Green” by Freya Williams and Graceann Bennett. Adweek also showcased this Nissan LEAF spot as one of their favorites from 2011.

3. Meet the brand editors — I thought I was so ahead of the times when I started proposing that brands should have Tina Browns serving audiences across channels (digital and otherwise) for brands. Someone highly creative and strategic to propose and develop content, events, videos and conversation across not just Facebook, SlideShare and Linkedin but also CRM channels, advertising and new platforms like Google+. But by the time my piece appeared in Direct Marketing News, agency McCann hired a Chief Brand Editor, Twitter hired its own editor, and I created the role on of our big brands at Ogilvy. There are dozens more out there too, though I suspect some are more sophisticated than others. Expect to see much more of this evolution of content management in 2012, and I hope to scale our model as well. Here’s also a recent posting on Harvard Business Review blog with more of a retail perspective.

4. Google the Marketer — Starbucks didn’t advertise until recently, but it certainly didn’t rush the stage as big as Google has over the last 12 months. Google’s advertising, especially for Chrome and recently for Google+, has been everything from innovative to emotional to even a bit bland. Just like the real brand it has become. It nailed several medals at The One Show Festival and Cannes Lions, and we should all expect to see more creatively in 2012, and maybe some marketing muscle from Facebook too for a big face-off. Dear Sophie for Chrome is one of my sappy favorites.

5. Pay for it — The New York Times paywall was controversial and brilliant. Finding that balance between free content (which never really is) and subscriber is delicate and I was impressed although the signup was clunky and I still don’t know why Lincoln paid for my original basic one. (We gave up our Mini for ZipCar — the only Lincoln I’ve ever been in has been a Town Car to the airport) Next year I think we’ll see much more exploration of pay for service models and while many will hunt around for ways around them, companies have to make money to survive and pay their people, including journalism, services and yes, software like Spotify. I help pay for NPR, I can pay for The Times.

6. Twitter as customer service channel — Maybe Zappos pioneered it, but 2011 was breakout year for brands swarming to use Twitter to solve customer complaints. Hotels. Restaurants. Public sector (NYC311 is amazing and Rachel Sterne is the city’s Chief Digital Officer, bringing more services online) And perhaps most importantly if you’ve ever been trapped on a runway or weather delay, airlines are getting Twitter down to a science with serious resources and response time. My buddy Joseph Jaffe’s book Flip The Funnel (a good read too) also underscores the central role of customer service to marketing a brand the he modern age so expect to see even more ambitious customer support across platforms in 2012. Watch out too for embarrassing tweetstakes. Brands can easily suffer in the manner of Ashton Kutcher. (that rhyme was on purpose).

7. Nebish Netflix — The sub-brand and pricing fiasco was stupid, but it was perversely fun too. Every year, we need a brand to make a gaffe to help remind us how do things right. The goal is not to be the one who does it. The Washington Post recently had a quick slideshow on digital darwinism and survival. Sears, of course, is in there, with the prediction of its disappearance in 2012.

8. Klout — The new social currency for digital influence will either tempt you or drive you mad. Some revile it, many are obsessed by it, many more are ignoring it. But just as there is a badge to your number of Twitter followers, we also have a fetish for new algorithms. This one is your power and personal share of voice. Mine dipped for awhile and then climbed up to 51 as of this writing. One of the best ingredients to a good Klout score, I’ve learned, is not just volume of activity across channels but folks retweeting and re-sharing what you do say. Recognition of good sharing has gone from simply being a compliment to a tangible asset. The end goal? If you’re a gamer, you can simply enjoy the game of it. Another could be monetizing it.

9. The Cloud —Like many, I love Dropbox and now there’s iCloud too, but the biggest marketing of it was in business-to-business by players big and small. It’s a boon not just music and personal storage but for small and medium-sized businesses who can outsource much more of their infrastructure. If last year started to market that it existed, this next year will be about who’s is best and what it does for you.

10. Political Ads — Now that web video is so mainstream, I bet we’ll see tons of political advertising that’s not fit for TV but created to be passed along online. Cain’s unintentionally hilarious smoking ad and Perry’s aggressive anti-Obama leadership ad (which ends like a movie trailer) give a taste of what’s to come.

There will be plenty of other lists (I’m sure with catvertising on many) but this is mine. There’s also plenty of Olympic advertising and changes on Youtube and Search to look forward to. Have a good holiday. Mine is starting early.

—Your humble ad correspondent near (but not too near; the crowds are awful) Madison Avenue

The post Top 10 in 2011 Marketing That We’ll Still Be Talking About In 2012 appeared first on The Faster Times.

It’s not unique to complain about customer service. You probably have at least one or two bad experiences a week like me. They make us skeptical of customer service claims in advertising since it’s usually a throw-a-way line about how much they care about you or how much they loan to small business.

So when I saw the Enterprise Rent a Car spot in which employees proudly said they don’t have to find a manager and can solve issues right then and there, I took notice. What a specific claim that nails a true pain point.

Enterprise is connecting with a nerve in the culture and reflecting it authentically through their culture —something successful brands do. And Enterprise isn’t a premium brand like American Express, Danny Meyer restaurants or Starwood from which you expect and usually get good service. Enterprise is just a regular brand, like Citibank or Starbucks, so hearing that they can solve a problem on the spot stands out and deserves applause. Especially if they mean it.

This wasn’t a one-off either. Recent Enterprise commercials all star employees, with a focus on listening and being customer-focused. Scanning about 50 customer reviews on blogs and sites gives me the impression it’s fairly true.

I plan on trying the Enterprise brand next time I need to rent a car. I even wouldn’t mind a problem to experience its resolution. Hopefully quickly.

The post Customer Service in Advertising: They Picked Me Up appeared first on The Faster Times.