Donna's Promo Talk

Obama Utilizes YouTube for his Weekly Address

CBS's 60 Minutes just featured President-Elect Obama and our future first lady, Michele Obama, in their first interview since winning the election. Watching them speak to Steve Kroft like they were in our living room just left me with a sense of hope and a great excitement to be an American.

Yesterday, President-Elect Obama featured his first weekly address which was released as a web video. It will also continue to air on the radio but will now utilize YouTube as the means to distribute the video and to communicate with the American public by. It will also be available of AOL, Yahoo! and MSN. President-elect Obama plans to publish these weekly updates through the transition process and then continue them from the White House.

The first address from President-elect was short and addresses the concerns of the current economic crisis. Check it out here:

You can also access this video through the website, www.change.gov. Unfortunately comments have been disabled on the YouTube page. I have no idea if this will change in the future, but I would guess that there would be so many comments that it would be impossible to keep up with them.

We have much to do in these trying times but social media is helping us to join together and communicate as one. I wouldn't want to be any place else in time but right here right now.

Social Media Campaign Works to Raise Awareness of Violence Against Women

Today was again my day to guest blog over at Lipsticking.com. I took the opportunity to write a follow-up on the The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and their Say NO To Violence Against Women. I'm a bit disappointed with the initial response that I received to support this cause from both blogs, so I'm trying again.

In my new post on Lipsticking I have included some exclusive videos of Goodwill Ambassador Nicole Kidman speaking about the campaign. We only have a couple of weeks left for them to meet their goal. So, RocketXL, the social media agency working on this campaign, is really pushing to get this message spread through the blogoshphere and via social networks. So please check out this post and add your voice today to this cause. Here's the widget again.

Election Day Gives Us Free Coffee, Donuts, Ice Cream and a New President

It's now just about 24 hours since the media officially announced that Barack Obama will be our next President of the United States. History was made last night and many of us are still walking around in awe today with a happy grin on our face and a very optimistic attitude. It also helped that it was November 5th and was sunny and hit 70 degrees in Western New York as well as a good portion of this country!

So, did you get your free Starbuck's yesterday? I didn't get a chance but my daughter Kelsey said she did. She was disappointed however that they ran out of "I voted" stickers because it was her first time voting. See the Starbuck's ad in my previous post.

Participating Krispy Kreme donut shops also had a free promotional offer and were giving customers a free star-shaped donut with red, white and blue sprinkles to those that showed their "I Voted" sticker (sorry Kelsey no donuts for you). Online they changed their traditional Krispy Kreme "hot light" sign signaling a new batch of donuts in stores "Hot Now" to instead read "Hot Vote Now".

If you didn't get free coffee or a donut, Ben & Jerry's was also "Celebrating Democracy" by offering a free scoop of ice cream between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. at participating scoop shops. Ben & Jerry's website has a link to a Facebook page that includes a special locator function that lists 24 colleges and universities around the country where company reps where scooping free Election Day ice cream in student unions and on campuses. Facebook profile pages have been created for each on-campus event with RSVP capability.

"We want to thank you for voting by giving you a free scoop of ice cream," reads the Ben & Jerry's college site Facebook copy. "If you did not vote, we'll give you a scoop anyway, but no complaining about the results"¦or the size of your scoop."

Besides theses promotions, online sites, especially social media, where all buzzing last night. I was tuned into Twitter's Election Day page that had so many tweets coming through it was hard to keep up with them. It was amazing to read the tweets that announced when a network proclaimed a state's winner. When Obama won Ohio I read about it on Twitter first before ABC news proclaimed it.

CNN.com reported today that they brought in 27 million unique visitors to their site on election day, a record. Comscore says they averaged just 5 million unique daily visitors in September, so this is more than 5x normal traffic. The site also generated an record 276 million page views.

So I don't think anything could top a day that gave us free coffee, red, white and blue sprinkled donuts, Ben & Jerry's ice cream, great warm weather, record-breaking online visitors and the democratic election of America's first black president!! Let's keep the momentum going!

Join The Cause to Help Violence Against Women

Since I launched this blog almost two years ago I've written several posts about Dove's Campaign For Real Beauty in an effort to help spread their positive self-esteem messages. One of the social media marketing firms that has helped Dove get this message out to us bloggers and into the social media word is RocketXL. I was recently honored when they contacted me about a totally new initiative that they're supporting that also involves empowering women.

So I couldn't help but utilize this blog as well as my guest blogging privileges on Lipsticking.com to help spread this message. Please visit my Lipsticking.com post to read about  The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and their Say NO To Violence Against Women which is the new movement that RocketXL is now working with. You can join this movement by just simply adding your signature to the widget found below.

Politics, Sexism and Marketing to Millennial Women

Hey I wanted to let you know that today was my day again to post as a Guest Blogger on Lipsticking.com.

I've written what I think is a pretty engaging post titled: "Politics, Sexism and Marketing to Millennial Women".

This all came together after reading this great article written by Bonnie Fuller that was published online earlier this week on Ad Age. Between the presidential election race and what's happening with our financial industry and overall economy it's not easy to not get involved in a heated discussions. As marketers and particular women marketers, it is great to have forums like blogs to exchange our thoughts. So, please visit lipsticking.com here, read my post and leave a comment.

Thanks. I'll be back here at the end of the week to conclude my posts of the PMA Digital Marketing Summit.

McDonald's Lost Ring is Big Idea at PMA's Digital Marketing Summit

Here's a continuation of my report on PMA's first annual Digital Marketing Summit which was held last week at the Bridgewaters at the South Street Seaport in downtown NYC. After Rob Master, North American Media Director for Unilever, got us started off we then heard from the McDonald's brand/agency team, Kim Lloyd, Sr. Director of McDonald's Global Marketing and Julie Channing, Sr. Account Director with AKQA, with a presentation titled "Going Global with a Big Idea".

The big idea was the Lost Ring which I first wrote about here back in April after I attended PMA's Annual Integrated Marketing Conference where I got to hear Neil Golden, CMO of McDonald’s USA, give us a first look at this innovative program. The ultimate goal of this marketing campaign was to celebrate the spirit of the Olympic Games. McDonald's gave their agency, AKQA, a very brief, brief which stated this goal as well as it should also tie-in with Beijing as well as build the McDonald's brand on a global level.

Looking Forward to PMA's Digital Marketing Summit

Next week I'll be heading down to New York City to attend PMA's first annual Digital Marketing Summit. I'm looking forward to it since I haven't been to any type of conference or workshop since last April when I attended PMA's Annual Integrated Marketing Conference in Chicago which I thought was great.

This conference titled, Digital Marketing Fully Integrated, brings together the country's leading digital marketers including Advertising Age's top 3 “Digital Marketers of the Year” that include Unilever, AKQA and Google, plus Promo's 2008 Agency of the Year, Digitas, which I wrote about here. It's being held at Bridgewaters at the South Street Seaport on Monday, September 8th.

Social Media &Traditional Media Mark This Labor Day

Labor Day weekend is coming to a close and it was such a beautiful one here that it's hard to relate to the storm, Hurricane Gustav, that has hit Southern Louisiana today. My husband, Kevin, and I had a chance to get out and play golf this morning and when we returned home we were eager to find out the latest on the storm since it was expected to hit land at midday.

Kevin checked online through Yahoo right away and we were relived to hear that it had not hit New Orleans directly as Katrina had. I then also got online and checked some of my social networks and blogs and saw that there was an amazing amount of chatter regarding the storm. Through Twitter I found a great deal of tweets on the subject. The social media site Mahalo has created a Hurricane Gustav Page. Here I got to see some YouTube videos of those recording from New Orleans as the storm was coming into the city. Every Dot Connects, an social media blog that I subscribe to had this post today with links to many Web 2.0 activity on the storm.

I felt it very ironic that mother nature decided to make a statement in New Orleans today... the same day that the Republican Convention was to get under way. It was the day that President Bush was to speak, which he smartly changed his plans and canceled his appearance. Not a good way to start a convention.

On top of that the media was interrupting coverage on the storm with the news that the just recently announced US Republican vice-presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin's 17 year old daughter is pregnant. The question they're discussing is should the media make this news or leave it to the family?

One newscaster I saw on CNN, who I can't remember her name, said this is almost like a comedy. First off Sarah Palin looks quite a bit like Tina Fey, was a runner up for Miss America, works out of a building in a small town in Alaska that is no bigger than a corner store and now her teenage daughter is pregnant. This is gonna get interesting.

Since it was such a beautiful weekend here in Upstate New York (plus the end of the official summer season) besides grabbing updates on Gustav I did try and stay away from the computer. However, I did get a glimpse of a new announcement that came from Google today. They launched a new browser, called Chrome, which is really a pretty big thing. Why launch it on Labor Day? I don't know other than it's the first of the month. Mahalo also has a Google Chrome page on this that you can get some info on as well as the Google blog. I have to learn more about this soon.

On top of all this we survived our first full week without our daughter Kelsey at home and she survived her first full week at NYU learning how to get around Manhattan. Classes start tomorrow for her. My other daughter, Alex, will start her senior year of high school the day after, Wednesday, when the rest of the kids here all go back. Alex went to a Gossip Girl premiere party tonight at one of her girlfriend's. Now that's one of most important events of the day to them.

Whew, it has been quite a day! September has entered like a lion. Bye-bye summer!

The Olympic Games Have Begun - Are you Watching?

The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games got off to a spectacular start.  I stayed up till midnight on Friday night to see the end of the recorded version of the opening ceremonies that NBC broadcast. It was really cool the way they lifted Li Ning, former Olympic gymnast for China, to the top of the Beijing National Stadium ("The Birds Nest") and had him appear to be running on air with the Olympic torch to light the cauldron. 

It appears that the opening ceremonies that the Chinese hosted for the world were the most spectacular to date and included an amazing blend of human talent combined with technology. I found it really hard to pull away from watching the event on TV...even the commercials. While the Olympic Opening Ceremony normally doesn't receive the same hype for TV ads as the Super Bowl does, there were some really great ads that ran during the broadcast.

One of my favorite ads was from McDonald's featuring children's soccer. It didn't have any words, just a musical score with very strong expressions coming from the "losing team" and well as the "winning team".  It showed how the kids' expressions changed dramatically once the food showed up... for the losing team of course. It reminded me of when my daughters were young and going to McDonald's was such a treat. In fact one of my daughter's first words were "french fries" (which actually sounded like "fra-fras") and she would yell that out whenever we passed the Golden Arches.

I'm looking forward to watching some of the events tonight. I read that the U.S. already got it's first Gold Medal - in Fencing. The time difference is a little confusing. We'll get to watch some live meets tonight, Saturday evening, which are actually taking place Sunday morning in Beijing. That's why it's so important to be able to watch what you want, when you want. NBC is scheduled to have over 2.200 hours of event coverage online this year. That's pretty cool, even though there has been some criticism for not giving viewers more choice. Check out this article from Silicon Alley Insider that lists some of the ways NBC could have really utilized Web 2.0 in their strategy.

Another interesting bit of research that I read in this Adotas article is that teens are not that into the Games. I have two teenager daughters who are so busy with what's going in their own lives that they really don't appear interested at all in the Olympics. They may have been more I think if Abby Wambach was there playing with the U.S. Soccer Team. Abby is a graduate of Our Lady of Mercy High School here in Rochester, where both my girls are from. The team did pretty well without Abby today. The study on teens was done by Harris Interactive which states that less than half, 43%, expressed any interest in the Olympics.

I've also been trying to keep up with Jenny and Tom who are blogging on Kodak's blog, A Thousand Words, from Beijing. I've also been able to follow Jenny on Twitter. It appears to be an experience of a lifetime for her so far. She writes in her first post from Beijing about how "tall" she thought all the Chinese women were until she noticed the platform shoes they wear. Jenny took this photo of the shoes along with some other great photos of the Opening Ceremonies you just have to check out.

Well I just have to admit that these Olympic Games have brought back for me at least a sense of patriotism and if anything helps make the world seem like a smaller place. I've learned so much already about China and its people. It's hard to comprehend how big of a country it is ....over 1.3 billion people living in a country on the other side of the world from us Americans. Hopefully we'll get to know them and they'll get to know us a little better. Now wouldn't that be be a great result of these games?

Web 2.0 and the Beijing Olympic Games

Today's Wednesday and that means I'm again a guest blogger over at Lipsticking.com.  So, please follow this link and read my latest post that talks about how some Web 2.0 strategies are being integrated with a couple of Olympic marketing efforts.

With only ten days left till the Opening Ceremonies, the excitement is really starting to build. But could NBC be doing more to attract an online audience and will you will following the games online or on TV?

I'm hoping to get some discussion going on over at Lipsticking. So I invite you follow me and discussion over there.