• Volkswagen Tabs Edelman For Social Media
    Volkswagen said it has named Edelman as its social media agency of record following review involving multiple digital agencies.
  • As Marketers Reach Out To Moms, Women Feel Dissed On Their Day
    With Mother's Day a few weeks off, marketers are doing their best to offer novel ways to remember her. Lowe's, for instance, is targeting outdoor DIY projects as the ideal way to please her, offering plenty of mom-friendly ambience (solar powered post caps for railings and birdbaths, for instance) and lots of bright flowers. The retailer is even connecting it to a mom-friendly cause, selling Susan G. Komen Plant for the Cure Gerbera Daisy, Dahlia or Geranium plants. And Hallmark is getting some buzz for an extensive line of postage-paid greeting cards, so slacker offspring don't even have to make …
  • Crisp Media Gets $6 Million
    Mobile rich media ad provider Crisp Media has secured $6 million in financing from Singapore-based investment firm EDBI and existing backers Meritage Funds and Intel Capital. That brings its total raised to about $11 million. The company said it would use the new capital to support the international expansion of Crisp Engage, its self-service rich media ad management platform. It will also establish a presence in Singapore to be co-located with the Asian headquarters of global ad agencies. “Brands everywhere want to engaged with mobile consumers,” said Crisp CEO Boris Fridman, in a statement. “This funding allows us to …
  • Visa Takes Stake In Square
    In its latest foray into the mobile payments space, Visa has made an undisclosed investment in startup Square, which makes a small device that attaches to an iPhone, Pad and Android phones that can be used to accept credit card payments. A Visa executive will join Square's board as part of the deal. The payment giant in February acquired PlaySpan to enter the virtual goods monetization space, and more recently has launched an iPhone app for finding local deals and announced it will allow person-to-person payments like PayPal. In Square, Visa has placed another bet on new way to …
  • Report: Why 77 Million "Healthy Actives" Can't See Your Ads
    With all the attention that gets lavished on America's obesity epidemic, it's easy to forget the 77 million consumers who are currently maxing their workouts—a group that tends to be older, affluent, and decidedly anti-advertising. In a new report called "Understanding the Active Healthy Lifestyle," Williams-Helde Marketing Communications says the thread that runs through this large group—whether they are 18 or 80, is a keen sense of personal responsibility. "These individuals are willing to take full responsibility for their decisions, their health, their actions and the outcomes of their experiences," the Seattle-based agency writes in its analysis. "Their belief …
  • Troy Kelley Leaves Arnold For R/GA; To Lead Walmart Account
    Arnold Worldwide’s top digital exec Troy Kelley has joined digital agency R/GA in the new position of vice president, managing director, client services. He will lead the Interpublic shop’s Walmart business. At Arnold, a Havas agency, Kelley was executive vice president and chief digital officer.
  • YouTube Founders Acquire Delicious From Yahoo
    YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen today announced acquiring the Delicious social-bookmarking technology from Yahoo, promising "to continue the service that users have come to know and love and make the site even easier and more fun to save, share and discover the Web's 'tastiest' content." During a transition period, users' public and private bookmarks will be maintained and then transferred when Delicious is relaunched. Hurley and Chen said they've relocated Delicious to San Mateo, Calif, near where YouTube was launched, and are hiring aggressively to build it into the premiere content discovery tool on the Web. Yahoo …
  • Timberland Asks Facebookers: Where Is The Tree Love?
    Earth Day may be oh-so-last week, but Timberland isn't giving up on its tree-planting ambitions: The shoe marketer says it is launching a Facebook campaign to encourage people to celebrate Arbor Day this Friday. To honor the oft-overlooked holiday, the campaign asks users to take a quiz and discover their Inner Tree personality (and no, "Katharine Hepburn" isn't an option.) Users can then plant trees using its recently-relaunched Virtual Forest application, and for every virtual tree, Timberland will plant a real one in Haiti (up to one million trees). Most of the men surveyed turned out to be redwoods …
  • Dentsu, Twist, Nylon Unite For Local Fund-Raiser
    From the pro bono department: Matthew Bottkol, associate creative directive at Dentsu NY, was at his local Brooklyn bar, B61, when he learned of bartender Jamie Mandel’s plans to play ping-pong for 15 straight hours this Saturday. The cause? Raising $35,000 to replace nine teeth Mandel lost in a car accident 16 years ago. Thus was born "Pong 4 Teeth." Bottkol and fellow Dentsu associate creative director Todd Eisner enlisted Chris Stocksmith of commercial production company Twist to shoot and edit two YouTube videos they hope will go viral: a teaser ( http://youtu.be/pns9LYyIjGU) promoting the ping-pong marathon and a …
  • VivaKi Creates Chief Social Media Officer Position. With Michael Wiley Joining From Edelman
    Publicis Groupe's VivaKi -- whose agencies include Zenith Optimedia, Starcom MediaVest, Digitas and Razorfish -- has created a new position of chief social media officer and filled it with Michael Wiley, formerly with PR firm Edelman. VivaKi said Wiley's key responsibilities will include standardization of product offerings and product development, M&A activities and education and training.
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