Tired of carrying around those cumbersome, wallet-busting gift cards? Target wants to ease your burden by allowing you to keep their gift card right in your smartphone. The big box retailer just announced that customers can now access their gift cards right from their smartphones by presenting the digital bar code to the cashier at time of checkout.
Clearly this is a big step forward in m-commerce (as in mobile commerce) and a likely look at the shape of things to come. “There’s been such rapid growth in m-commerce in the last two years,” Ben Rushlo, senior manager of Internet technologies at Keynote, based in San Mateo, Calif., told Marketing Daily.
If you live in California, this will come as no surprise; there is an overpopulation of Chihuahuas here.
Concerned that our sunny streets will soon be overrun with unruly gangs of these little critters, Virgin America has partnered with the San Francisco Animal Care and Control to transport the homeless dogs to New York where the demand for the dogs is high. Once in New York, the Chihuahuas will be under the care of American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals employees, who will work to find adoptive homes for the micro-mutts.
Facebook recently announced its newprivacy enhancementsthat may just make our information less private. Although there are new controls that allow you to limit who sees your personal information, posts, photos, etc., the change that’s causing blow back is due to a new category, called “publicly available information,” that is beyond users’ control. This new category includes a person’s name, picture and city, the list of their Facebook friends and the Facebook pages they have endorsed. As a recent LA Times editorial observed, “The friends list is particularly sensitive, privacy advocates note, because of the amount of personal information that can be gleaned from knowing a person’s associates.”
Why did Facebook do this? According to the LA Times, it’s simply good business. For them, not necessarily for you. Read the Op-ed piecehere.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch intends to block Google’s search spiders from indexing his News Corporation’s sites. As has been widely reported, Murdoch believes the time is right for people to begin paying for online content. He also feels that content aggregators have been getting a free ride by “stealing” content and it’s time for this practice to stop.
In this interview with Sky News’ David Spears, Murdoch explains the thinking behind his position.
Several months ago we posted about a new Pizza Hut iPhone app that let people order their pizza and play a pizza delivery inspired game right on their phone. According to a recent article in Mashable, the pizza maker has generated incremental sales of more than $1 million dollars since the app’s introduction. The app’s success has surprised many, including Pizza Hut’s own senior director of digital marketing, Bernard Acoca.
“We always saw a steady level of growth with our mobile business via our WAP site, but to be candid it wasn’t the explosive level of growth we’ve seen with the iPhone app. iPhone applications capture consumers’ imagination in a way that WAP sites simply can’t do, so the decision to expand to the iPhone was as good one for us.”
In addition to bringing in added revenue, the app has also earned one of the highest distinctions available; it’s been featured in an iPhone TV ad. Click here for the full story.
You’re not really going to use that old vacation photo for your Facebook profile, are you? Estee Lauder has a better proposition. Beginning October 16, the cosmetics company will offer free makeovers and photo shoots at select department store cosmetics counters to produce head shots women can use for their online profiles. The promotion will also include a giveaway of a 10-day supply of foundation.
This event runs counter to the cosmetic industry’s “gift with purchase” promotions, but the executives at Estee Lauder are viewing this as a way to bring a more contemporary image to the brand and perhaps attract a younger buyer as well. And, since the photos will have an Estee Lauder logo in the background, the company can likely expect to increase its brand presence on Facebook and other social sites.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recently announced two new requirments that will impact both advertisers and bloggers.
Testimonials
According to Mary Engle, associate director of ad practices at the commission, the FTC is changing its guidelines on endorsement so that advertisers will no longer be able to use statements like “Results may vary” as a way to justify claims that are counter to the norm of a product or services’ expected performance.
David Vladeck, head of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said, “Disclaimers of guidelines are not working. Misuse has been especially prevalent in weight-loss products.
“In the FTC’s review of 300 ads, two-thirds used consumer testimonials. Few showed realistic claims, and disclosures of atypical results were flashed too quickly to read. ‘Results may vary’ does not adequately inform consumers that claims are outliers or extreme cases. They do not disclose results consumers should realistically expect. That is the main problem.”
The changes to the guidelines will take affect this year.
Bloggers
The Associate Press reports that under new guidelines approved the by the FTC, bloggers will now be required to disclose any gifts or payments they receive for reviewing a company’s product. The penaly for noncompliance is a fine of up to $11,000 per violation.
Common sense, right? If one of your email subscribers requests to be removed from your list, and even mentions that they never signed up in the first place, you remove them promptly with no questions asked. Perhaps you even add an apology for any misunderstanding.
You and I know this, but apparently, not all companies do. Read on.
Most likely, the answer is no. The home building industry has been one of the slowest to adopt using this now emerged media. But when 84 percent of homebuyers begin their property search online, builders need to be online as well. They can’t afford not to, it’s where their audience is now.
The home building industry is starting to catch on to Social Media but many do not know where to start. Carol Ruiz, principal, public relations for red rocket LA, participated in a Webinar put on by Big Builder magazine on how to best use Social Media in the home building space. Carol Flammer of mRelevance in Atlanta also participated, while Sarah Yaussi, editor of Big Builder Magazine, hosted.
Even if you aren’t in the home building industry, this Webinar is chock full of valuable advice for anyone to apply.
It’s perhaps the last frontier on the email front; messages with streaming video directly embedded. And with developers already testing systems, it isn’t far off. Below are excerpts from recent MediaPost article by Elie Ashery highlighting the advances of two developers:
Gmail recently announced a new “Labs” feature allowing users to preview YouTube videos in emails. This technology is currently only for Gmail users, and is limited to YouTube videos, but it stands as significant progress in the move towards true video embedding. Many marketers are experimenting with Gmail-only campaigns, segmenting their lists for gmail.com subscribers and embedding short video clips as part of the campaign.
GoodMail Systems has also found a way to insert and play videos from email messages. The CertifiedVideo platform enables qualified senders to incorporate rich video and audio content directly in email messaging, without additional mouse clicks and pop-ups. CertifiedVideo is based on GoodMail’s core CertifiedEmail technology with the addition of a new CertifiedVideo tokenclass. Senders’ messages are delivered directly to the inbox and ISP restrictions are lifted, enabling video to be instantly viewed by recipients. CertifiedVideo supports streaming and progressive download of .SWF and .FLV files, playable in Adobe Flash Player. If you qualify for GoodMail services, you should definitely take a look at CertifiedVideo.
Several months ago we 
You’re not really going to use that old vacation photo for your Facebook profile, are you? Estee Lauder has a better proposition. Beginning October 16, the cosmetics company will offer free makeovers and photo shoots at select department store cosmetics counters to produce head shots women can use for their online profiles. The promotion will also include a giveaway of a 10-day supply of foundation.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recently announced two new requirments that will impact both advertisers and bloggers.