It’s Friday and everybody is grumbling about work–how much of it they have to do, how much they hate doing it, or how much they really need some so they can pay the bills. Even if you love the gig you’ve got now, chances are you’ve had one (or five) that have sucked. Hard.

Naturally, if you’ve had a job like that, you have also fantasized about quitting that job in some kind of fantastic way. No wonder the story about Steven Slater, the put-upon JetBlue employee who quit by calling a passenger a naughty name, grabbing a beer, and escaping down the emergency slide, became such a working-class hero tale. And of course, when one meme goes viral, dozens of copycats are bound to follow, which led to this heartwarming story: a pretty young girl, after being harassed by her evil boss, quits by writing snarky comments on a dry erase board, photographing them, and emailing them to the entire company.

The interwebs FLOCKED to this unknown Jenny’s banner. She was a hero. Until we realized that the story was FAKE. A hoax, put together by the same comedy website that did that story about Donald Trump and the $10,000 tip. Her name isn’t even Jenny! It’s Elyse!

Rats. No cute girls quitting spectacularly. No stickin’ it to The Man. Just a meme. Disappointing, but no big deal, right? Right.

Unless you’re in social media marketing. In which case, you are now going to have to try to convince the suits above you that there is no formula for a viral video. At least with the Old Spice commercials, they probably noticed that the people responsible put a LOT of work into it. But with “Jenny,” all they had was a whiteboard and a pretty girl! That’s gotta be cheap and easy, right? So go make us a viral video! Community manager Evan Hamilton explains why this is going to be a major pain in the ass for social media workers everywhere: it’s going to re-convince executives that there is a viral “button.”

Good luck proving to your clients and executives that the only way to get real buzz about your brand is to put in the real effort.

Everybody knows this job market is one of the worst since the Great Depression. I’m not going to harp on about that…it’s freaking depressing. Everybody knows that the current generation of 20-somethings is full of existential angst, has a short attention span, and has no idea where it’s going. All the pundits are saying, “Kids today, blah blah blah, get off my lawn.” The kids themselves are freaking out over the fact that they’re having to live in their parents’ basements while they hunt for a job—any job—and try to pay off some of their student loans. Parents freak out over having to support their kids when they themselves are already stretching every dollar.

I know. I’m one of those kids. Moved home. Having to defer my student loans. Repeatedly. Biting my nails and arguing with my folks about money, jobs, and who does the dishes. And it sucks. It really sucks, not knowing what’s coming next. I’ve always hated uncertainty of any kind and it’s worse this time, because there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. No more “when I go back to school in the fall” or “when I graduate,” because I’m done with school. No more “when I save up some money” because that’s probably not going to happen. For a long time.

It’s really easy to get depressed about…well…everything. But I came across this article on an education blog the other day with a really thought-provoking title: “Dancing Towards Uncertainty.” The author, Josh Barkey, a teacher, describes a confused student:

“I think Brandon is confused because he is living in a confused world. Like most young people, Brandon is searching for a passion equal to the raging tornado of yearnings that perpetually spins inside him. Yet he knows that as a privileged member of a privileged class he is gifted with a lot of potential and wants some meaningful way to live it out, but what he sees with his razor-sharp mind is a collapsing house of cards…Brandon is left wondering why he has bothered to conquer the academic mountain in the first place. He wants his life to matter, and is told that the way to do that is only to keep on climbing.”

Barkey goes on to theorize that perhaps our current obsession with security, with success, with finding that perfect, meaningful, lucrative path as quickly as possible, is what is keeping us in the dark. Perhaps we are too focused on looking for one CERTAIN thing, and as a result, we are missing out on countless wonderful opportunities.

“I…am tired of the coldly constructed educational approach that demands a clear answer to every question. I believe that before growth can happen there has to be a period of doubt and uncertainty. Certainty kills innovation, and while I need a degree of certainty in the surgeon poking around in my brain or the pilot flying my airplane, I also hope that somewhere along the line they have learned how to be creative. When problems develop for which they have been provided no textbook answer, I need them to be able to step back, take a breath, and lose themselves in the dance of the moment.”

By insisting on certainty, we are killing innovation. If we could bring ourselves to calm down and explore the uncertainty for a while, perhaps we can discover something new. Penicillin was the result of moldy bread, and microwave ovens were the result of melted chocolate in a researcher’s pocket. After all, research has shown that the main distinguishing characteristic between lucky people and their less fortunate counterparts is being observant. Yep, just being able to spot an opportunity.

So maybe we should all just relax and enjoy the dance.

I was going to write a snarky post about this Onion article and how I’m totally sick of the tired old copy about how “it’s a new way to connect in meaningful ways! Content! Connect! Blah blah blah!” and how I would like one of these new social network upstarts that claim to be revolutionary and provide real-world results to do something that actually translates to the real world…

But then I saw this HILARIOUS book trailer for Meg Cabot’s new novel, Insatiable, and my snarky mood vanished! The trailer manages to describe the plot of the novel while making fun of itself and the genre of teen-hormone-fueled vampire fiction spawned by Stephenie Meyer and her (bloodcurdlingly awful) Twilight Saga. This trailer does two HUGELY AWESOME things for me:

1. It makes me want to read the book. And I haven’t read a Meg Cabot book in 10 years (sorry Meg, I burned out on Princess Diaries).

2. It makes me believe that publishing is not dead. People will want to read this book. They will buy it. Hardcover, paperback, Kindle, iPhone, iPad, Nook, and every other format you can think of. They will buy it. They will read it. And they will want sequels.

So what’s the problem? Why are you worried?

Because so few people are seeing them and even fewer books are using them. If publishers spent more time and energy creating deliciously exciting, funny, enticing things like this, and empowering their authors to do projects like Cabot’s crowd-sourced zombie-couture Fashionably Undead audiobook (co-written by the author and 50 of her Twitter followers, for BBC Audio), instead of having conference after conference bewailing the end of the industry as we know it, they’d be doing just fine. Readers would be excited and engaged, and above all, they’d KNOW about the fabulous books being written ALL THE TIME instead of drooling endlessly over Robert Pattinson fansites.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, some FANTASTIC transmedia projects, book trailers, and crowd-sourced book clubs:

It’s a Book! Trailer, explaining the difference between books in dead-tree vs. ebook form.

Neil Gaiman’s Instructions trailer, narrated by the author.

Meg Cabot’s magnificently insightful blog entry about her Insatiable trailer.

Meg Cabot’s celebratory online Dracula reading group, working up excitement for the new book, complete with prizes!

My personal favorite, the #1b1t discussion group, the first Twitter-wide book club, currently reading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, started by Jeff Howe, the inventer of the term “crowdsourcing.”

Hear that, publishers? Quit sending your people to nonsense conferences and quit writing articles about how the industry is dying and DO SOMETHING TO SAVE IT.

Or get Zach Galifinakis to be in your book trailer.

Following up on Mike’s previous post about Google Buzz, I totally get the furor about it. The service definitely needs work, and Google has definitely made a whole lot of big mistakes.

But hey, it’s new. That’s the downside of a service being released by such a huge, publicly visible company. Twitter and Facebook were NOT famous when they were released. They weren’t globally famous for years after they were founded. They had plenty of time to make changes, fixes, and tweaks based on quiet user feedback. Google Buzz had the disadvantage of going very public, very quickly. It wasn’t finished. And it got slammed. Now I wonder whether Google will have enough time to fix it and realize its potential before it gets laughed out of existence.

I think it would be nice if Buzz went back to beta. Google definitely needs more time to tweak it, and they need a setting to get real constructive criticism instead of media snarking. I still think the service has a lot of potential. I like Pete Cashmore’s take on it. If you insist on using an analogy to define Buzz, try this one. Think of Facebook as the local bar, where you go to hang out with your friends, play some games, and just shoot the breeze. Think of Twitter as the village square where you get all the news and have public conversations. It’s a public forum. Then you have Buzz, which SHOULD eventually become a place to focus detailed conversations on IDEAS. Not news, not people, not “what are you doing” or those awesome photos you took on your trip to Cabo this spring, man. It’s a platform to talk about content and have major brainstorming sessions about concepts and projects.

If Facebook is the local bar and Twitter is the town square, Google Buzz (I hope) will be the local college campus.

I’ve said before that I like Google Wave as a productivity tool–an easy way to keep work projects neat, tidy, and collaborative at the office. I don’t find much utility for connecting with friends about random things. It’s a business thing, and I like it that way. I think Buzz will end up being sort of similar in market, although I hope more concept-oriented and less business-y.

If it lasts that long.

To be completely honest, this should probably be Part 1.5. This isn’t actually a blog (it’s a shopping site, I think) and I don’t actually know what they’re saying because it’s all in Dutch. I don’t speak Dutch. However, I think the animation on this site is absolutely gorgeous. Click on the site and just wait and watch. The animation will start in a second. Really fantastic, I promise. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

http://producten.hema.nl/

Oh my God, did you click? Did you watch? It’s amazing, RIGHT? I have no idea exactly what the little pop-up at the end is advertising, but I just LOVE this concept. It’s like an online Rube Goldberg project. It’s fun, engaging, and visually beautiful. It doesn’t hurt that it shows off the technical expertise of the site builders, as well as the fun aesthetic of the people who own it. I think business would be a LOT more fun if everybody incorporated this kind of sense of humor and attention to detail.

On an only-vaguely-related note, anybody who speaks Dutch want to tell me what the site is ABOUT?

In case you missed it the Grammys were on CBS last night. I say in case because not many people missed them, the ratings were up 33%… I was part of that 33%.

My wife and I weren’t going to watch the Grammys, neither of us ever have. In general we are not huge fans of award shows and our dial rarely ever goes below Channel 4.  However last night something happened. As we were on twitter and Facebook we took notice of all the post’s talking about how crazy this Gaga person looked. Other posts were highlighting how amazing the Black Eyed Peas did, and still others that poked fun at every opportunity.  It was at that moment we realized we had a choice watch the Grammys or find ourselves irrelevant.

Last night CBS added eyes via Social media are you?

***DISCLAIMER: Let me just say, before I get into the actual post, that I love Sherlock Holmes. And mysteries requiring deductive reasoning. And witty banter. And steampunk. But most of all, I LUURRRVE Robert Downey Jr. So beware of fangirlishness popping up in this post.***

We at Nostrum have been fiddling around with augmented reality stuff for a while now, and as part of that, I’ve been researching film promotions. Now, as I warned above, I was already excited for Guy Ritchie’s upcoming reboot of Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, and the delightfully lugubrious Mark Strong. So when Robert (Nostrum’s Robert, not Iron Man Robert) asked me to check out a promotional game for the film, I was happy to oblige and immediately hopped over to 221b.sh. I landed on a nicely designed page depicting a nice darkly luminous Dickensian-looking London…and a ridiculously long load time. The long load time, combined with the huge “Facebook Connect” button, led me to believe that the game was going to be some lame Facebook game where you get two choices: 1. run away or 2. “fight.” And by fight, they mean hit a button and get a message that says “you just fought and won 20 gold coins!”

I was therefore quite pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be a real, participatory game. It’s kind of like the scavenger hunt games that were set up leading up to The Dark Knight, and apparently, for Iron Man 2 (why didn’t I hear about that one??), except the evidence is all in one place. You get assigned a case by Scotland Yard and then put together the evidence to solve it. And here’s the kicker–you need two people to play (ideally). One plays as Holmes and the other plays as Watson, and they each get different evidence and have to consult in order to solve the mystery. Of course, you can play both ends yourself if you’re like me and don’t feel like waiting for somebody else to figure it out. It has all the usual stuff, like automatic status updates and so forth to spread the word, but it’s not a Facebook game.

The mechanics of the game itself are well-done, except that they load too slowly. You watch a video from Scotland Yard or a victim setting up the mystery, and then you read police reports, newspaper clippings, mysterious letters, and so forth, to piece together what’s going on. Then you do some more creative things like chasing down burglars, breaking into buildings, exploring hideouts, and interrogating witnesses. It incorporates strategy games, timed games, hidden object games, and logic games all in one, which is what makes it more fun (and way more participatory) than your average Facebook game. Plus it hints at the premise underlying the plot of the film without giving anything away or relying on teasers like Sherlock Holmes wallpaper or AIM icons (which nobody cares about). In short, it’s fun, it’s intriguing, and it’s well-done.

And it’s ongoing until the film comes out on Christmas Day. There’s a new chapter every Monday. Ok, Holmes, now go find your Watson and get sleuthing.

Alright, I think I managed to avoid too much fangirl blather. What do you say?

The next film in the Twilight series came out at midnight. And it’s already grossing off the charts.
The thing that eludes me is that there’s been little to no branding for the film (that I’ve seen) and it’s still the most popular thing EVARRRRR (according to my 16-year-old sister). At this point I can only chalk it up to the unholy power of teenage girls. Someone please enlighten me.

All I know is that I will be avoiding the movie theater like The Plague, and hiding under my bed, with a stake in one hand and a big plate of garlic bread in the other.

This is just a short post to say:

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!! You can now report spammers on Twitter with just a click–in the actions tab on any profile you can report the profile as spam! YAAAAAY!!

The details are available on the official Twitter blog. On the one hand, ABOUT FREAKING TIME! On the other hand,

YAAAAAAAAAAY!!

Now Graham Spam Spam Spam Chapman can finally have his breakfast without spam.

This Mashable compilation of hilarious Twitter spoofs brought me back all the way to my very first blog post with Nostrum, way back in March.

The Jon Stewart one is still my favorite…and I still like Twitter.

Nostrum has been using Radian6 for awhile now and honestly we rave about it all the time.  The real time analytics and the granular nature of tracking in the social space is spectacular for our client base and second to none.

We were extremely proud and excited to see last month how R6 integrated seamlessly with Twitter and MTV to showcase the VMA’s online attributes.  If this doesn’t show the masses (hint hint CMO’s looking for ROI) at the value in data, we have no idea what will.

Kudos R6 and continued success. Shout out to Chaffic and Tina: Two great R6 employees and wonderful people….thanks for all the help thus far….

Hello Kitty and I have been friends since I was in the 1^st grade.  I met her on a pencil set that was gifted to me and since that moment, we became best of friends.

Whatever she had, it always matched, was insanely cute and I coveted it all.  If the pencil was pink, so was the sharpener, the case and the eraser.  Same logo and color palette throughout and thoughtfully packaged.  Hello Kitty taught me about Branding.

Then she introduced me to her friends, Little Twin Stars, Tuxedo Sam, and My Melody.  Hello Kitty taught me about Product Extension.

When I needed appliances and interior decor, she had her with her own toaster, TV, bedding and more.  Hello Kitty taught me about Brand Extension.

When I went through a “Goth” phase, she started to don more black.  Consequently, she got a slew of new friends and a lot more popular.  Hello Kitty taught me about Brand Revolution.

You would think that Hello Kitty and I would drift apart over the years, but we didn’t.  Maybe because we were born the same year we seemed to grow up together. When I got my first Nirve beach cruiser, so did she.  When I started wearing MAC makeup, so did she.  When I entered into my career and needed a Mimobot USB flash drive, so did she.  Hello Kitty taught me about Brand Partnership and Brand Evolution.

HK is one wise little kitty.

If you’re a skeptical business owner or a corporate executive just interested in social media, this clip is a must see. And after viewing this clip, you still think social media is nothing more than a bunch of ramblings by high school and college kids, you better start looking for a new job relatively soon.

As I have said (and countless other people), there is a fundamental change occurring in the way business will be done in the next few years. Social Technologies are drastically altering the business landscapes and how brands communicate in them. And if companies, brands and people don’t get on board they’re lively hood may be irrelevant come 2015.

Now I’m not saying that this is the end all be all and brands should drop everything they are doing and dive in head first. These social channels are another tool to add to the marcom arsenal. By understanding and integrating social tools into your current marketing mix, brands can begin to open new and untapped customer segments that they probably never dreamed they could have reach 2 years ago.

Let us help us help you understand and strategize your business options: nostruminc.com

Thanks Socialnomics for making these insights available and we here at nostrum will continue to help educate the masses as well!

It’s no secret that sex sells just ask Ad Age. I’m not naïve enough to refute that—it’s just the way of the world. But fast food chains are taking it WAY too far, and in the process, they’re alienating half the fast-food-buying, money-spending population.

We’re all used to seeing steamy Calvin Klein ads on LA billboards and Paris Metro stops, and sexy liquor ads in glossy magazines. But when brands start using sex to sell SANDWICHES, you know things are starting to skew in a weird direction. I enjoy a nice, juicy burger as much as the next girl, but I never got aroused by one. Not to burst your bubbles, guys, but girls don’t get spontaneously turned on eating a hamburger or a “seven-incher” sandwich (paging Dr. Freud) any more than we have pillow fights in our undies or go from “cat-fights” to make out sessions (or ride roller coasters in lacy lingerie, much to the dismay of UK theme park-goers).

Unfortunately, Burger King and Carls Jr. disagree.

Now this is getting out of hand. When a toaster asks a Quizno’s “sandwich artist” to “put it in me” completely without irony you know the audience’s IQ has deteriorated to an embarrassingly low point. This kind of campaign might work on the “South Park” watching, Juggz-subscribing, Axe-wearing crowd, but it doesn’t work on anybody else.

And a word to the wise, guys—buying any of those products, including the “seven-incher” sandwich, will NOT make girls spontaneously swoon and start licking barbecue sauce off your fingers. So, as Ken Wheaton of Ad Age pointed out, “A sandwich is just a sandwich, so quit trying so hard to make it a penis.”

Seth Godin’s recent blog post, in which he defends Chris Anderson’s ideas from his book Free: The Future of a Radical Price (it can be yours, but not for free - try $26) against Malcolm Gladwell’s less-than-agreeable review, is just plain nonsense. The core of the debate is the future of content. Will people stop paying for all information because they can get it for free? Godin (whose blog I normally love) and Anderson seem to think so, while Gladwell disagrees, and so do I. If YouTube is the poster-child of the Free Revolution, then the whole thing is going to be one giant failure (as YouTube costs Google almost $1 Billion annually).

I understand where Anderson and Godin are coming from, especially regarding news and the written word. Given the staggering growth of blogs and the speed at which bloggers and other online outlets can get the news to its readers, the current situation doesn’t appear all that great for newspapers and magazines whose “news” isn’t news by the time people read it and whose consumers must pay to get it. However, Godin and Anderson don’t consider quality and deepth of coverage in their arguments. They say that soon there will be so many part-time writers who make enough money to cover there costs of writting through advertising that the need for paid content won’t be there. I disagree. The more blogs and other free sources that are out there on the same subjects, the less the bloggers will make on advertising - as they will be splitting their audience. Also, speed isn’t everything. People need qualified, professional journalists to contextualize major events and to lead them through complex issues.

When people aren’t making any money for their efforts they start doing something else, when people aren’t making enough money the quality of their work goes down and ethically journalism goes by the wayside - as it apparently did in Anderson’s book when he lifted pages right out of Wikipedia.

The future of information is not that it will all be free, the future of information is that the tabloid and breaking news will be free, and they will push towards the editorial content which will always cost something (after all, even Anderson thinks Free will make people money). IMO (on this issue) Anderson and Godin are what Gladwell calls “technological utopians” who at times swap their marketer hats for economist hats and write long diatribes essentially explaining why Vegas comps rooms, only drawing the conclusion that somehow the gambling should be free too.

Kit Kat Japan had a major dilemma: How do they stand out from the clutter on a crowded snack aisle at convenience stores.  They didn’t want to buy their way to the top for many reasons - number one being cost - so what to do?

They went to the drawing board and saw an opening that was ripe for the taking and swooped in and did something extremely innovative, creative and “completely out of the box.” (I hate using that term but it works well in this setting.)

When Japan Post was privatized, kit kat went to them with a proposal with the idea of kit kat mail.  This newly packaged candy let users write notes to the attended recipients and then literally drop them in the mail to be sent on the fly.  To mass market this product kit kat took it to the next level. They proposed selling the items right at the register of the post office to maximize exposure.  And in some cases, changed dingy post office locales into kit kat shop in shops.  But the kicker of the campaign had to do with timing.  They slated the launch to coincide with university admission examinations to maximize reach and exposure in an already well traffic local where users primary goal was to send something already.  The assumption being that if they made a superior product; tweaked the packaging so that the box facilitated an ease of use to ship and receive seamlessly; and made it accessible to everyone at a location where it would be relevant - this would equate to a successful new product launch.

O how right they were.  The campaign won the Media Grand Prix this year at Cannes; Kit Kat has grounded itself as Japan Post’s candy of choice at the retail post level; and the social component of the campaign still continues today.

Coca-Cola released a new vending machine at Cannes Lions which incorporates full user-engagement beyond pushing a letter followed by a number for your selection. These machines will be at special events and will be released within a year around the globe.

I’m surprised these types of interactive vending machines haven’t been introduced yet as the first coin operated machines first debuted in the United States in 1888. While reviewing its history, I found the possibility of offerings to be endless- from a french fry making machine in Australia, a beer and sake machine in Japan, as well as an umbrella machine, and pizza made from fresh dough and baked in the machine located in Italy. Pepsi has some work to do.

We showed Milo a few weeks ago and now this: Project Natal. Microsoft continues to roll out some amazing XBox offerings. We have yet to play anything yet so we still are in the “Doubting Thomas Mode,” but the promos are sure exciting and make our minds race. The Windows maker is truly taking the gaming experience to the next level with XBox’s newest offerings and we like thus far BUT the proof isin the pudding. Coming soon to a home entertainment center near you - our guess is just in time for Christmas but the date - to our knowledge - is still TBD….

What do you guys think?
And be sure to click the Project Natal link to see some other insights on the horizon that Bil and his team have going on…Some heavyweights in the entertainment industry are behind most of this and I think you guys will be shocked….

Nothing.

When I watch my favorite reality TV shows, I experience the same giddiness and delight I felt when eating the pepperoni pizza that used to be sold inside Fedco.

My addiction started with the debut of The Real World, The Swan (extreme makeovers for the “aesthetically challenged”) and Survivor. Then I became mesmerized by shows like Wife Swap, and Flavor of Love. I have now developed a much more sophisticated palette for “serious” content like Project Runway, Top Chef, The Housewives of (OC, NYC and ATL) and the newer seasons of The Bachelor/ette and Millionaire Matchmaker. And one new – don’t hate me: Jon & Kate Plus Eight.

Previously taunted when mentioning these avant-garde shows, I now find support in friends and peers who have finally come out and proclaimed their obsession with “bad” reality TV. We appreciate the lack of intense intellectual stimulation and revel in the hilarity and chuckles that these shows provide. Laughter, as you know causes us to release good endorphins to help our immune system, raise levels of T-cells, B-cells, etc. and decrease stress.

Yes, Reality TV can help fight disease.

How many times have you heard: I don’t understand twitter?  Or, I have an account and i tried using it but I just dont get it, so I gave up on it?

Well if you’re like me or you work in the new media biz - a hell of a lot of times.  But that doesn’t mean that just because you don’t understand something you give up.  I use twitter all the time for both work and personal things.  Yes I will admit some of it is for  mundane things like updating Lakers Scores while sitting at Staples or just tweeting out where or what i’m doing at some random time.  But that is only one small facet of what i use twitter for.

The main purpose of my twitter usage is for research and connecting to the best and brightest of the digerati set in real time.  Tapping into the minds of people like david armano and charlene li is something that the most privileged only got to do during their stints at Harvard or hearing them on the lecture circuit.  With Twitter, I can literally cherry pick thoughts and concepts and interact with them on a second by second basis.

Do they know me - Not from Adam.  Do they care about me - not really.  But does it build a relationship - most definitely.

Its a hard concept for people to truly grasp but i do believe the more you explore and participate with Twitter (or other Social Tools) the more you will see their true value.  Look at this to see how ” real people” are opening the twitter-universe to make it work for their lives.

Tweet us your insights and let us know how you use twitter: @nostruminc