Germany's upscale dog food GranataPet (a brand name derived from its pomegranate basis) has found success combining traditional billboards and social networking. In a Foursquare campaign that debuted in March, all you need is a smartphone with the Foursquare app, a billboard and a dog.

Owners checked in at a billboard location to earn their dog a free bowl of GranataPet dog food in a social marketing campaign that proved so popular it's coming back.Continue reading...

Memorial Day is, of course, the unofficial kickoff to summer in America. And to many, summer means a visit to Baskin-Robbins, the world’s largest ice cream purveyor with more than 5,800 shops around the world.

B-R is 66 this year, but it’s not close to retiring and is now ready to bring back one of the 31 flavors it packed away for seemingly good at one point or another in its history — and its virtual deep freeze. 

Last summer, for its 65th birthday, the brand retired five flavors including French Vanilla and Beatle Nut, which was created to cash in on the 1960s rock ’n’ roll British Invasion. Fans of those flavors, naturally, had something of a meltdown.

But now they can fight for their flavor. In a new social marketing promotion called The Big Thaw, the Dunkin’ Brands subsidiary is asking consumers to head to its homepage or the Baskin-Robbins Facebook page to vote on which of 31 retired flavors they would love to see again at B-R.Continue reading...

While mega-platforms Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter dominate social media, there’s one startup — the San Diego-based event marketing firm, Eventful — that is betting the farm on smaller, highly focused social communities coming together around common interests via their “Demand it!” platform.

“The Demand it! service is unique because it serves as a direct bridge between social media engagement/impressions and actual consumer buying decisions (i.e. commerce). We answer the question, 'What should we go do tonight?' and drive commerce around that,” Jordan Glazier, President and CEO told brandchannel. “We put consumers in control of influencing, shaping, and determining the outcome of entertainment experiences.”

A pedigreed group of Silicon Valley heavyweight investors are supporting Eventful's growth, including eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, Zynga founder Mark Pincus, entrepreneur Esther Dyson, global telecommunications giant Telefónica, and VC firms Draper, Fisher, Jurvetson and Bay Partners.Continue reading...

Banks are keeping up with technology through their use of ATMs and, increasingly, by offering online and mobile banking — even partnering with the world's search engine giant to advance mobile commerce, as Citi is doing with Google Wallet.

But when it comes to social media and digital channels in general, "retail banking has largely remained on the sidelines," according to Johannes Bussmann, Paul Hye, and Jorg Sandrock, three principals with the global consulting firm Booz & Company, authors of a new report, Banking on Social Media.

They argue that banks "need to reach out to younger, more Web-savvy customers... devising new products and services that are simpler and more transparent, and using the power of social networking and other digital platforms to improve their marketing."Continue reading...

As a city in Wisconsin rolls out its "How do you Sheboygan?" tourism campaign, fast food brand Sonic is asking (telling?) consumers "This is how you Sonic." Why does everyone suddenly hate verbs?Continue reading...

In the crowded marketplace of premium vodkas, a brand really needs to do something special to stand out. For example, a brand can get attention by being the choice of our future sexbots, or as the go-to brand of "vodka eyeballers." Other brands focus more on the bottle than what's inside.

Russian Standard, now planning a push into the US market, has gone all out to create a game of Russian Roulette… on Facebook. But how Russian is Russian roulette?Continue reading...

Earlier we noted Lenny Kravitz lending his musical talents to Chrysler to promote his beloved Jeep brand. Honda is also looking for music and fresh musical talent, but more amateur than pro.

The brand's new Facebook-based "Sounds of Civic" social media songwriting contest invites singer/songwriters to submit a song inspired by one of the four 2012 Honda Civic models.

It's, naturally, dangling a 2012 Honda Civic as a prize — along with $2,500 in musical equipment from Sam Ash, and the chance to perform his or her song live at a 2011 Honda Civic tour date in Los Angeles, a nice boost to any aspiring Kravitzes out there — or Pete Wentzes, who explains the talent contest above.Continue reading...

Facebook has rolled out a new product feature, "photo tagging for pages." This new service will allow users "to tag Pages in their photos on Facebook in the same way they can tag their friends." Basically, this means Facebookers can tag part of one of their photos to link to the page of the product or photo that is in that photo. 

Facebook says the virtue of this feature is that it "enables people to share richer stories with friends about the things they interact with in the real-world, such as businesses, brands, celebrities, and musicians."

Of course, the immediate worry was that Facebook would soon either allow brands and products to themselves tag-link user photos or that Facebook would soon develop programming that would do it auto-tag and link to brands' Facebook pages.

What nobody has yet worried about — how the whole thing could backfire and have Facebook scrabbling to appease the very brands it wants to court by censoring users' tagging access.Continue reading...