We have a meme that just went viral on Buzzfeed, and it seemed worthwhile to walk through it on this blog, given that some business readers might not be Internet culture junkies. Ice Cream Dude appeared on the cover of the Washington Post, yesterday morning. One of our editors (Tanner Ringerud) saw the original image posted in Tumblr, and quickly [...]

I got the opportunity to sit down with Jason Calacanis yesterday to talk about BuzzFeed, branded content, and earned media. In addition to covering most aspects of the business, we got to delve into how brands can approach making their content viral in a systematic repeatable way. In some ways, the interview was the most in depth opportunity I’ve had [...]

In my continued study of vintage advertising industry texts, I came across Lester Wunderman’s tome “Being Direct,” thanks to David Shen. Wunderman the eponymous firm, remains a leading creative shop within the WPP group.  Lester, himself, is perhaps known as the godfather of direct marketing, and the 1996 book makes no reference to the internet.  With that said, few things [...]

Gives a great overview in under a minute.

Brands typically come to us with a key concept, message or strategy, as well as assets (videos, images, and text). In a prior era these assets might have been just banners, but, today, almost every leading brand is creating this much richer grade of asset. The brand is typically looking to get this content as shared as possible – viral. [...]