At the time of this writing, over  11,500 people on Facebook  joined a new group, “May 19 2013 OK TORNADO DOC & PICTURE RECOVERY,” . Due to an overwhelming response, the group created a more organized page (with the same name and content) dedicated to posting images of people’s  priceless pictures and smaller items that were scattered throughout Oklahoma by the devastating tornado that hit Moore on Monday, May 20, 2013. People are also using the page to post donation, missing persons and family resources links, as well as loving words of encouragement.  In times like this, helping people regain any semblance of their lives before the storm can make all the difference.

Want To Help?

To donate $10 to the Redcross Disaster Relief fund, text the word REDCROSS to 90999

This article from U.S. News on NBCNEWS. com includes a great list of resources.

(Janae Johnson)

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is looking to make a $1 billion dollar deal in a bid for the micro blogging site, Tumblr. With Tumblr being one of the last ad revenue frontiers in the social media world, Mayer could take the site to new heights by adding her Yahoo know-how.  The buyout could also bring a young, fresh new crowd to Yahoo. 

Google+ Gets Great Updates

If you are one of the 190 million monthly users still using Google+, you’re in luck. The social site added over 40 new features this week.  Updates range from user interface settings to auto-back up options, changes to the ever popular Google Hangout and a new photo feature simply titled, “Auto Awesome,” that will merge the most awesome parts of your pictures into one.  

RETWEET!

Hey! – a little enthusiasm never hurt anybody.  According to new social media marketing data, adding an exclamation mark to your tweet can garner more re-tweets. However, tweets with exclamation marks received fewer clicks. So it seems folks are simply RTing (that’s Twitter speak for re-tweet) your enthusiasm instead of getting to the bottom of it. 

Apple is Uncle Sam Approved

Due to high demand, the Department of Defense has joined the Apple Age and approved mobile devices running on iOS6 for official government and military use. Hmmm…I wonder if President Obama prefers iMessage over FaceTime?

(Janae Johnson)

Monday

Met Gala Madness – Stars flock to New York’s Metropolitan Museum’s annual Met Gala.

High Point: Kim Kardashian finally evades Anna Wintour’s ban and makes her debut on the red carpet, snuggly (smugly?) on the arm of her boyfriend, Kanye West.

Low Point: The pattern of her dress is similar to your grandmother’s couch.  She is then noticeably cropped out of all photos featured on Vouge’s site. Burn!

Tuesday

House of Horrors – Three women, missing for almost 10 years are discovered alive in Cleveland, Ohio.

High Point: Charles Ramsey, reluctant hero and perfect interview-giver , tells the story of how he helped to free Amanda Berry and her daughter from captivity.

Low Point: The slow, unraveling details of a truly horrific story that lead to captor Ariel Castro’s swift arrest.

Dishonorable Mention: Former South Carolina Governor, Mark Sanford is back in the house – literally.

Wednesday

GUILTY! – Alleged killer Jodi Arias is found guilty on first degree murder charges by an Arizona jury.

High Point: Justice is served for the family of Travis Alexander who was killed in 2008.

Low Point:  Arias reveals that she would rather face the death penalty than live out her “natural life” in prison.

Dishonorable Mention: The Miami Heat crush the Chicago Bulls with a score of 115-78 in Game 2. The two Bulls fans on my timeline disappeared quickly.

Thursday

Scandal = Thursday’s Nights. If you aren’t watching ABC’s break-out show staring Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope, then what are you doing?

High Point: my entire timeline spent all day either discussing Scandal plot theories or talking about people who constantly talk about Scandal.

Low Point: I spent all night narrowly avoiding Scandal spoilers plastered all over my timeline since I am behind a few episodes. Shame on me.

Friday

#TGIF - There was a lot of heavy news this week, so Friday has been pretty lighthearted seeing as everybody is simply happy to have made it through the week.

High Point: Chris Brown’s subtweet about his break-up with Rihanna automatically causes him to be a trending topic. This prompts people to tweet their best “sad” Chris Brown nicknames like, “Chris Frown” or “Woe Bidden,” both of which are very funny.

Low Point: Tons of people realize that Mother’s Day is Sunday and began scrambling for gift ideas!

(Janae Johnson)

Tagging on Instagram is Here!

Looking for something better to do on Instagram than post selfies and pics of your lunch? Well, now you can tag your pictures.  “Photos of You” is just what it sounds like – all photos that you are tagged in will appear in that tab. I wonder if Instagram tag themselves in a pic of their new logo? 

Close to the Edge

Brands are constantly looking for opportunities to connect with consumers, but at what costs?  Mountain Dew hit a wall with a weird goat-themed commercial created by even weirder rap group member Tyler of Odd Future. Apparently, angry farm animals and caffeine don’t mix.

Breaking News on the Web

Meet Storyful, a new company that specializes on breaking and verifying news on the web. Storyful’s Director of News Services, Clair Wardle explains the process of breaking news in a 140-character, fast paced society, where any and everything counts as news.

Contextual Marketing

How new is the concept of contextual marketing?  It looks like the definition is slowly starting to change based on new markets that have emerged since the mid 70s.

(Janae Johnson)

On Tuesday, hackers targeted The Associated Press twitter account and sent out an outrageous tweet claiming that both The White House AND the President were in distress. After a few hectic minutes, the Press Secretary stepped in to calm our fears, but not before the Dow Jones dropped more than 150 points!

Future Fears: 3D Printing vs the Ad Industry

Be prepared to be wowed by 3D printing. The future is here and we are finally able to easily make a three-dimensional solid object from a digital model, all from the comfort of our desktops (or smartphones). But what type of impact will this have on the advertising industry? Only the future will tell.

Mathematica Magic

Thanks to science, we can take an extremely detailed look at just how Facebook data adds up across the board.  Stephen Wolfram, Founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, uses mathematica – renowned as the world’s ultimate application for computations – to tackle the very nebulous world of Facebook statistics. 

The Science of Being Noticed

It’s no secret that there is an exact science to getting noticed. From nature to your supermarket shelves, certain colors and shapes stand out. Executive Creative Director Ben Steele and VP-Design Michael Connors of Omnicom Group's Hornall Anderson, a Seattle-based design agency that works with some of your favorite brands, talk about what makes certain product packaging pop – and trust me, it’s no coincidence.

(Janae Johnson)

That’s the gist of research conducted by Dr. Read Montague of the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, whose work centers on human social cognition, decision-making and willful choice with a goal of understanding the detailed underlying neurobiology of these functions in health and disease.

His team uses “functional MRI,” or fMRI, to see real-time images of the brain while doing tasks. The same brain that makes purchasing decision.

Without getting into the scientific gobbledygook – after all, I got into public relations and advertising to avoid math, though I love science – his team conducted an experiment showing that, no matter what subjects were given, they prefer Coke over Pepsi.

Has it to do with Coke’s indelible imprint on the brain thanks to multi-billions of dollars of marketing over the years? Perhaps. The brain works in mysterious ways.

I was honored to appear with this scientist and pioneer on neuro-marketing on a recent hour-long public radio program, Virginia Conversations. The topic was how the human brain responds to advertising.

It’s a fascinating topic and a program worth listening to.

So does this mean fMRI will replace focus groups, intuition and metrics to craft advertising campaigns? Should ad agencies plan to install these to test messages?

Not so fast. While the scientific research certainly raises issues about how the brain reacts to marketing messages, the findings won’t easily replace research-driven advertising to uncover the psychographics, habits and preferences of the target audience in a digital world.

While science will continue to provide new insights at the end it’s about research, creativity and measurement to truly see if a message makes it to the brain.

(Thomas Becher)

In a way, Apple is at least somewhat responsible for my job. One of the biggest increases in marketing spend over the past few years has been because of mobile, and Apple has led the way with their smartphone (still making up over one-third of total market share) and even more so with their tablet (making up over one-half).

With Apple’s focus on creating the simplest, most user-friendly experience with their products, it’s fair to ask if mobile product adaptation, and therefore marketing spend, would have had the same kind of dramatic increase without them.

What worries me even more than Apple’s stock ticker news, is talk of an ‘iWatch’ as one of its next possible products. Although I see the need for having a digital device with you at all times, we’re already close enough to that with our smartphones. And smartphone screens have been getting larger over the last couple of years, so the idea of a watch with a screen a quarter of the size of a smartphone doesn’t seem particularly appealing. Advertising options on this kind of device also seem limiting. This is all speculation of course, as Apple, Google and now even Microsoft are only rumored to be working on some kind of digital watch, but there has yet to be any kind of tangible evidence to surface.

Apple does desperately need to come up with some new product this year, and I’m still holding out for a true iTV. You’ve probably heard the Steve Jobs sound bite of “I’ve finally cracked it” referring to the development of a TV that would work seamlessly with other Apple products, and potentially cut out the need for cable, if only they could make a few key deals with major television networks. This product could also open up a whole world of digital marketing opportunities, and would further the merging of TV and digital media. And for someone who works exclusively in digital marketing that would be a very good thing to see.

(Drew Aronica)

March Madness is here, heating up your television lineup (since Mother Nature missed her memo to turn up the sun). All 67 games, across four networks: CBS, TNT, TBS and truTV are anticipating sold-out ad space, with spots costing $250,000 and increasing as the tournament progresses. Ads running during CBS’ Final Four coverage will reach up to $1.1 million, with overall sales reaching $875 million – $100 million more than last year.

(Ed. Note: Let’s go VCU! HAVOC!) 

Drop Zone

Is it just me, or does time seem to stand still when you drop your phone?  A new iPhone patent is hoping to make those split seconds between safely holding your phone and it hitting the ground a little less dreadful. The newly published patent for “Protective Mechanism for an Electronic Device” identifies when your phone is falling and adjusts its center of mass to control its landing. The future is now and here to save your phone! 

H@ppy Birthday Twitter!

“just setting up my twttr” – Can you believe it’s been seven years since Jack Dorsey, creator of Twitter, sent out the first tweet ever in 2006. Fast forward to today, Twitter has amassed over 200 million active users and 400 million tweets a day! So happy birthday Twitter, who knew 140 characters could be so meaningful.

(Janae Johnson)

Aside from the heightened focus on images, Facebook also decided to get rid of its heart, the news feed, and replace it with a segmented feed, that features music, friends, groups and a pure photo feed – which is all pictures, all the time. We are all trained to immediately tackle the newsfeed in the upper left hand corner to wade through what we might have missed since the last five minutes we logged on. This new and improved feed feature allows you to customize what you want to see most when you come to Facebook.

Despite owning Instagram, it seems that Facebook is planning to crib what people love most about that app and plaster it over what we love most about Facebook. The new look also resulted in a uniformed interface for mobile, tablet and web. So all that scrolling you do on your phone will now be across the board. I can already hear the complaints from here.

Other aspects such as status updates or sharing links don’t take major hits. Posting articles and sharing your location will still yield views and likes since the new aspect of Facebook really gives you more of a view with less to look at (if that makes any sense at all).

These changes aren’t visible just yet, but there is a sign-up list. In the meantime, Facebook plans to slowly integrate the look, just like they did with the cover photo layout.

But will this new redesign come with a slight backlash? The designers at Facebook say don’t even worry about it. They are sure that this new look will transition seamlessly, you won’t even notice the changes–they aren’t here to rock the boat, they’re just here to keep the story going.

(Janae Johnson)

Those being the glasses we’ve been seeing, reading and hearing about for at least a few years — the ones that will provide us with “ubiquitous computing” . . . voice or touch-activated Internet access walking down the street, sitting by the pool. Driving in rush-hour traffic,— enjoying Christmas dinner.

Had to go to the dark side, right?

Oh, back to our amble — we may qualify to be among the “bold, creative individuals” Google is looking for (um, crowd-sourcing) to pick up a pair of these snappy opticals for Beta testing.

Wow. That could be fun. Or headache-inducing (your mileage may vary).

Now for the tiny-type disclaimer: You’ll need to fork over fifteen-hundred clams and be available to turn up in New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles to pick up the goodies during special events.

Just three cities? Chicagoans are peeeeved, right about now, not to mention Dallas, Atlanta, Seattle and the rest of us slugs in flyover-land.

Let’s see—New York . . . New York (so nice, they — heh) as we peruse Google maps, from downtown Chatt-town we’re looking at a 13-hour drive — aereoplanes be damned! — and 41 gallons of petrol at $3.6—oh, wait!—make that $3.75 per, adding back the previously referenced clams—

A grand total of $1,653.75 (not withstanding a couple of Heath® bars and Diet Cokes® along the byway) to pick up my too-fab-for-now Buck Rogers eyewear!

Singing all the way home: Oh, Bennie, Bennie—Bennie and the Jets . . . read it in a magaze-eeeen. 

All jest aside, the most astounding bit of related data: A mere 18 months ago these prototype glasses tipped the weigh station at 8 pounds (see: average canned ham, or newborn human); the models to be rolled out for testing will weigh . . . about 3-ounces. 

What an amazing feat of engineering. Fo’ real.

Once these glasses are officially out the door and generating hard cash, the development team should be loaned (for an open-ended stay) to the cruise line industry, post-haste. The high seas smell fresher with just the thought.  

Closing now, with the most important bit: your post to qualify must contain #ifihadglass and run no more than 50 words - none of those words, we would guess, being “gee-gah.” 

Or Apple.  

The whole thing fills us with a longing to be 30 years younger.

Or older.

(Doug Cook)