Brand Mix

Another week flashes by. Continued posting sparcity. (Hey! I can make up words too.) Still getting my act together just enough for SOTB for a crazy, crazed, crazes edition. Here goes:

1) Facebook Questions: a friend-powered Google? Thought Gadgets
This week's Facebook innovation is its Questions tab, a new bulb button showed up on my FB in the middle of the week. Now you can ask any question on FB and get answers from your online friends or any of the 500 million members. Useful for you and, as Ben points out, great for advertisers who can serve up ads related to your question. As usual, this innovation raises new privacy concerns because your queries will be visible to everyone. If your question is: "What do I do to protect my privacy?", one answer is: "Not use FB."

2) 'Check-in' craze moves beyond location: the social
In other social media news, Caroline McCarthy notes that the idea of "checking-in," popularized by Foursquare, is starting to catch on elsewhere. It's not just about checking in to a place anymore. New services let you can check into an activity too. Look out for GetGlue which has just announced a partnership with HBO to promote its current series "True Blood," "Hung," and "Entourage" and a mobile app called Hot Potato that lets users check in with what they're doing. Is this going to be the next big thing? Ian Schafer doesn't think so. In this post, he says that the problem with these badges is that there's no pay-off so, once the initial thrill has worn off, there's nothing left to keep you coming back for more. That rings true for me. I'm pretty much done with Foursquare (as long as I'm still Mayor of my #24 bus).

3) The Tortilla Takes a Road Trip to Korea: The New York Times
Korean tacos have gone national in record-breaking time as entrepreneurs all over the country have been inspired by the success of the Kogi trucks in Los Angeles. This article reports on this latest food craze. But it was this quote that caught the attention of a Marginal Revolution reader:

“The meat makes it Korean,” said Mr. Ban, who marinates chuck roll in a soy and garlic sauce that is traditionally used with Korean barbecue dishes. “The tortilla and the toppings are a way to tell our customers that this food is O.K., that this food is American.”

Some food sourcing relativism going on there.

4) What Social Media Can Learn from Hordes of Bicyclists: tippingpoint labs
Anything to learn from Critical Mass, the last Friday of every month street-takeover by hordes of triumphant cyclists? Joseph Stucker thinks so. He translates the rules of a successful Critical Mass event into lessons for new media. For example: "Know the leaders and follow them"--there is no set route for a ride and there are no designated leaders yet a route and leaders emerge. Better follow them (or be one of them) or risk getting separated and lost.

5) Math Is No Match for Locust Swarms: Wired Science
Locusts wreak havoc that Critical Mass riders can only dream about. And a group of mathematicians have concluded that it's impossible to predict when swarms will start or where they'll go. To get a better understanding of the physics of swarming, they added more and more locusts to a ring-shaped arena to see when, at a critical density, the locusts switched from wandering around on their own to behaving as a group. But they found out that the trigger point was determined by the steady accumulation of random influences making it impossible to predict.

6) Bad Ass LEGO Tattoos: Coolest Sh%# I've ever seen

Great campaign from Grey Advertising out of Barcelona for Pilot pens. As Eric Miltsch suggests in his post, this campaign could be/should be opened up to all of us for submissions and idea extensions.

That's it! Back soon with more stories from the world of brand strategy. More thoughts and comments also available on Twitter (@martinjbishop).

PS: Would it be too much trouble for Google to fix the continuing Blogger problem that line spacing gets messed up when you use the block quote function in your posts? Meanwhile, if you need a fix, go here and follow the instructions.