But what if you used a blog or Facebook page to bring a company’s marketing icon to life?

That’s exactly what Pavone and Utz Quality Foods did when they took one of the most recognizable corporate mascots in the eastern United States – the Little Utz Girl – and brought her to life with her very own blog and Facebook page. Yes, after nearly 90 years, the ageless, ruddy-cheeked little girl on the front of millions of Utz packages finally has a voice. And like any preteen suddenly given access to the World Wide Web and social media, she’s got a lot to say.

Since its launch on February 1st, the Little Utz Girl’s blog has been visited more than 3,600 times and her Facebook presence has attracted more than 700 fans.

What’s interesting about this social media case study isn’t  that it’s proof that these new tools really can work for a brand… we knew that already. This one is noteworthy for its ability to create a personality that toes the company line (as all good corporate social media channels should), but also has her own distinct identity. She has likes, dislikes, hobbies, friends, pets, and her own unique sense of humor and writing style (including a love of exclamation points exceeded only by her love of Utz snacks and her dog, Doodle).

In other words, we took an iconic symbol and made her real – at least as real as a person can be in the ether of cyberspace.

Following the earthquake in Haiti, there should be no doubt about digital media’s ability to mobilize the masses and influence their behavior. Take text messaging, for example. Just 48 hours after the quake leveled much of central Haiti, text message donations totaled more than $21 million. Most of the cash was raised simply by asking people to text “Haiti” to 90999. A $10 charge on their phone bill would then be donated to disaster relief efforts.

And how was word spreading about this magical five digit number? Via Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other social media channels. And e-mail, of course. Can’t forget about that dying fad.

So what does this mean for digital media’s use as a marketing tool? It means if you’re not onboard at least in some capacity, you’re destined to be left behind. It means great things can happen in 140 characters or less. And it means if you give people a good enough reason to take action, they will… even if it’s while standing in line at McDonalds.

By the way, funny story* about the whole Haiti text messaging thing. A girl (age and location unknown) mistakenly thought that each time she texted “Haiti” to 90999, someone else would donate $10 to the cause. A $2,000 phone bill a few weeks later proved otherwise. I’m guessing somewhere in Port-au-Prince a medical ward is named after her.

* Assuming you’re not her parents.

The conversation reminded me how much many of us take for granted these “newfangled” communication methods and how a large segment of the 21st century population (older Americans) still has little knowledge of these channels (or little use for them). Will blogging alter consumer habits in the future? Some would say it already has, and the influx of “non-credible” blogging has become more worthy than the facts and ultimately change how people make decisions for their lives.

Take the case of Haiti, a country ravaged by disaster that is experiencing much-needed relief thanks to Web 2.0 fundraising efforts.

Relief is arriving in the form of donations to organizations like the Red Cross, Yele Haiti Foundation, Doctors without Borders, The Salvation Army, UNICEF and many more. These organizations are not only receiving donations the tradition way of checks through the mail or credit cards over the phone, they’re also receiving them digitally. And we’re not just talking about credit card donations on a corporate website. Some of the most popular methods of donations include text messaging, iTune purchases and Facebook applications.

Text messaging is by far one of the largest generator of donations for the Haiti relief efforts. The Red Cross has raised more than $25 million dollars through texting “Haiti” to 90999. Wyclef Jean even got involved by driving his 1.4 million Twitter followers to donate to his charity Yele Haiti Foundation via texting “Yele” to 501501. It’s reported that he has been able to raise over $2 million for his foundation. Some carriers are even waiving their text messaging fees for these transactions.

You can even purchase songs and donate to the Red Cross via iTunes. Pop singer Rhianna is selling her performance of “Redemption Song” (as seen on Oprah) for $1.29 with proceeds benefiting the Haiti relief efforts. In addition to buying music, you can also donate multiple amounts to the Red Cross via iTunes.

iTunes will continue to provide opportunities to donate when it releases the video and performances from “Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief” on Saturday. The proceeds from these items will go to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, Oxfam America, Partners in Health, Red Cross, UNICEF, United Nations World Food Programme and the Yele Haiti Foundation.

Facebook’s Farmville even raised money for Haiti by selling “Sweet Seeds for Haiti.” Zynga donated 50% of the proceeds to help the children of Haiti. In all, Farmville raised $1.5 million dollars by selling virtual goods for this relief effort.

I could give even more examples, as new digital donation methods crop up daily, but I think you get the point. Personally, I find it both amazing and refreshing how digital and social media are not only impacting the lives of those who use the channels, but also impacting the lives of those who don’t.

Social networking is no longer just a “hobby.”  It’s become a vital organ of the world in which we live, work and play. However, more than half of employers across the nation have banned access to social media in the workplace. Obviously, employers think it’s a bad idea to take advantage of your social networking savvy employees to positively promote your business for FREE. Did I mention FREE promotion? Facebook alone has over 350 million members who could potentially see, hear and interact with your company. Capitalizing on this technology now, may help ease companies into the digital transition to come.

“In today’s difficult business environment, the instinctive reaction can be to batten down the hatches and return to the traditional command-and-control techniques that enable managers to closely monitor and measure productivity. Allowing workers to have more freedom and flexibility might seem counter-intuitive, but it appears to create businesses more capable of maintaining stability,” said Peter Bradwell, a Demos researcher.

In other words, be a lover, not a fighter.

Employers should consider options on how to incorporate social networking into daily work priorities to benefit their company. While here at Pavone, social networking for personal use is not permitted during work hours, we’re encouraged to use it to positively promote the agency. The agency itself is an active participant in Twitter and Facebook, in fact our latest post includes our holiday e-card.

Face it, this generation is like no other and social networking is here to stay. Knowing that, social networking at work should be a trained, monitored and encouraged activity.  Its capabilities should never be questioned because you shouldn’t question a good thing. After all, we’re living in a digital world and it’s about time companies learn to live there too.

A) tell you something about yourself, and

B) share that something with a small coterie of friends who will, in turn, share it with others.

Your Halloween Name also features dopey, spurious, black-and-white drawings of vampires, werewolves and some sort of bug-brained creature. It took me far less than three hours to produce, start-to-finish.

But within a half hour of publishing this content, a friend reported that his cousin had used it. And, as I write this — barely 48 hours later — 29,431 unique Facebook users have encountered my trivial Halloween pursuit, which does little more than translate their name into a spooky moniker (a la the credits on the annual Simpson’s Halloween Special.)

Here’s some current data from my recent foray into viral content:

• 28.25% of those users are between one and 18-years-old, while a meager 2.26% are over 55.
• Nearly three quarters are under 35.
• Females outnumber males in a ratio of 79.22% to 20.78%.
• The users are nearly all from the U.S. and Canada, with the states of New York (2,484 impressions) and California (1,390) leading the pack.

Later this weekend, over on YouTube, my millennial offspring introduced me to the Mean Kitty Song which has enjoyed 26,634,112 views since its posting in 2007. The Mean Kitty Song and its subsequent spin-off video franchise are basically amateurish videos of a guy playing with kittens. They are unpolished, nominally edited, and relatively goofy. They are, in short, pretty much next to nothing in the grand scheme of things. And yet, if each of the Mean Kitty Song’s views was made by a unique individual (of course, the viewers are not actually unique), that number would constitute roughly 1 in 12 of every human living in the United States. That’s one powerful kitty, friends.

Today in still another corner of the digital world, I watched the exceptional advertising case study for the Queensland Tourism Board by the firm Sapient Nitro. This campaign used classified display ads to generate one of this year’s most massively successful returns in earned media.

My experimental Your Halloween Name app, the Mean Kitty Song, and Sapient Nitro’s Best Job in the World Campaign all share a few common features:

• They look like they were thrown together.
• They are casual.
• They are very, very cheap.
• They do not appear to sell anything.

All of this got me to musing. It seems like content that isn’t overly crafted or commercial may also help lower the barrier to viewership. It’s almost as though, as digital foragers, we have become accustomed to favor content that signals its own impermanence and lack of airs. While we might well shell out ten bucks to see a blockbuster movie, that movie usually costs upwards of $30 million to make. If that same movie returns $100 million in profits, it has delivered only 10 million impressions, give or take. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the Mean Kitty dude probably spent about three days and $150 in software to generate twice that many viewings.

In my mind, none of this tolls the death knoll for the thirty-second spot, an ad format that has been much lamented by our industry of late. But it does mean that a few creepy Facebook drawings, a kitten caught on an amateurish videocam, or a classified ad all have the power to drive one more nail into the spot’s coffin.

That’s what I’m calling next-to-nothing to the something-th power

I just spent a good five minutes trying to Google the answer every which way imaginable, but I can’t find it. I mean you’d think there’d be lists of this stuff all over the place on the Internet (c’mon Technorati). I found an entry from an obscure blog from 2006 that touches on the topic, but the few record-breakers it cites aren’t higher than some popular blog entries I’ve seen recently.  It does, however, link to another blog entry whose comments reveal some contenders.

I routinely see blog entries with comment totals in excess of 1,000. That happens all the time. So I’m guessing the record is well beyond that. Actually, what renewed my curiosity on the matter was when I stumbled onto the satirical blog “Stuff White People Like.” I must be the last person on Earth to discover it, because it gets a sick amount of comments to every post. We’re talking hundreds, sometimes over a thousand comments to every post. One post (for some weird reason because it’s not even close to being the funniest post on there) has 14,588 comments and counting!

That’s the most comments I’ve ever seen on a single blog entry. If anyone has proof of more (we’re talking blogs, not message boards or forums), please let me know… with a comment, of course.

The Twitter Fan Wiki has compiled a whole list of phony celeb twitterati, which span the big screen, small screen, stage, radio, books, politics and even fictional characters (I guess you had to assume the latter were fakes.) Here’s a compendium of just a few imposters, some of whom have attracted hoards of followers who were duped into thinking they were receiving tweets from the real thing:

Sarah Palin (Former GOP VP Candidate, Governor of Alaska) – “Palin 2013!”

Osama Bin Laden (elusive terrorist mastermind) – “Still pissed about Saddam”

Pee Wee Herman (comedian, cultural icon) – “Aaaaaahh!”

Chuck Norris (lethal weapon) – (Though he may welcome all comers in real life, Norris is rather guarded on Twitter and has opted to protect his updates from those not pre-approved by him.)

David Hasselhoff (TV star, “The Hoff”) – “Deciding which leather jacket to wear”

Santa Claus (the nice one) – “Words cannot express just how much the elves LOVE reading your twitter posts.”

Santa Claus (the not-so-nice one) – “elves are driving me fucking nuts”

The USA (global superpower) -”Got $787 Billion in my pocket and it’s almost the weekend. Who wants to party?”

Gunnery Sgt. Hartman (fictional character, the only real reason to watch Full Metal Jacket) – “I AM A FICTIONAL CHARACTER, I EXIST FOR ENTERTAINMENT, MAGGOT.”

Eric Cartman (cartoon character, the only real reason to watch South Park) – “A hippie and a terrorist is the same thing.”

Uranus (celestial body) – “So you think my name is funny? You suck.”

Stewie Griffin (cartoon character, Family Guy star) – “Lois is washing my hair”

The LOST island (island…on LOST) – “I will be confusing the fuck out of you all soon.”

Darth Vader (Jedi hater, Lord of the dark side, Luke’s dad) -”Note to @Alyssa_Milano – Tony Danza is not the boss. I am.”

Satan (CEO of Hell) -”all my stocks are rising”

Global Warming (environmental phenomenon, the only thing keeping Al Gore relevant) -”Sadly, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite launch failed. The OCO would have measured CO2 in the atmosphere. http://tr.im/gJce”

Okay, so they’re not all funny or even entertaining (there’s a lot of wasted comic potential with global warming), but you get the idea. A lot of real celebrities have taken to calling out the fakes, but it doesn’t seem to have slowed the growth of the faux star twitters… at least until the long arm of  the law (or Chuck Norris) shuts them down.

It’s an indictment on our society that people are shocked that a plain-looking 47-year-old woman has the voice of an angel. We suspect that she could NOT have gotten a recording contract on her own, despite her talent. We think recording studio executives would dismiss her because of her looks. This harks back to Shanna’s entry on sex in advertising/marketing, “Where’s Rosie the Riveter When You Need Her?” That Rosie is actually pretty sexy. Did real life female riveters look like that?

People weep when they watch Ms. Boyle sing “I Dreamed A Dream” because she not only bravely faces a studio audience filled with smirking people – sending them to their feet with wild applause – but she packs so much power and emotion into her performance that you think the song must have personal meaning for her. She jokes about being single, “never been kissed” and living with her cat Pebbles, but isn’t that just bravado?

One thing to take away from the response to Susan Boyle is that people who want any kind of audience at all outside their little corner of the world – and that means outside a one-block radius – MUST put their message online. Why can’t people spell? Why do they turn to the Internet to make friends or be entertained? Or get their news? Shop? Or do anything for that matter? Because “new media” is the massage.