There are a few things at play here.  Not only was it a mistake by the marketing department / ad agency, but also a failure of the PR department.  Once the misprint was noticed, Denny’s and their advertising and marketing divisions should have taken steps to address it.  Additionally, the PR team should have generated a few statements for online media addressing the misprint and how they were going to get things back on track, etc etc.

Here are 5 things you can learn from this Denny’s branding, marketing and PR fail:

1. Mistakes aren’t “the end of the world” if you address them swiftly and across the appropriate channels
2. Due diligence is a must prior to any major proclamation, print run or press release
3. Implement processes that are followed without fail with vendors and outsource partners
4. Ensure that the lines of communication between the PR, marketing and advertising departments are clear
5. Own mistakes in the Internet world.  Otherwise, online communities will ensure that nobody forgets your mistake(s)

All you have to do is this:  Text “haiti” to the cell number 90999

It’s so easy that your druncle could figure it out at your next family BBQ.  To make it easier on yourself (depending on the type of phone you have) you can do what I did.  I added “Red Cross Text Donation” as a contact into my cell phone address book so that I could easily text my donation…and for possible future donations.

Still on the fence?

Let’s go over some of the last things you probably spent $10 on, shall we:

1. An overpriced and over-hyped vodka + Red Bull for that gal that turned out to have a tattoo of a bowl of gravy on her left shoulder
2. Your Netflix monthy fee
3. Dry cleaning on 4 shirts
4. A blended coffee drink for you and your coworker because it was your turn to buy
5. A plate of happy hour priced nachos and two happy hour draft beers

You get where I’m going with this.  You can make a legitimate difference by donating $10.  Sure you may be thinking that you don’t have the cash because the economy sucks or that you don’t trust how it will be allocated…blah blah blah.  Suck it up and take a chance by doing something nice for a family you will probably never meet in your life.  Do it because it’s the right thing to do.  And PLEASE don’t rely on Twitter as your trusted news source on this cool way to donate to families that need it.

The Super Social mixtape is many things, but it is not contrived or boring.  Like his previous mixtapes, New Berlin ventures down a new road of uncategorizable sonic stylings.  The intro tracks lead the listener to believe the Super Social mixtape is a techno endeavor.  Don’t be fooled!  This mixtapes ebbs and flows from up-tempo electro to pop R&B to indie rock to vocal house.  This is the sort of mixtape one would hear at a club in Tokyo, Germany or Poland.  It was worth the wait.  Trust me.

Dell recently announced that they have generated $6.5 million in sales from interactions originating from their 12 Twitter profiles, including their ever-powerful @DellOutlet profile that boasts 1.4 million followers.  Though nobody is sure when they began tracking these figures, it has definitely grabbed my attention.  Even if this figure accounts for a minuscule fraction of their overall annual sales ($60 billion, last I heard), it brings to the surface the discussion of social media ROI.

Any manager will want to know what to know ROI for their social media expenditure.  This is where it gets sticky.  Most social media experts will tell you that social media serves more as a branding function.  More specifically, social media serves as a listening post for brands so that they can course-correct their marketing and customer service strategies.  Dell, however, has turned that notion on its ear by delivering these new sales figures to the public.  This is a little dicey.

Are small businesses, Dell’s competitors and other verticals to believe that social media is now a sales pipeline?  Dell would have you believe that to be so.  Dell has the resources, products/services, infrastructure and support that enable their leveraging of a social media channel like Twitter.  But, can Kenny’s Curry House in Anytown, USA expect to realize any sort of major sales by simply creating a Twitter account?  The answer is “no”.

The truth is that Dell employs 100 people  across 30+ Twitter profiles to send out tweets.  This compared to a small business that leaves their social media strategy and execution to a college-aged intern illustrates the chasm separating big business and small business strategy and implementation.

While I don’t fault Dell for releasing these impressive numbers, I do caution business owners and marketers.  What happens in the rarefied air of major global brands may not be sustainable at sea level marketing and sales.

On one hand, Peek’s new Twitter specific handheld device, TwitterPeek, makes me want to stab myself in the eye with a chopstick.  On the other hand, however, it intrigues me to no end.  This device enables one to post on Twitter and nothing else.  I guess there is a percentage of the population that are not able to post on Twitter using their computer or mobile phone. </end sarcasm>    Sounds like a royal waste of cash.  Here is the cost breakdown:

• $100 for the device + $7.95 monthly wireless fee (1st 6 months are free)

OR

• $199 for device & includes a lifetime of free wireless

Am I missing something here, folks?  Do people really need this?  Even the most epic of epic Twitter users would have no use for this product.  It deserves to be the truck with Lamont and Ed Sanford.

You may be thinking, “Wait, Brendon!  We all have any number of products in our lives that only serve one function and they friggin rule!”  Good point.  Let’s put the TwitterPeek to the test against the old guard of single function items that many of us find in our homes and offices.  You be the judge of whether TwitterPeek wins or falls short.

TwitterPeek vs:

• Toaster
• Toothbrush
• Stove
• Waffle Maker
• Mixing Bowl
• Turkey Baster

It seems to me that this product beats out the waffle maker, but damn, dewd.  I love waffles way more than I like to post on Twitter.  Hell, I even like moist turkey more than “OMG”ing on Twitter.

All kidding aside, consumers and brands can easily post to Twitter via their computers and smart phones.  Hell, most of my associates and friends post via their phones 2-3 times more than from the computer.  I think the TwitterPeek is the Bass-o-matic of this year.  They should have channeled their funds to develop a hot Blackberry or iPhone application, not another version of e-waste.

The website called highDEAS has mastered simplicity.  They feature cannabis drenched ideas from people that are experts in getting high and pontificating about “astronaut weed” and “finding your Romulan” after a big night of partying.  The folks at highDEAS are contributing to a new form of website content to which Texts from Last Night or Overheard in New York would top their respective hats.

Web content, like products from the Industrial and early Information Ages, is evolving at a breakneck pace in an attempt to match pace with our ever-dwindling attention span.  Though more people are understanding and brainstorming on ways to utilize user generated content (UGC), few are doing anything about it.

Along with websites like Fail Blog and Twitter accounts like ShitMyDadSays, highDEAS is delivering content that is highly targeting groups of people that either smoke pot or that have met a weed smoker that pukes-out a “highDEA” .  I fall into the latter.  I don’t smoke pot, but I have met plenty of pot smokers that have ideas that verge on the cusp of brilliance.  No kidding.

As the number of people contracting critical cases of “social networking fatigue” continue to increase, community and social networking sites will have to devise ways to engage people on terms dangerously close to “uber niche”.  Yep, you read that terrible term here first.

Let’s get serious for a second.  Though sites like highDEAS aren’t social networking sites, they compete for the same mind-share that Facebook and Twitter do.

How many people do you know that have been on either end of the “unfriending” trend in Facebook or Twitter?  It’s becoming a big trend that will affect you soon; if it hasn’t already.   Running parallel to this trend (and arguably springing from this trend), is the reality that people are spending less time on Facebook, Yelp, Twitter, etc.  But, they are not closing their collective laptops.  They are choosing to go to other websites.  For lack of a better way of describing it, they are “content surfing”.

…In comes highDEAS serving-up funny UGC that people can’t get anywhere else.  They have the right idea.  In the last few months they have enjoyed 15K hits per month.  For a young brand, they are doing something right.

What other “uber niche” sites have you come across that are getting it right?

Your good pals in law enforcement want to be your BFF on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.  You can now slap mustached high fives with your buddies.  The FBI is now making themselves seen and heard on the Internet via social media. Heck, maybe they’ll want to make some comments on your latest photos.  Sounds like the boys at the FBI are embracing social networking and SEM.  But wait…what about MySpace?

*crickets*

It seems as though MySpace draws too much attention from “the fuzz” and media for the brethren of J. Edgar Hoover.  I can’t blame them.  With all of the people being accused of bad stuff on MySpace, there’s no telling who else will be implicated in anything fishy that pops up on that site.  *wink wink*

With all of that said, the FBI is no stranger to widgets.  Apparently they are still employing them and still analyzing the data they’ve collected.  Not sure what that means.  Sounds kinda creepy if you ask me.  Should anything else come up in the social networking and law enforcement worlds, we’ll be the first to let you know.  But hurry, they’re already have over 1,000 members on Facebook!

The website called We Are Hunted is lurking in the dark corners of your blogs, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and any other place they can to learn what you are listening to. They post the top 99 songs on their website so that you can learn about the newest, local and indie bands.

Pump your brakes. Let’s think about that for a second.

Are you dying to know what live show people in Los Feliz are talking about via their Twitter posts? Need to know what bands are huge in the punk/art scene in Omotesando in Tokyo or on 6th Street in Austin?  Maybe you can’t believe that Passion Pit is so awesome and you never would have heard about them if it weren’t for this website.

The great thing is that you can purchase the music you like.  That’s a good way to help put some cash back in the pockets of those poor musicians trying to make it in this freaky music industry climate.

We Are Hunted exists only to report the top 99 sweet bands that are being talked about via blogs, micro-blogs (Twitter) and social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, etc).

Thanks, WAH.

Everybody has a Twitter these days: CNN, politicians and Justin’s dad.  Sadly few people are achieving their goals with their account.  Like anything else in social media, one has to deliver content that is relevant to people.  Justin is doing that at an alarming rate with the amazing statistics he’s throwing up with his shitmydadsays Twitter account.  Yesterday he saw a jump of 4,000 followers in less than one hour.  This morning, less than 24 hours later, he’s seen a 10,000 follower jump.  He’s now sitting at 165,731 followers in less than 1 month.  Look at the image at the top of the screen and notice how many people he’s following.  One.  That’s it.

Those are the kind of Twitter statistics that are downright alarming!  He’s not running a contest, selling product, giving away bags of money or giving relationship advice.  He’s simply posting the outrageous things his 73 year old father says.  That’s all.   Apparently, people love it and are sharing the account with their friends and coworkers.

What is it about this Twitter account that has people buzzing?  I’ve been giving this a lot of thought as I’ve been watching his following skyrocket.  What I’ve come up with is that he’s got relevancy.  All of his followers know somebody or have met somebody like his cantankerous old dad.  The one-liners Justin posts are so natural sounding that we can’t imagine them NOT coming from the lips of a cranky, old man that is done trying to sugar coat things.

Having said all of that, this thing could very well be a hoax.  It could be the equivalent of a viral video:  Viral Tweets.  Even if  these are viral tweets, I think it’s genius.  It’s the equivalent of writing good stand-up material; which is no easy task.  Regardless of what happens, I’ll be keeping an eye on ” shitmydadsays ” over the next few months.  In the meantime, I’ll leave you some quotes that Justin has posted on behalf of his dad.

“Your brother brought his baby over this morning. He told me it could stand. It couldn’t stand for shit. Just sat there. Big let down.”9:35 AM Aug 20th from web

“The dog is not bored, it’s a fucking dog. It’s not like he’s waiting for me to give him a fucking rubix cube. He’s a god damned dog.”10:43 AM Aug 18th from web

“The dog don’t like you planting stuff there. It’s his backyard. If you’re the only one who shits in something, you own it. Remember that.”9:33 AM Aug 26th from web

(left on answering machine) “Hello? Hello? It’s Sam. Anyone there? Nobody checks this god damned thing. HELLO?! HELLO?! Screw it.”8:46 AM Aug 12th from web