The Pro Shop

When thinking about rappers, Jay Z and Lil Wayne come to mind, not two guys from Bounty paper towels rapping about an experiment to see if 11 billiard balls can hang on a wet paper towel before the towel goes the way of the corner pocket.

But there they are in a YouTube video, looking a bit like they’re headed to perform surgery on Bart Simpson. But they’ve got the moves, the car, the rap, the chains and … the girls.

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I don’t know if you recall it—a lot of water has gone over the dam since late 2006—but throw your mind back and remember those TV commercials for Quiznos Subs that showed in various ways how superior they were to those of rival sandwich maker Subway. Some of them were professionally produced, man-on-the-street comparison ads from Quiznos itself, showing apparently average folks dissing wimpy subs from Subway for the sponsor’s meatier wares, and specifically its just-launched cheesesteak subs.

Nothing new there, really. But Quiznos upped the ante by tapping into the then-novel user-generated content wave. Specifically, they asked fans to create their own Q. vs. S. spots and upload them to a Web site, www.MeatNoMeat.com. The public were invited to “grab a camera and show us why you think Quiznos is better.” The grand prize: to see your ad air on VH1 and on a jumbo screen in Times Square on New Year’s Eve 2006, along with a year’s supply of Quiznos. more

With all the fuzzy, grainy home videos posted on YouTube it’s sometimes difficult to tell whether a brand has seeded a video or it’s just some goofy guys trying to gain notoriety.

The latest buzz is over two viral videos showing naked people working out. In one video, several people are working out in a gym. A naked, Chuck Lidell, an extreme fighter, (with certain areas blurred out) pumps up and down on a chin-up bar as his girlfriend Heidi Northcott, a professional poker player keeps a steady pace going on an elliptical machine sans clothing. The video had been viewed more than 11,000 times.

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I’ve written a fair amount about the ways that individual retail brands are using social and mobile marketing to get closer to their customers, enticing their biggest fans to step up and advocate for the brands, and monitoring social media as an early warning system for CRM problems.

But I had a chance on Monday to view digital media takeup from another retail perspective: that of the shopping-center landlord or property manager. I sat in on a panel discussion at the Fusion conference going on in Chicago that week, mounted by the International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade association for the shopping center industry. more

I’m a fan of the Olympics and I wondered what it would be like to be there as a marketer so I checked in with Janet Fletcher, the marketing director at P&G. She had arrived Feb. 9 in charge of running the P&G Family Home, a four-story conference center transformed into a branded gathering place for U.S. athletes and their families.

Janet had already scored a pair of those cute must-have red mittens sporting the white maple leaf on the palm and—overcome as people do up there with Olympic excitement—wore mostly patriotic colors.

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Johnson & Johnson is about to embark on a daring move of which the end result could change the way some companies do business online.

Later this month, a subscription-based online stress management program for women will go live at Upliv.com. Subscribers will be charged $99.95 for the first month and $39.95 per month after that. In return they will get an online stress analysis to determine whether finances, men, jobs or some other thorny issue is causing undue stress in their lives. The analysis will be followed by advice specific to alleviate that particular stressor and other information as time goes by.

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