Minutes after the game ended YouTube had videos of not only the ads but people’s reactions and “TV on tape” examples of the best and worst. The YouTube AdBlitz channel also invited viewers to click and vote for their favorites, but I had trouble viewing the channel and wonder if others did too.

The Snickers Betty White ad was declared the winner in the USA Today’s ad meter and one of the spots we helped promote for Coca-Cola showing a sleepwalker finally getting his Coke showed up as #5. However, it will be interesting to see what happens to the ranking once the public starts to weigh in.

So give us your opinion, Peepshow readers. We know you have them. What did you love? Who should have been left on the sidelines?

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I dedicated 11 hours of my life to “The “Jersey Shore” – watching every episode in its entirety, including the reunion show. I know I won’t get those 11 hours back and that’s fine; I enjoyed every second of it. Somehow this train wreck of a cast captivated me weekly. Eight vain egomaniacs who enjoy the simple things in life — tanning and being tan, steroids, hair gel, fist-pumps and drunken hookups — took America by storm.

By the third or fourth episode, I was sure this was a one-season-and-done type of a show, and that the cast would soon go back to living with their parents and working part-time jobs in retail. But to my dismay and delight, “The Jersey Shore” will be back for a second season, on their terms. The eight, proud-to-be-stereotypical Guidos held out for more money after MTV offered to air “The Jersey Shore” for another season. Why wouldn’t they, though? They are the stars of MTV’s most popular show to-date. Why not get the money you deserve for being the stars of an entire network?

What else are they doing to cash in on their stardom? Let’s take a look at a few cast members.

The Situation

“Everybody loves me: babies, dogs, hot girls, cougars. I just have unbelievable mass appeal.” – The Situation

The Situation is currently trying to trademark his nickname, releasing a signature cologne, appearing on TV shows like “Mike and Mike in the Morning” and “The Today Show,” and is reportedly getting paid $7,500 – $10,000 to appear at night clubs across the country.

Snooki

“I can’t walk out of the house without bronzer … even if I go to the store I need makeup … I’m 4′9, maybe with the poof 4′11.” -Snooki

Snooki is showing up everywhere. From doing the weather on local TV shows, to “Inside Edition” and the “Today Show,” Snooks’s face is on TV screens everywhere, daily. Snickers is also earning $7,500 – $10,000 for night club appearances.

Pauly D

“We’re beatin’-up-the-beat, that’s what we say when we’re doing our fist pump.  First, we start off by banging the ground, we’re banging it as the beat builds ‘cause that beat’s hittin’ us so we’re fightin’ back, it’s like we beat up that beat.” – Pauly D

Pauly D, a.k.a DJ Pauly D, is also showing up on TV shows, getting paid to appear in clubs and is earning extra money to guest DJ at night clubs. He’s also coining a new hair style, just as Jennifer Aniston did during her days on “Friends.” He orders hair gel by the case and does his hair twice a day. Oh, he’s also publicly offering to pose for Playgirl.

“The Jersey Shore” cast proves you don’t have to be smart or talented to become rich and famous. Well, famous. You just have to find what you’re good at and if it is very niche, and you market yourself in the right way, you can make money at it. Of course, starring in an MTV reality show exposing the idiosyncrasies of Italian Americans, or self-proclaimed Guidos, doesn’t hurt.

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Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Keegan Shoutz, a senior at St. Cloud State and one of our Fast Horse Experience Facebook friends, who paid us a visit and shadowed George a couple weeks back. Keegan is at left with George.

As an upcoming college graduate, come May I will be thrown out into the real world with hopes not much unlike any other college graduate. Find a job I like, in an area I want to live in, near people I want to be around. Although our economy is struggling and jobs are hard to find, I have been privileged with the opportunity to get an inside look at the public relations field on many occasions.

My advice to any college student is this: Get involved! Become active in student organizations and events you are interested in. Doing so will open doors you may have never thought possible. Don’t believe me? Feeling like it’s too much work? Well, take me for example. I joined the Public Relations Student Society of America my sophomore year in college. I was an average member; helped out when I could but never really took advantage of the opportunities I was provided.

Fast forward to my junior year, when I became a more active member within the organization and decided to run for the presidency. Turns out I got it and quickly was given a world of opportunities and experiences not only for myself, but for all the members of the organization. I began the year with a plan: work hard, but work together to benefit our group as a whole. In doing so, each member of PRSSA has been given an opportunity to make a number of great connections within the public relations field. We have been focusing on topics such as informational interviews, tours of agencies we are interested in, social networking sites and job shadowing.

Which brings me to where I am today, sitting in the offices of Fast Horse, “a consumer marketing agency,” located in Minneapolis.  If you had asked me at the beginning of the year if I thought I would be confident enough to seek out an agency I am interested in and ask if I could go in to job shadow for a day, you would have received a simple “no.” Getting more involved throughout each year of college has truly created opportunities I never knew existed. The ability to sit in an office such as this, right next to the very people who have the job I want, is an eye opening experience.

Most of us spend four or more years in college, and although we attend class and go through the motions, many of us cannot imagine where we really want to be after graduation. It takes initiative, hard work and dedication to find a career and let’s be honest, just going through the motions is not going to cut it.

It’s important to network, get your name out there and find the answers to any questions you may have about how to get to that dream job. Use social networking sites and the Internet to your advantage. Times have drastically changed and it’s even more important today to get your voice out there. Do anything you can to distinguish yourself from the others searching for the same position, and create your own opportunities.

The time is now and graduation will come faster than you think. So get out there, find what interests you and strive for achievement. In the end it will take you places you never though possible.

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Typography has always been fascinating to me, especially foreign languages for whose meaning I have no clue. By looking at the strokes or the way the words are spelled out, I sometimes can feel what it is trying to say. Or sometimes I just stare at it really hard, hoping I will know what it means eventually.

That idea inspired me for this experiment. I created a page filled with the word “typography” in Chinese. Although I can read in Chinese, the crowded page soon becomes unrecognizable, and the negative spaces start screaming loudly when they become forms.

f

After a long stare, I started seeing shapes that are recognizable again within the negative and positive spaces. That’s where I started punching out some of the shapes into an alphabet. I found the alphabet “A” at first — then, one after the other, soon I had the entire alphabet made out of these unrecognizable Chinese characters.

The alphabet cannot be recognized by itself without the other shapes that give form to the individual letters. Then I matched the discovered letters with some images that I found.

I love to compare the relationship between the unrecognizable shape of an alphabet letter with an out-of-context image. The relationship or the language between the two speak differently to different people. By combining the two forms together, an entire new form is being created.

I am not yet done making these forms into something transparent. So stay tuned for more of the form-making process. In the meantime, check out an experimental type design I created in the past. view

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We just bought a couple new laptops, so that must mean we have more job openings, right?  Indeed we do! The first will be issued to an emerging superstar with serious social media chops, strong writing skills and a little gravitas to boot.  Ideally, our new Client Relationship Director would be a highly creative and strategic thinker who can provide support and leadership on national consumer marketing programs. We’d love to find someone who has a 5-8 year track record of success at an advertising, PR or non-traditional agency.  Sports marketing, health and wellness, food and beverage, hospitality, financial services or home products experience will get an extra, extra long look.

As for the second opening?  Well, let’s just say we’re casting a very wide net for new talent. This would be an investment hire (or two) based solely on the need to keep our bench deep as we continue to grow.  Talented people get absorbed quickly around here, and we are always looking for marketers who bring new ideas and experiences to our shop.  Perhaps you’re an account planner looking for a new opportunity.  An interactive developer searching for more interesting projects.  A social media maven eager for a bigger stage.  A creative director ready to take it to the next level. A media relations expert ready for a new adventure. All of the above?  When can you start?  Our list of services can be found here.  Take a gander and tell us how you think you can help us continue our momentum. We’ll create a position if we can find a superstar to fill it.

We value initiative, a sense of humor and curiosity.  Our culture is loose, flexible and extremely fast-paced.  Sound like a place where you or someone you know could thrive? Please direct resumes to Jorg Pierach at info@fasthorseinc.com. In the meantime, we’ll start a discussion tab about our latest talent search at the Fast Horse Experience on facebook. Join us there if you have questions or ideas about where we might find great candidates.

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Editor’s note: This is John Reinan’s weekly marketing column for MinnPost.com. To view the original, go to http://bit.ly/deOIrB.

We update the Idea Peepshow five days a week. You’d be surprised at how uncommon this is among marketing and advertising agencies. Many Twin Cities agencies don’t blog, and of those that do, infrequent posting is the rule – certainly not daily, or even weekly in many cases.

But we believe we should be fully immersed in new media, so for nearly two years, we’ve kept to our Monday through Friday posting schedule. During that time, we’ve slowly grown our regular traffic to more than 400 visitors a day — not dazzling, but respectable. And it’s quality traffic, with a low bounce rate (people who leave the site immediately) and a long average time spent per visit.

Last week, our office assistant mentioned that she had a bunch of photos of Target Field, the new Twins stadium, on her Facebook page. Her aunt works in the team’s front office and had recently taken some family members on a tour of the nearly completed ballpark.

We put up a blog post with Lindsey’s stadium photos, tweeted about it and put a link on our Facebook page. Soon, the hits started rolling in. People were interested in seeing the inside of the ballpark. Before long, we heard from SportingNews.com, which had somehow found out about it and wanted to use the photos on one of its blogs.

The day we put up the original post, we had our biggest traffic day ever, with nearly 600 visitors. And that traffic has held up in succeeding days, as more people pass along the links to our Target Field photos, both on our blog and on the Sporting News site.

It’s not exactly a viral Internet sensation, but it’s boosted our traffic by almost 50 percent, and I think it will have legs — it will continue to draw people to our site for some time to come.

Plus, it’s pertinent to our business. We do sports marketing for several clients, and giving fans a sneak peek at the new ballpark is the kind of thing we’ve done on other occasions as part of an outreach program.

Building Web traffic is challenging, as anyone who’s created a blog or a Website knows. You can always grab eyeballs with something freakish or disturbing — there’s a great appetite on the Internet for bloopers, tirades and the bizarre.

But while posting an obscenity-laden rant or a motorcycle crash on a business Website might garner viewers, it wouldn’t do anything to further the business goals of the organization. Earning viewers with meaningful, pertinent content takes more time and patience.

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A recent report in the Financial Times (free registration required) again shines a bright light on the potential risks online communication via social media can bring to an organization (or “organisation,” if we’re staying true to the pink paper’s British heritage).

The piece was written by the head of a information risk management and e-discovery firm, likely surrounded all day by information technology professionals and lawyers and CROs. Those of us in the world of marketing and creativity and content creation come from a wildly different perspective, but we’re all ultimately working toward pretty much the same thing: success for our clients.

With that in mind, the article’s premise:

Not only do social networking processes give employees the ability to locate the right people, information and expertise quickly, but they also greatly aid external networking, sales and marketing activities.

The instant nature of communication in a Web 2.0 world is a major part of the business appeal of these tools – but there is a fine line to tread.

Information can easily be divulged, co-opted or misconstrued, opening enterprises up to great risk, ranging from embarrassment and reputation damage to business failure and other serious financial consequences.

The author cites a study that reports “an alarming 89 percent of UK businesses permitting social networking access have no dedicated guidelines in place to control its use and, ultimately, the spread of information through these channels” (emphasis mine). Thankfully, the author continues by calling efforts to simply block access to Web 2.0 or social networking sites “pointless.”

Instead of blocking access or prohibiting use, the author calls for a more measured approach: Create a policy to guide your employees’ use of social media. He’s coming at this from a technical and legal perspective, so for the sake of the liberal arts majors in the room, I’ll add: Don’t tell them what they can’t do; coach them to do things well.

For example, look at the policy our client Coca-Cola recently unveiled (PDF). It’s not a summation of what the company has prohibited its employees from doing. It’s a document that helps those employees be smart about what they’re likely already doing, acknowledging the important role online communication plays within the organization. Coke’s policy includes this gem:

The same rules that apply to our messaging and communications in traditional media still apply in the online social media space; simply because the development and implementation of an online social media program can be fast, easy, and inexpensive doesn’t mean that different rules apply.

The Company encourages all of its associates to explore and engage in social media communities at a level at which they feel comfortable. Have fun, but be smart. The best advice is to approach online worlds in the same way we do the physical one – by using sound judgment and common sense, by adhering to the Company’s values, and by following the Code of Business Conduct and all other applicable policies. [emphasis mine]

Back to the FT article:

However, while having a corporate policy in place may seem common sense, it is important to remember that any such policy is only as effective as its enforcement. … As Web 2.0 tools open up new, and often unrestrained, communication channels, failure to prepare for how staff will use them can result in lost productivity in the workplace – and possibly a breach of regulations.

Which reinforces something I’ve been hollering for years: Managing effective use of social media is a people problem — a management issue — at least as much, if not more so, than it is a “technology problem.” Act accordingly.

Photo courtesy of zach_manchester on Flickr

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Photo illustration by Minyanville

MSN.com recently posted an article about “10 Companies That Almost Weren’t” that I found pretty interesting. Did you know Wrigley began by selling Wrigley’s Scouring Soap in 1891? At that time, William Wrigley Jr. decided to throw in a box of baking soda with every soap purchase. The baking soda was so successful that the company ditched the soap and decided to sell baking soda, this time with chewing gum as an incentive, and the rest is history. You can read Wrigley’s full story here (including a tidbit about how a Wrigley chewing gum product featured the first UPC barcode ever scanned).

The article also tells of how Glen Bell, Taco Bell founder who died earlier this month, had dreams of opening a miniature golf course but due to limited capital, ended up opening Bell’s Drive-In instead and selling hamburgers and hot dogs. But, when two brothers named McDonald and a milkshake machine salesmen (Ray Kroc) brought a little competition to town, Bell decided to specialize in tacos. Read the rest of Bell’s story here.

And, while I’ve heard pieces of Ben & Jerry’s story before, it was interesting to read the details of how the ice cream mavens first set out to start a bagel delivery business but when start-up costs proved prohibitive, they opted for a $5 correspondence course on how to make ice cream. Of course Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield did a lot of things right to strategically carve out a niche in the ice cream industry, but I didn’t know Ben’s lack of a sense of smell and near lack of taste was the main inspiration for adding crunchy candy and cookie dough to his ice cream.

It was interesting to read about the humble (and somewhat miguided) beginnings of some of the world’s biggest brands. I’m the kind of person who finds myself having many of those “why didn’t I think of that?” moments when I come across an innovative idea (for example, I’m not a fan of Crocs but I still wish I’d come up with the idea to sell rubber shoes with holes in them for $29.99, and then later developed the idea to fill the holes with “jibbitz” for another $2-$5 a pop). It was nice to see that “trial and error” played an integral role in some of the brands/products that later went on to be big successes. To read about some of the other companies with similar histories, check out MSN money.

Commenters at MSN have since added a few other case studies worth noting, such as how Procter & Gamble started by making candles (but a mixing mistake turned it into soap) and how Nintendo started by selling poker cards. What others can you add to the list?

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On Tuesday evening at 10:18, the Kentucky Wildcats men’s basketball team (ranked #1 in both the coaches’ and Associated Press polls) was defeated by the University of South Carolina Gamecocks.  The Wildcats entered the game with a record of 19-0 and had many analysts wondering aloud whether or not this basketball program was capable of pulling off an undefeated season.  And oh, yeah.  The team spent part of Tuesday morning on the phone with none other than President Barack Obama, who called to thank them for organizing a telethon that raised more than $1 million for Haiti.

After the phone call, CBSSports.com senior writer Gary Parrish wrote a blog post where he jokingly suggested that, should Kentucky lose at South Carolina, they would be the first victim of what would forever be known as the “President Obama Curse.”  Parrish may have been kidding when he wrote his post; after all, what serious college basketball fan would possibly suggest that Kentucky might lose that game?  But it looks as though Parrish has stumbled upon yet another “curse” that athletes, teams and fans alike must fear.

For years, football fans have agonized over the annual announcement of which star player will grace the cover of the latest Madden NFL video game.  Since 1999 (the year that the game stopped featuring John Madden on its cover), seven of the 12 players chosen to appear on the cover have suffered from a major decline in productivity from the year before*, or worse: a season-ending injury**.  In fact, belief in the Madden curse is so widespread that when LaDainian Tomlinson was initially tapped for the 2008 cover, his fans created SaveLTfromMadden.com to voice their displeasure (Tomlinson, citing contractual obligations, eventually declined the offer).

And what about the Sports Illustrated cover curse?  While this curse does not appear to be as damning as the Madden curse, fans of college and pro teams alike have lamented their favorite player’s placement on the cover before a big game.  In fact, one of my colleagues here at Fast Horse complained just last week when he saw that Brett Favre had been featured on the cover of one version of the Jan. 25 issue of Sports Illustrated.  And while our beloved Vikings did go on to lose, just as Mark Sanchez’s Jets lost after he graced the cover of the other version of SI’s Jan. 25 issue, is it fair to blame these losses on Sports Illustrated?  Is it fair to blame Troy Polamalu’s injury-plagued season on his status of Madden NFL cover boy?  And is it fair to blame Kentucky’s loss Tuesday night on President Obama?

The jury is still out on sports curses.  Are they just another way for fans to avoid placing the blame of an especially heart-wrenching defeat on the shoulders of their favorite player?  Or should college basketball fans start a petition urging their favorite teams to let President Obama’s future calls go straight to voicemail in hopes that the “President Obama Curse” never gains enough traction to join the ranks of the Madden and Sports Illustrated cover curses?  Only time will tell.

* Daunte Culpepper: broke the record for most fumbles in a single season after appearing on the cover in 2002. Marshall Faulk: did not register another 1,000 yard rushing season after appearing on the cover in 2003.  Brett Favre: Appeared on the cover in 2008 and saw his performance in the second half of the season decline in such a dramatic fashion that, even after leading the Jets to a season-opening 8-3 record, he failed to reach the playoffs.

** Michael Vick: appeared on the cover in 2004.  Broke his leg during a preseason game and missed the entire season.  Shaun Alexander missed six starts after breaking his foot in 2007 and appearing on the cover.  Vince Young: sustained a knee injury during the early part of the 2008 season and was replaced by Kerry Collins for the remainder of the season.  He graced the 2008 Madden cover.  Troy Polamalu: sprained his MCL during the season opener, then came back and injured his posterior cruciate ligament during game 6.  He shared the 2009 cover with Larry Fitzgerald.

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Nice to see the old Twins characters figure prominently. They'll light up and shake hands at every Twins homer.

A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to get a private tour of the new Twins ballpark, Target Field. My aunt is the executive assistant to Jerry Bell — the president of Twins Sports, Inc. — and Mr. Bell graciously allowed her to take some family members through the stadium.

After my tour, it was hard to imagine ever seeing a nicer professional sports stadium. It seems as though they have thought of everything! From lounges to food and bars, there doesn’t seem to be a bad seat in the house. The views, accommodations and experience from every seat seem priceless to me.

It’s tough to pick a favorite feature when I am so excited for all of it! No more heading into a bubble on a beautiful summer day. Instead, pack the sunscreen and decide which angle you are going to get the best tan from! The toughest decision to make now will be which of the many stadium bars you want to get a drink from.

Let the countdown begin! 75 days until opening day at Target Field and outdoor baseball for Minnesota Twins fans!

Lindsey in the Twins' locker room

Hot and cold running beer!

From the dugout, looking toward left field

The Metropolitan Club

View from the Metropolitan Club

Another view from the Metropolitan Club

Another view from one of the many stadium clubs

Club seating in left field

Rooftop club view

View from the press box

All the suites are named for Minnesota lakes

Inside a typical suite

Kirby has a bar named after him. There's also a 573 Club honoring the Killer

Inside the 573 Club: the great Harmon Killebrew

Along 1B and RF line

Upper deck, center field

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