The third part of the series is scheduled for an October 21st release, and to help spread the word and to stoke interest, Paramount — the studio backing the Paranormal Activity series — is turning to Twitter to promote the movie via their “Tweet To See It First” campaign. The concept is simple. Twitter users can pick the city closet to them, tweet about it, and the top 20 cities, which is calculated which ones have the most tweets, will be shown the movie three days before the movie opens for the rest of the world.

Over at the Paranormal Activity 3 website, users can select the city closet to them, which they then tweet about. These posts act as a vote, of which, the site keeps a real-time leader board that displays the cities that are currently winning.

The tweets in question look like the following:

Unfortunately, that tweet represents the first one from the WebProNews area, so it’s doubtful Lexington, Kentucky will be one of the lucky 20 to get the early premiere. To help kick the “Tweet Your Scream” event off, Paramount released the second trailer for PA3, which doesn’t look too bad at all:

If you’re interested in joining in the fun, you’ll need a few friends with Twitter accounts in the local area of choice. Simply navigate to the Paranormal Activity 3 site, pick your city — or the one closet to you — and get to tweeting. The contest ends on October 13th, at 11:59 PST. You can follow the official PA3 Twitter account, as well, @TweetYourScream.

You know the ones I’m referring to, but if not, allow this to serve as a refresher:

It seems as if those self-lacing shoes are about to become a reality, and the word is being spread on a viral basis as Nike wants to stoke the fires of anticipation before they launch the 2011 Air Mags. Apparently, the shoes will be available tomorrow (Friday, September 9th), and as indicated, the buzz for Nike’s power-laced shoes is building.

The viral aspect began in earnest when Frank Marshall, the executive producer on all three Back to the Future movies, started tweeting these ambiguous pieces of bait:

Of course, when you throw the idea of hoverboards out there, it’s hard not to get excited at the mere possibility, but since our scientific community has yet to master anti-gravity as a means of transportation — at least, on a consumer level — we know that’s still a pipe dream.

Self-lacing shoes, on the other hand, are not.

Nike’s already patented a self-lacing shoe construct, and now, it appears as if they are ready to unleash these beasts on the rest of the world. But first, the marketing aspect has to kick in, and thanks to the viral nature of the web, Nike’s “Power laces! Alright!” shoes are now buzzing.

Nike has also released a promotional video for the Air Mags, and it’s vague enough to be considered a viral offering. To wit, the video is called “McFly’s Closet,” as if to provide a hint where Nike is leaning:

Update:

Nike has a press release concerning the shoes, and if any of you have any inclinations of acquiring a pair, get ready to flex some eBay skills. According to Nike:

1500 pairs of the 2011 NIKE MAG will be auctioned on eBay with all net proceeds going directly to The Michael J. Fox Foundation. Each day for the duration of the ten-day auction, one hundred and fifty pairs of the 2011 NIKE MAG shoes will be made available via eBay’s Fashion Vault. The auction starts September 8, 8:30PM PST, and will end September 18. Thanks to a previous 50 million dollar match given to the Michael J. Fox Foundation, all donations will be matched, effectively doubling the contributions from the auction.

While Nike says eBay’s Fashion Vault is where the charity auction will take place, there’s nothing on the page to indicate it the auction is now active. There is, however, a video of the shoes, which, I’m sad to report, will not have the power lace system.

That unpleasant reality is something that faces an upcoming sitcom that’s scheduled to appear on NBC’s Fall lineup. Based on the reaction of the Twitterverse, NBC’s new rom-com sitcom, Whitney may have failed before its first viewer has even seen it.

In order to promote Whitney, NBC put up a bunch of billboards in the major cities, all with the idea of spreading the word and catching the eyes of folks who are looking for that special show to call their own. One of the billboards, which comes courtesy of the Daily Billboard Facebook page, leads this article, and to say the Twitter reaction to it and the others was quite derisive is something of an understatement:

The thing is, it wasn’t just random viewers who were reacting negatively. It was people who could be considered peers of the show’s leads. From the removed article, which is still alive in my Google Reader:

If you go check #RejectedWhitneyPromo right now, you’ll find comedians, writers, etc. of all levels of notoriety bashing the show without the first episode having even made it to air.

And so, we checked, and guess what? Kroeger’s right. Reaction to the upcoming Whitney, thanks in large part to those maligned billboards, is harsh. So much so, in fact, the idea of the show being doomed before it even airs seems like a real possibility. It doesn’t help that the early buzz concerning Whitney is also of the “meh” kind.

From AVClub’s Fall Season preview:

To put it bluntly, Whitney’s pilot is clumsy. Sure, the show wants to be edgy and different, but a huge chunk of the first episode involves Cummings in a sexy nurse’s uniform—a desperate appeal to the lowest common denominator that sitcoms don’t usually resort to until a little further down the line. As a character, Whitney says a lot of unrelated witty things, but Cummings the real-life showrunner hasn’t figured out what she wants the character to say in a broader sense.

Based on that, it would be surprising if Whitney survived its first season, but then again, and as Kroeger points out in his post, Two and Half Men is wildly successful, so predicting these things is not an exact science.

Nevertheless, as indicated, the early Twitter reaction to Whitney, powered via the #RejectedWhitneyPromo hashtag, and to the promotional content has not been pleasant, but this first one, well, it just makes me laugh:

If you don’t feel like reading all of that, just watch this mash-up promotional video for the upcoming show:

Now, I’m not entirely sure why Whitney is the only new fall show to be taking a beating like this. I mean, H8R sounds like absolute trash, but yet, it doesn’t have much of a Twitter presence, at least in regards to the venom Whitney is receiving.

Based on this, do you think Whitney has a fighting chance to make it to a second season or did NBC’s attempt at viral promotion blow the whole thing up before it even aired? I will say, however, based on the all the negative reaction, it’s almost impossible to not watch at least one segment of Whitney when it airs. From that perspective, maybe NBC didn’t fail after all.

As it turns out, iPad Head Girl isn’t the next step in horror movie special effects. Instead, she represents a pretty slick viral marketing campaign; one that promotes a new men’s magazine that will only be available on the iPad environment. The magazine in question — is a tablet-only publication really a magazine? — is called Cosmo for Guys, and it comes from the Hearst media empire. Hearst is also responsible for magazines like Oprah’s O, and of course, the traditional Cosmopolitan.

According to The Next Web, the iPad Head Girl viral campaign was created by the Thinkmodo marketing team, and the design of the iPad helmet was pretty ingenious:

The video features a girl wearing headgear made out of 4 iPads shaped into a cube projecting video playback of each side of her head.

Apparently, the model wearing the iPad helmet couldn’t see without the use of a video camera in her purse. The camera relayed images of the surrounding environment to a pair of video glasses, which, in turn, allowed her to navigate the streets of New York City.

Of course, putting someone on the streets with iPads covering their face is not the only ingredients necessary for a viral marketing campaign. The product being pushed — Cosmo for Guys — needs to be featured in some aspect as well; and that’s where the genius of the design comes in. Next Web’s article contains a quote from the campaign’s director, which details the approach quite nicely:

“The concept and analogy here is to show a guy ‘getting inside a girl’s head’ and sort of ‘reading her mind’ by flipping through the magazine pages on the iPad. The reason for that is: it is the first magazine for men that is written by women, so for the first time women are letting guys in on what they think,” says the viral’s Creative Director Michael Krivicka.

That could be one of the largest digital publications in history of man, especially if the women writing the magazine start discussing things like quality time and meaningful conversation. If the subject of how men can entertain themselves while escorting their significant other on a shopping spree comes up, we’ll know that the goal of Cosmo for Guys isn’t education.

Try subjugation instead.

Facetiousness aside, Thinkmodo’s viral creation is certainly effective — could you ignore someone walking the streets with an iPad cube on their head? — although, it’s hard to say if the curiosity would lead to guys wanting to download a men’s magazine that’s only available on Apple’s touchable device. Maybe if there’s some fantasy football information available. Or beer commercials.

Apparently, guys who love being guys with their guy friends love beer commercials.

From this perspective, it means you cast you’re lure where the fish are. It’s really that simple and it’s that same mentality that explains why so many companies and businesses are comfortable sending potential traffic to Facebook. Go where the people are, and it’s pretty obvious Funny or Die has a substantial following. Their original content says as much. The question is, can they be an effective music marketer?

Considering there are over 4000 Facebook likes on the page, and already over 75,000 views of the video, which launched yesterday, that answer sounds like a “yes.” Granted, those aren’t Rebecca Black numbers, who’s new video/song already has over 1 million views, but over 100,000 dislikes. It, too, was launched yesterday. Of course, the Beasties don’t have quite the Twitter reach Young Miss Black does, and it’s highly doubtful people aren’t watching Beastie Boys videos just to hate on them.

Speaking of videos, the Funny or Die release of the video attached to the “Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win” song is a little over three minutes long, and it’s an absolute gem, thanks in large part to the direction of Spike Jonze, the same person who directed previous Beastie Boys videos like “Sabotage” and “Sure Shot.” Jonze is once again on-point as he uses action figures to tell the story:

Oddly enough, the YouTube/Vevo extended version only has a little over 300 views, although, that could simply be a case of slow updating on YouTube’s part. Nevertheless, when compared to the popularity of the aforementioned Rebecca Black, it’s a little dejecting; but then again, you can probably count the number of tweens with the necessary attention span to last 11-plus minutes of a music video on one hand. It could also be a case of these same youngsters being completely oblivious to the likes of the Beastie Boys.

Nevertheless, the new video has at least one fan, and he’ll be enjoying this video long after the initial hype has died down.

As for this new era in marketing, how viable is releasing unrelated content to a site in order to promote your work? Or is this a case of the Beastie Boys resonating with the Funny or Die crowd, and because of that, it’s more of a natural partnership than it first appears?

Here’s the basic concept of the ad campaign: Kenny Powers has taken over (in a hostile fashion) K-Swiss and become their new CEO. Why did he do this? In order to change the sports world and stop people from acting like “goddamn pussies” all the time, according to him. To fulfill this goal, he has hired some top athletes to help him run the company.

It looks like K-Swiss has launched this viral campaign to promote their new shoe called “Tubes” or as Kenny Powers calls them Totally Unbelievably Badass (and) Extremely Stealth-like. They have taken a multi=platform approach, taking to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to promote their new product.

On their YouTube Channel, K-Swiss has released a series of videos that show what Kenny Powers is doing as their new CEO. With the help of people like Michael Bay, The Biggest Loser‘s Jillian Michaels, and KC Chiefs QB Matt Cassel, the results are some of the best commercials I’ve seen in quite some time. This longest of the commercials contains components from most of the shorter ones. It is NSFW, as you would expect a Kenny Powers commercial to be, and just shows what companies can get away with on YouTube that they could never do on TV. Check it out -

[UPDATE: The original video I had embedded here has been removed by the user (K-Swiss Inc.), about 3 minutes after I put up this article. It contained quite a bit of foul language. Here's another video from the ad campaign, which is free of bad language]

[UPDATE 2: Here is the original video, entitled "MFCEO," uploaded by a user that's not affiliated with K-Swiss. So, enjoy - it may be removed at any time.]

K-Swiss announced their new campaign via Twitter on Friday, saying that Powers had taken over and linking to their Facebook page.

They began two new hashtags: #ImTheCEO and #WhenKennyPowersIsYourBoss. The latter actually started trending over the weekend, probably thanks to its adoption by the popular fake-account of Kenny Powers, @KFUCKINGP. That account has almost 300,000 followers on Twitter.

That account is explicitly “not affiliated with HBO or Eastbound and Down,” but you have to think that K-Swiss reached out to them when this viral campaign began. Not only does it get involved in the hashtags and humor of the thing, but @KFUCKINGP links to K-Swiss’ Facebook pages on multiple occasions.

That aforementioned Facebook promotion looks something like this -

K-SWISSWe’re still trying to figure out why our new CEO Kenny Powers is paying all K-SWISS employees in $1 dollar bills. 1 day ago · 58 likes · 14 comments

Besides providing for a ridiculously awesome viral video, do you think this is a good viral campaign by K-Swiss? Let us know how you feel.

If you watched any of the NBA Playoffs, you saw a massive marketing campaign for the upcoming Kevin James vehicle, Zookeeper. Ads and other related content were forced upon the basketball-viewing public because, apparently, the target audience for such schlock are people who watch sports. Never mind the fact that these ads should’ve been shown to children during viewings of Sponge-Bob, instead of NBA fans. The fact is, Zookeeper had a hefty marketing campaign, however misguided, but apparently, the product placement was not limited to Dallas/Miami basketball games.

How does editing reruns of television shows that, in this case, were shown four years ago, to include promotional material for a 2011 movie sound? Does that sound savvy or ridicule-worthy? Thanks to an eagle-eyed Consumerist reader, it may be easier for you to answer that question. As the Consumerist revealed, the marketing arm that does the promotional work for Zookeeper decided that a 2007 episode of “How I Met Your Mother” was a great place to include such marketing materials.

The edited image in question:

What’s next? Placing bumper sticker ads on for Super 8 on new copies of the Back to the Future DVD? Or maybe an inserted ad for the upcoming Captain America movie in M.A.S.H reruns?

Lead image courtesy.

“Just in time” for Father’s Day The Beastie Beastie Boys have released a new video to promote their new album. This time, they are promoting the June 21st release of Hot Sauce Committee Part Two on vinyl. Yes, I am aware that Father’s day is this Sunday, June 19th. I’m sure the Beastie Boys are as well. Let’s not let math get in the way of this.

This one isn’t star studded, but it is so awesomely strange that it quickly makes up for that. A happy family sits down for a nice cookout, but things get interesting when dad starts to grill his vinyl collection. Check it out below -

So forget the coupons for a free car wash. Forget the ties, #1 Dad shirts and executive pen sets. Your father really wants some Beastie Boys. The album, released May 3rd in the U.S., has received pretty universal acclaim. This writer has regrettably failed to find the opportunity to give it a thorough listen, but I might have to remedy that this weekend.

This classic gem has put me in a great mood, enjoy – ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES!

It’s safe to say that, after Bill’s atrocious experience with Dell’s Customer Care service, he won’t be recommending these products to the companies he advises ever again. At his blog (via the Consumerist), Bill recounts his Dell customer service with an incredibly detailed post that features phone calls, their duration and the discussions that occurred. To say Bill’s experience with Dell Customer Care was poor is something of an understatement.

Some history: Bill ordered a laptop from the company in question and when he received it, he discovered he had paid for a very expensive brick instead of a working computer. Naturally, Bill took his complaint to the proper Dell channels, and from there, his adventure began in earnest. In his post, Bill documents each and every phone call he had with Dell Customer Care, and truthfully, it reads like a manual on how not to provide good customer service. Some highlights, with [sic]s intact:

Wed May 18th – 1 Hour 15 Minutes (Computer troubleshooting)
Tried to troubleshoot battery, powercords, monitor, hard drive, etc to get the laptop to turn on.

Thursday, May 19th – 36 Minutes (Call #1)
Total hold time 32 minutes
Total time speaking with person 4 minutes
I call into Dell “Small and Medium Business” support. After a very long wait, I am greated by “Mr.Tom” (from India) I am told that theirsystems are down due to an upgrade and that they cannot help me. Please call back later today. ….. This is just sad, a COMPUTER COMPANY that is doing an upgrade in the middle of the day!

While this sounds all too typical, Bill’s experience continues with perhaps the funniest aspect, upon reflection:

Friday, May 20th – 18 Minutes (Call #2)
Total hold time 11 minutes
Total talking time 7 Minutes
I wait till the afternoon and call customer care small and medium business directly. I am greated by another Indian, don’t remember which American sounding name he game himself. I attempt to explain to him the situation, and he literally starts to raise his voice and tells me that I have to call tech support. I explain that I called them and they told me that I had to call customer care. I then ask to speak to a manager. He says “NO”. Then he says, he has to follow procedure, I have to talk to tech support. I say again, “I want to speak to a manager immediately”. He screams “NO” and hangs up the call.

Does that particular technique appear in the Dell customer service handbook under “how to deal with persistent customers who have legitimate beefs?” Unfortunately for Bill, his excursion continues for over 400 minutes, and it’s filled with FedEx disputes, “managers” who make him wait in silence, apparently hoping Bill would hang up, and finally, the satisfaction Bill initially sought out to begin with. Unfortunately, for Bill to get to this point, he had to endure what should go down has an example of how not to deal with paying customers who aren’t pleased — with legitimate reason, mind you — with their level of service up to this point.

However, Bill’s ire doesn’t just stop with a blistering blog post. It’s safe to say Dell’s (lack of) service left an impression:

So, here I am. I have a minimum of 404 Minutes – just shy of 7 hours trying to get my issue resolved adequately. Worse yet, I am still missing a laptop and was not ONCE offered a replacement or asked if I wanted to purchase a new laptop.

Dell, you really screwed up on this one. Not only is my company a decent spender, I make recommendations to Fortune 500 companies on a regular basis on the best way to allocate their I.T. expenditures. You cannot possibly expect me to recommend you to anyone in the future -this mistake may in fact cost you millions.

The thought’s closing statement was highlighted in red, just to emphasize the level of dissatisfaction Bill experienced. The question is, will Bill’s ire work like a strong viral marketing campaign, only in reverse? Will his word resonate throughout the business sector he advises or will Dell dodge yet another bullet from the bad customer service gun?

In regards to viral marketing, while the concept has been around before the Internet became popular — see the first Star Wars movie and how word of mouth assisted in its uptake — the connectivity of the Internet, not to mention the speed with which messages travel, has completely changed how viral marketing is conducted nowadays. Naturally, online videos play a big role in this marketing approach, which brings us to the Beastie Boys and their upcoming new album, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two.

Recently, to help promote their new release, the Beasties released a trailer that featured a list of cameos that served as a who’s who in the comedy section of Hollywood. Notable faces like Seth Rogen, Will Ferrell, Danny McBride, John C. Reilly, Will Arnett, and Jack Black appeared and once word about the video hit the blogs, it spread like wildfire. In two weeks, the video has amassed over 2 million views, and while that’s not Rebecca Black numbers — I guess the tweens aren’t too familiar with the Beastie Boys — it’s quite a bit for video that serves as a trailer for an upcoming song/new album.

Another area of surprise concerning this viral marketing effort comes from the Beastie Boys’ use of MTV’s video service instead of, say, YouTube. Granted, the “M” in MTV used to stand for music, but in today’s society, it might as well stand for “My God, What Happened To This Channel?”

To put it mildly, MTV is to music what drunk drivers are to safe roads. Furthermore, and while this is only a hunch, it’s a safe bet that more people equate YouTube with music videos than they do MTV’s video service. I’d even hazard a guess that says YouTube has more music videos in its index than MTV does.

Nevertheless, MTV was the initial conduit of choice for B-E-A-S-T-I-E (What up, Mike-D? Aw yeah, that’s me…); although, once the video hit the blogs, it didn’t matter what video service they used. Another item of note is the Beastie Boys’ official site is powered by Tumblr’s service. For some reason, I find that rather interesting because it means artists aren’t relying on the expensive design houses to construct their sites. Clearly, ease and usability is the goal instead of a pretty Flash-based site that limits visitor interaction.

One last aside: The Internet also deserves credit for the rise of video trailers for upcoming music releases like the following offer from underground rapper, Murs: