Tag Archives: celebrities

Twitter Endorsers

Without a doubt, Twitter is a place overflowing with advertisements and endorsements of products, services, and businesses. It is quite effective in that area too. What are the common factors of most of the advertisements and endorsements? Of course it’s got to be endorsers. Celebrities, musicians, athletes and other famous personalities often are paid to do advertisements. Have you wondered how much a star would be paid just to endorse a product on Twitter via tweets? Sponsored Tweets has listed the names of the endorsers and the prices for their tweets.

Here is the top ten of Sponsored Tweets :

10. Khloe Kardashian, reality TV star – 2,020,532 followers: $2.941.25 per tweet
9. Ndamukong Suh, NFL defensive lineman – 40,818 followers: $2,941.25 per tweet
8. Stephanie Pratt, reality TV star – 478,996 followers: $2,941.25 per tweet
7. Spencer Pratt, reality TV star/doofus – 478,996 followers: $2,941.25 per tweet
6. Lindsay Lohan, actress/jailbird – 1,390,392 followers: $2,985.80 per tweet
5. Heidi Montag, reality TV star – 1,151,913 followers: $3,529.50 per tweet
4. Holly Madison, Playboy bunny – 533,709 followers: $4,000 per tweet
3. Soleil Moon Frye, Punky Brewster actress – 1,419,400 followers: $5,850 per tweet
2. Michael Ian Black, comedian – 1,574,746 followers: $5,882.50 per tweet
1. Kim Kardashian, reality TV star – 5,374,854 followers: “Call for price.”

Isn’t it unfair that these people will be paid huge amount of bucks to tweet, whereas commoners could tweet all their heart out for a brand but dont get a single cent out of it?

F.T.C. says bloggers need to do what good bloggers already do

There’s a lot of buzz about the new advertising disclosure regulations the F.T.C is putting into effect on December 1st.

Tim Arango over at The New York Times says in Soon, Bloggers Must Give Full Disclosure.

The F.T.C. said that beginning on Dec. 1, bloggers who review products must disclose any connection with advertisers, including, in most cases, the receipt of free products and whether or not they were paid in any way by advertisers, as occurs frequently. The new rules also take aim at celebrities, who will now need to disclose any ties to companies, should they promote products on a talk show or on Twitter. A second major change, which was not aimed specifically at bloggers or social media, was to eliminate the ability of advertisers to gush about results that differ from what is typical — for instance, from a weight loss supplement.

And David Gelles over at Financial Times says in Celebrities face crackdown with new rules on product endorsement

The new rules covering the use of testimonials in advertising, released by the Federal Trade Commission yesterday, say that anyone who endorses a product, whether celebrities or bloggers, must make explicit the compensation received from companies. This rule will affect everyone from film stars who receive free products in return for endorsements and bloggers.

The truth is, responsible and honest bloggers have been disclosing the fact they they’ve received free gifts or payments since the beginning. Now it’s regulated and that of course will be a bumpy ride, but certainly nothing crippling to the blogging community.

What do you think? Is F.T.C. regulation really needed? Has the F.T.C. gone too far? Not far enough?

F.T.C. says bloggers need to do what good bloggers already do

Our Facebook Page Creation and Management Services

In the past, there were many methods for promoting on Facebook; however, Facebook is clamping down on Terms of Service (TOS) violations. As a result of — and in response to — people creating profiles that do not reflect authentic peoeple but brands, products, services, or fictional entities, Facebook has replaced business profiles and business groups with Facebook Pages.

Pages are entitities not unlike profiles, and are becoming more and more like profiles. Like profiles, Pages have walls, updates, videos, events, and all the rest. Additionally, they interact with peoples’ statuses in much the same way that Facebook Profiles do.

When the staff of Abraham Harrison creates a Facebook Page or Group or Cause, it is important to remember that these Facebook Apps are community-oriented and need to be fed and watered.

The tools support community, conversation, and collaboration and many people develop these Facebook Pages as if they were a published brochure instead of a dynamic, developing, conversational community.

These communities are needy, more like a blog or like Twitter than anything like a page. A MySpace profile can be deceloped more like a proper web page, but Pages offer the opportunity to share Events, Conversation, Links, Discussion, Photos, Videos, etc. While they don’t have to be completely open and interactive, they do need to be responsive and there needs to be a certain level of maintenance and content creation committed to the Facebook Page.

There is a lot to know about the Pages, however, and there are many 3rd party tools and services that can be used to expand brand, including doing Facebook Ads and the like, to help promote the brand.

In order to best promote “fan” membership of a Facebook Page, one needs to be creative as to the reason why being a fan is worthwhile. Some easy “gifts” can include exclusive content, Facebook-only offers, “live” interviews, access to celebrities or notables, etc. When an online brand reputation

One of the things that makes Facebook Pages better than either Facebook Profiles or Facebook Groups is that the content is not hidden behind the Facebook Authentication Membership Wall. More like MySpace profiles and groups, which are completely visible and partially accessible when not yet a registered member of the site, Facebook Pages are one of the few “rooms” in the mostly “gated community” of Facebook proper.

Facebook Pages can be indexed by search engines like a normal web page and found using simple keywords through Google, Live.com, Ask.com, and Yahoo!

One of the beautiful things about Facebook Pages is that Google loves Facebook more than just about any other web site (Google loves Twitter more) so brands that have a Facebook Page are often surprised by how quickly the Page turns up on the first page of search.

There are other ways of promoting brand on Facebook, which can include cross promotions with other Social Networks (have all of the networks aimed at the Page), organic SEO strategies, Facebook Ads, as well as incorporating a strong blogger outreach campaign aimed at brand promotion.

However, that said, it is hard to start a Facebook Page and we generally recommend starting with a Facebook Group. It is much easier to prospect new memberships, invite new members, and get everything started from zero, so we often start with a Group, build that up to over 1,000 members, and then have the Group converted into becoming a Facebook Page, which is what we have the connections to do. We call it the one-two sling-shot punch!

The advantage of a Facebook Page is that you can use it as a proxy web page for marketing and a proxy online community in support of your brand instead of developing or hosting your own; however, aside from being a “fan” of your company, brand, product, or service, there is little incentive, or “gift,” associated with ever returning to your Facebook Page unless you spend some time and resources developing unique content for the Page — Facebook Pages support photos, events, videos, message boards, a wall, etc – as well as for responding to questions, queries, comments, and the like.

One of the strong advantages of smartly-but-aggressively developing messages, updates, photos, videos, and exclusive content is that the New Facebook Pages have evolved into me a lot more like the Original Facebook Profile, which includes status updates that scroll down each fan’s status update stream in exactly the same way their friends and family’s statuses update.

This is a very powerful method for brand messaging and distrobution. One of the past lacks of Facebook Groups and Facebook Pages is that it was too easy to join and forget, becoming a Group member or a Page fan and then never seeing hide nor hair of it until there was an explicit admin message to all members — a member update.

Even so, with Facebook Groups in the past, one was penalized by success because when a Facebook Group grow above 1,000-1,200 members, the ability to send a message to all members was revoked.

With the new Facebook Pages, it is easy to keep “fans” engaged and updates, through the regular status update stream that all users; unfortunately, as I mentioned above in the section about Facebook Groups, it is easier to proespect and collect new members on a Facebook Group and a Facebook Cause because it is very possible to easily invite personal Facebook “friends” to Groups and Causes.

When creating a brand profile on Facebook, it behooves one to develop all three: Facebook Page, Facebook Group, and Facebook Cause.

Our Twitter Community Management Services

Twitter is not a broadcast medium, it is a community-prospecting platform. In order for the entire community to take shape and take bloom, one needs to not simply register an account, one needs to design, populate, and then prospect followers before there can be any real growth.

Twitter community-building
This community-building leverages both our collected contacts and current community relationships as well as several tools that we use to help promote and grow online reputation and growth of your Twitter online reputation. In other words, like everything online, if you build it they won’t come. Building it is a start, if course, but unless you’re Oprah or Ashton Kutcher, there is a lot of work and a lot of building, promotion, and prospecting required, and that is what Abraham Harrison LLC can do for you.

Twitter posts
Twitter has become an essential part of online branding. Companies, celebrities, brands, and even fictional entities have been leveraging the ease-of-use and the simplicity of Twitter to both communication with current and potential customers as well as being able to engage and respond to user question, user requests, and user responses. However, it isn’t as simple as posting status updates to Twitter regularly. In our process, we work with the client to come up with 25-100 pre-approved “tweets” that the client can approve, veto, or edit. Over time, AHLLC is able to message on behalf of you, the client, with messages that are consistent with client vision. After that, the messages are delivered to the Twitter stream with an approved-to frequency, from once-per-day to a couple posts to multiple-posts-per-day, with the frequency according to the scope of the contract. During this process, it is also important — essential — to trust the Twitter team to be able to triage all replies and direct messages on behalf of the client — or, there needs to be a rapid process to triage replies and direct messages through the client. As the campaign moves forward, the evolution of the campaign can change to offer more and more independence to the Twitterer.

Twitter Retweets
The secred sauce of Twitter is retweeting (retweet (RT) a) to copy a tweet and then send it again on twitter. b) passing along of messages in Twitter) Retweeting is the epitome of what makes Twitter such a powerful tool.

Retweeting allows Twitterers to repeat content from one Twitter stream they’re following onto all of their own followers. Writing compelling tweets is what organically can result in retweets down the Twitter stream; however, it is also important to use Retweets as a form of reciprocal currency. Retweeting someone else’s tweet can engender attention or connection and build social equity within the “Twitterverse.”

In addition to intentionally retweeting on a client’s behalf, one of the benefits of running your Twitter campaign through Abraham Harrison LLC is that you are able to instantaneously have all of your client tweets retweeted through not only our staff’s Twitter accounts but through all the status-update social network sites our staff is a member of.

This allows our clients an automatically enter the conversation well-in-advance of their earned reputation online.

Twitter message modeling
In our process, we work with the client to come up with 25-100 pre-approved “tweets” that the client can approve, veto, or edit. Over time, AHLLC is able to message on behalf of you, the client, with messages that are consistent with client vision. After that, the messages are delivered to the Twitter stream with an approved-to frequency, from once-per-day to a couple posts to multiple-posts-per-day, with the frequency according to the scope of the contract.

Our Twitter Community Management Services

You are Free to Choose Who You Follow on Twitter

Adam is an insightful fellow. He put into words what I have been thinking: celebrities are not ruining Twitter because nobody is forced to follow celebs — or anyone — on Twitter. Please read Celebrities Are Not Taking Over Twitter for the rest of the below insightful excerpt:

Celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, Shaquille O’Neal and Britney Spears are not taking over Twitter. A well publicized event like Oprah tweeting on her show won’t help. Ashton vs. Larry King, in a contest to see which account, @aplusk (“a plus k”) or @cnnbrk can reach a million followers first is a publicity event that had lots of benefits for both in terms of building large networks, but they are not taking over. Any way you slice it, their efforts are futile. They can’t take over Twitter because of one simple fact: people choose who they follow.

The Twitterati Version 1 are bitter and jealous but they should be ecstatic because they, the first Twitterati, were, in fact, ground zero for something that has taken the world by storm.

It is the same for Internet Denizens Version 1 complaining as the unwashed AOL members flooded into USENET.

What Adam might be saying and I am surely stating is that this break out is good and that there is still plenty of room in Twitter to hide in plain site. Additionally, there is little or no use complaining.

We not only must compete with the Ashton Kutchers and Oprahs of the world but we are also dealing with their media machine, their publicists, their networks and their studios as well — in addition to the obvious equity that they’re happy to cash in from their other media platforms to spend of Twelebrity.

I am amazed that after three years and acruing “merely” 6,347 Followers, I have chosen to spend my time well by investing in 140 characters x 16,210 tweets, resulting in around 2,269,400 characters.

So, heaven forbid I had spent all of that energy in Pownce, which has died, instead of the winner, Twitter — now that would be a waste.

Unlike my blog, which is surely my very own intellectual property that I can maintain forever, my Twitter content is dependent on the health of Twitter. So, I feel blessed, amazed, and triumphant that Twitter has become de rigeur in the world of online media outreach, content-sharing, and community outreach.

You are Free to Choose Who You Follow on Twitter

Mercedes-Benz Geländewagen celebrating 30 years

Gallery: 30 Years of the GWage via Autoblog

Bling Bling Bling Goes The Adidas

In celebration of their 60th anniversary, otherwise known as the diamond anniversary, Adidas has added some diamond bling to one of their most popular shoe designs, the Superstar. The Diamond Superstar is made of fine leather and is accessorized with real diamonds and Swarovski crystals.

(PS: Limited edition, £450) Via Retro to Go & Luxist

I Love Me My Geländewagen EDITION30.PUR

I love inappropriately grunty utes. I loved owning a 1997 Land Rover Discovery with a lift but I love the Land Rover Defender series of utility vehicles even more. The crème de la crème of the lot, however, is the Mercedes-Benz Geländewagen, known as the G-Wagen or G-Class. Now, according to Luxist, 30 Years and Counting: Mercedes Celebrates With Special G-Class, Mercedes is coming out with an offroad-focused specialty vehicle known as the new EDITION30.PUR, which is cool, “a rugged off-roader to satisfy the serious trekkers that have embraced the G-Wagen for the past three decades. It’s all bare bones, with a hose-down interior and diesel engine and a heavy-duty hood you can actually stand on.” Now, that’s the one I want.

Mercedes-Benz has a variety of sport-utilities and crossovers in its line-up today, but long before luxury sport-utility vehicles turned mainstream, the German automaker was building a truck called the Geländewagen. Known as the G-Wagen or G-Class for short, the truck started production in 1979 as a tender for the Shah of Iran, and has been in production ever since. This year Mercedes is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the G-Wagen with a pair of special editions.

The first, called the EDITION30.PUR, is a rugged off-roader to satisfy the serious trekkers that have embraced the G-Wagen for the past three decades. It’s all bare bones, with a hose-down interior and diesel engine and a heavy-duty hood you can actually stand on. The EDITION30, however, is based on the luxurious, go-anywhere G500 and features unique Platinum Black paint and special leather and wood interior. Available now for order overseas, 60k Euros will get you the bare-bones EDITION30.PUR, while the luxuriously appointed EDITION30 edges closer to the 100k Euro mark.

Gallery: Mercedes-Benz G-Class EDITION30

autowp.ru mercedes benz g klasse gelandewagen 5 door 30 I Love Me My Geländewagen EDITION30.PUR

Aston Martin Revives the Lagonda (Really?)

Back in the late 70s and 80s, Aston Martin made a terrible mistake in a modern interpretation of the Aston Martin Lagonda from 1976-1989. It was the first modern Aston Martin. It followed the unfortunate trend in the 70s and 80s when European car makers tried to become more like American muscle cars and tried to appeal to the need of the power brokers of the 80s who wanted bigger, faster, shinier, and more powerful emblems for their wealth. The Lamborghini Countach, the Lamborghini LM002, the Ferrari Berlinetta Boxer, and this model of Porsche 911 are prime examples.

Well, according to Jalopnik, Aston Martin plans to revive the brand:

As rumored, Aston Martin is readying the Lagonda nameplate for an all-newGeneva Motor Show concept. The secret concept, previewing a new brand, is said to be a perfect blend of practicality and performance.

Lagonda was founded in 1906, but was purchased and integrated by Aston Martin in 1947. The Lagonda name has been affixed to Aston Martins since then, and graced the quirky 80s-era Aston Martin Lagonda, but has never been its own brand. According to Aston Martin, the Lagonda nameplate is preparing to celebrate its 100th anniversary next year (no, that makes no sense to us either) and to commemorate the occasion, an all-new concept will debut at the Geneva Motor Show in March.

There’s no telling what this concept could be other than a competitor in the luxury car market filled with Bentleys and Rolls Royces, but Aston Martin is already talking about a production schedule for a 2012 on-sale date. We’ll keep our eyes peeled.

Aston Martin Press Release:

Aston Martin CEO confirms the revival of the Lagonda MarqueAston Martin Chief Executive Officer Dr Ulrich Bez has today confirmed his intention to revive the Lagonda marque.

In a statement today he said, “After my eight years with Aston Martin, four with profitability, and 16 months of independence, it’s time to think about a longer term future. Aston Martin is an honest, authentic brand which builds the most beautiful sportscars combining modern technology with craftsmanship. Next year we will launch the four door Rapide sportscar, and this will be followed by the project ‘one 77′, the most spectacular Aston Martin ever. Aston Martins are currently available in 32 countries but we will remain limited in our market penetration by the pure character of our cars – sportscars.

“We have now investigated and concluded that the revival of the Lagonda brand would allow us to develop cars which can have a different character than a sportscar, and therefore offer a perfect synergy. Lagonda will use a unique design language as Aston Martin does. We will take elements of DNA from the past but will be very future orientated as we are with Aston Martin. With Lagonda offering exclusive, luxurious and truly versatile products with high quality and usability and suitable for both existing and emerging markets, I believe we can be present in more than 100 countries in the world.

“In 2009 Lagonda is about to celebrate its 100th birthday and in its centenary year we are confident that we will show the first concept of a car which could be in the market in 2012,” he confirmed.

I guess this is what another model year of the Aston Martin Lagonda looked like:

I don’t like that one either.

McKinney is a Website You Can Talk To

Othersource in Poland partnered with McKinney ad agency to build a Flash 3D engine with artificial intelligence for the McKinney website that’s launching this week.

Compared to other sites in the Semantics category, this one has an unusual level of interactivity. Users can ask the site questions, via the keyboard, using everyday language and expressions, and the proprietary “conversation engine” will decipher them and then fetch relevant results.

This means the user becomes liberated from the navigation. You no longer need background information to search the site – you just ask it a question.

Also, the site is completely index-able, bookmark-able, etc… from every page – even the video thumbnails have a unique URL. And every single page is a printable PDF, laid out for A4 or newsletter.I also found a nice blog post about it over at AdLab, Agency Site With a Chat Bot:

McKinney has built a Pandorabot-based chat bot (aka “conversation engine”) into its brand new site with a somewhat trippy interface. See if you can catch answers that were pre-scripted to make the machine sound particularly intelligent as opposed to the generic chat bot cop-outs like “Say what?” or “Come again”. – thank you, Michelle

Continue reading →

Chris Abraham

Because the Medium is the Message