Carre d’etoile has created the perfect hotel room squished into a transportable 10ft.x10ft. cube, with a skylight. This French, eco-tourism company has mastered a high-end-room-in-a-box equipped with accommodations for four, a kitchen, a flat screen TV, shower, and a telescope.

They have also paired their modern image with effective advertising strategies reaching their target through social media with twitter and blogger out-reach, even appearing in trendhunter.com. Currently, these French cubes can only be found in France, but with all the buzz floating around their bound to reach an international audience quickly (although the space might be a bit tight for us larger Americans).

http://springwise.com/tourism_travel/index.php?page=8

Those mini billboards atop New York taxis generally deliver not-so-subtle messages that vie for consumer attention in one of the densest visual environments in the world.

High art they most certainly aren’t.

But for the months of January and February, Show Media, a Las Vegas company that owns about half the billboards (they’re called cones) adorning New York city’s taxis, decided to give commerce a rest. Instead of advertisements, roughly 500 cabs displayed a different kind of message; artworks by Alex Katz.

The effort cost Show Media about $100,000 in lost revenue, but John Amato, one of Show’s owners and a contemporary-art fan, said: “I thought it was time to take a step back. January and February are slow months. I could have cut my rates but instead I decided to hit the mute button and give something back to the city.”

He contacted Mr. Katz through the Art Production Fund, a nonprofit New York organization that presents art around the city and proposed displaying his art for 2 months.

The project was called “Art Adds,” not just as a play on its advertising origins but also, Mr. Amato said, because “art adds to the public’s vision.”

Mr. Katz, known for his portraits of supermodels Christy Turlington and Kate Moss, has taken two of his recent portraits and put them together. One is a frontal portrait, the other the back of her head. They are set against a black background. “you can’t go wrong with black and yellow,” the artist said of the poster like quality of the design.

CF’s a fan of Mr. Katz’s work and we noticed the cones zipping around town and did some digging to unearth the story behind the artwork on the cabs. We quickly realized that there isn’t a revenue generation story or the launch of a hot new app here, but we applaud Show Media’s efforts anyway. This mash-up of art and fashion resulted in a stylish treat that cut through the visual ghetto New York’s cityscape too often is. Taste and beauty count for the quality of our environment and adds value to the New York brand experience. And that’s ROI we all can enjoy.

It’s official. Betty White wants to “thank you for being a friend” in helping her take over the Saturday Night Live stage. The Proposal actress confirmed last night at Elton John’s Oscar-viewing party that she will be appearing on SNL. Whether White will be hosting an episode or simply starring in the upcoming SNL “Women of Comedy” special (which would include SNL alumni Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Molly Shannon), it was a major phenomenon on what social media and a large group of fans (480,000+) who share a common wish can do to influence an American television network as large as NBC.

It started off as an innocent Facebook Fan page “Betty White to Host SNL (please?)” created by Golden Girls fan David Mathews back in December 30, 2009. The purpose: Mathews found Betty White humorous and felt that hosting SNL is considered a gold standard milestone for any funny man and woman. The result: 88-year-old funny lady Betty White will appear! The internet always wins!

Do you think she can out-funny this past weekend’s host Zach Galifianakis?

And what’s next? The Facebook nerd anthem? Oh wait. There is…and for your listening and viewing pleasure: The New Dork – Entrepreneur State of Mind

Social Networks what dreams are made of…

Back in January, the famous Australian wine brand [yellow tail] chose to donate $100,000 to the US Humane Society. As part of the “[tail] for tails” program launched by the brand, the donation aimed at demonstrating Yellow Tail’s commitment to rescue animals in peril.

But this move made American farmers, as well as consumers, upset, as the HSUS is opposed to factory farming and is allegedly using donations for political lobbying, rather than rescuing animals in peril.

How the crisis started:

Users poured angry comments all over the brand’s Facebook page. Troy Hadrick, a 5th-generation farmer from South Dakota,  resorted to YouTube to voice his disagreement, gathering more than 11,800 viewers to date.

Then, the discussion spilled to Facebook and Twitter. An alternate Facebook Page, Yellow Fail, gathered nearly 3,900 fans (vs. 2,200 for Discover Yellow Tail), while a #yellowfail hashtag provided buzz opportunities on Twitter.

How did Yellow Tail addressed the crisis?

Listening to consumers, yellow tail posted an official response on Feb 4th. Here is an extract:

We’ve listened to your recent feedback and it was very helpful to us – in fact it prompted us to specifically choose the areas where we’d most like to celebrate animals. Here’s what we’ve decided: We’ll still honor our monetary commitment to the HSUS, but now we are specifically directing our $100,000 donation to HSUS’ Animal Rescue Team, which launch on-the-ground missions to rescue animals in peril [...] We may not always agree with 100 percent of what an organization represents, but rescuing animals displaced from natural disasters is a cause we support.

Nevertheless, even if farmers and consumers are praising yellow tail for finally addressing their concerns, negative comments are still posted everyday. This shows such a crisis is extremely difficult to manage, and may entail consequences for weeks, if not months, to come. It might be interesting to know how much this breach in brand image has affected sales.

What lessons can we learn from this case?

If a brand wants to donate to a cause, it must do more research about who to donate to. Even if it’s a good cause, it doesn’t mean that the organization you are donating to doesn’t have foes. And if it has, why, who are they, and are they part of your consumer base and/or able to influence your audience?

For a wine brand, donating to an organization that is at war with the farming community is pretty dangerous. Vine growing and winemaking are also linked to agriculture. And the same goes for wine consumption: wine goes well with food, and wine pairs beautifully with meat.

A case study demonstrating the influence of the farmers’ community online

One of the most interesting facts in the Yellow Tail case is how the farmers community has been able to create a platform for a new conversation out of this accident. This shows a real shift in habits, interactions and use of technology, showing how new target audiences - namely the farmers community - have emerged online.

In fact, the Yellow Tail case gave a real opportunity for farmers, who were able to successfully use technology to rally consumer voices to their cause, leveraging Facebook, Twitter, industry sites and blogs to create a movement.

Too often I hear “I’m too busy. I need more time. I’m tired of junk,” when friends are describing the Internet and its endless possibilities.

I implore you to simply change the paradigm and let the “power of the Internets” come to you.

With an hour’s worth of work and a valid email address, you web surfers can get experts, tastemakers and style gurus working for you.

Google is SO yesterday. Thanks to brands getting smarter about their offerings, gone are the days I have to go searching the web.

My bevy of smartly written, interesting and well-curated email newsletters provides me all the news and info that’s relevant to my world, in one place.

Today, I don’t have to go in search of content. The information I want comes to me.

News? NYTimes has a PDF of the day’s top headlines in my inbox when I awake, keeping me up to date on current events.

Sports? ESPN will blast you alerts of your favorite team’s final box score as soon as the

Culture? Between a blend of Daily Candy, Urban Daddy, Thrillist and relatively new addition, Very Short List from media mogul Jared Kushner, I’m up to date on what’s happening in town and around the world.

Setup time: 1 hour.

Daily perusal: 5 to 15 minutes.

With a little upfront care to manage my preferences at choice outlets and selecting the right newsletters, I’m armed with enough information everyday for lunch and dinner conversation and perhaps a new book, movie or designer to check out.

All without having to leave the comfort of my inbox.

Fashion lovers have always scoured magazines about gossip and fashion to see and copy trendy ideas from the rich, beautiful and famous. But if the reader wanted to copy their favorite celeb’s look, it was up to them to source the items their idols were wearing. Needless to say, this was a labor intensive and unreliable undertaking at best.

The internet has make it easier for readers to shop for celebrities’ looks, and it has the added advantage of producing advertising and a little e-commererce in the process.

Readers click on or scroll over a celebrity photo on sites like JustJared, INFDaily or CelebStyle to see what kind of clothes Bragelina or Jessica Biel are wearing and where to buy them.
Identifying items celebrities wear has been a popular feature on fashion blogs and the Web sites of magazines like Lucky and Instyle, but they do it with only a handful of photos. And very few do it as a way to bolster e-commerce and advertising revenue.

“On sites that allow you to shop the look, it’s easy-it’s just one click and it’s done,” said Kathryn Finney, founder of Simply Good Media, which has four shopping blogs. “It obviously gives them an advantage.”

Companies like GumGum and Pixazza tag the paparazzi photos with links for buying the clothes. They hire people to look at photos and match the clothes they are wearing with the same or similar, more affordable items from retailers like Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom and Zappos. The companies get a small fee from retailers when a shopper clicks or buys and article of clothing.

“Publishers and readers look at it as this really informational resource, said Ophir Tanz, chief executive of GumGum, which tagged the photo of Ms. Jolie with one of its “Shop this Look” badges. “
We look at it as an ad unit.”

Right on Ophir.

Creativefeed sees celebrity/fashion sites as an obvious place to start with this business, but it occurs to us that photos all over the Web could be turned into ads or e-commerce portals. We see sites that cover travel, sports and interior design as potential additions.

Twenty Percent of Web real estate is image space, and it’s not really monetized well at all and we see this as a frontier of tremendous opportunity.

To build excitement the December 17, 2010 release of Disney’s Tron Legacy, emails were sent last night to willing fans about a city wide scavenger hunt taking place today in 25 cities worldwide including, New York, Paris, Los Angeles, London, and Toronto. For those in or around these select cities, the hunt was on.

The mission: Go to 27 places in one of the cities and find the envoy wearing a “Flynn Lives” t-shirt. When found, provide a password to receive a special code that unlocks images of the new movie on the Flynn Lives website.

This is not the only event where fans came together in the search for Kevin Flynn. “Operatives” mobilized at Flynn’s Arcade where they received search packets with a map and a black light to search for clues. We can only expect more Flynn hunts as we get closer to the movie debut.

Check out Flynns Arcade