Welcome back!

Here are some indications to what the latest (October 2008) issue is all about: BRANDS We decided to drill down deep into what we would like to call ”The Social Media Election” (the US presidential election that is). It’s not just a political campaign like all the others, it’s an insight to the future of marketing. Using social media as an essential part of two integrated campaigns both candidates are kicking some big brand butt this time around. No wonder Obama wins the title ”Marketer of The Year” by AdAge beating both Apple and Zappos.  MEDIA YouTube now lets you easily buy music from selected video clips. The future of monetization for online video, according to Google, and we think it sounds very interesting. Interesting is also trying to find ways to change a recession to something positive for you or your brand. Market shares are cheaper, the competition loses focus and so on. We also take a look at exactly what the F**K social media is really all about... PEOPLE The days of consumers playing nice is over. If you cross them you might be starring down the barrel of a consumer uprising. In Sweden that’s what happend to the authorities when they decided to start wiretapping the people. But that’s just one of many examples and you might as well read and think about it to make sure that it never happens to you… Since this topic was so interesting we even decided to produce a low budget web documentary about it called “Wiretapping Sweden“, which even caused some online debates in Spain. MISCELLANEOUS Lisa Kudrow is doing web based therapy for Lexus in their latest and greatest jump into online video. This project leans more towards ”branded entertainment á la BMW Films” rather than shaky mobile videos á la YouTube. We also give you some pointers on becoming a Twitter pro, and speaking of pros this issue’s profile is the digital planner, blogger and now podcaster Nicholas Gill, you can find his blog here and his podcast here (and keep an eye out for a cameo from Urban Lifestyle there in a future episode). TABLE OF CONTENTS Click on image below for table of contents: HOW DO YOU GET YOUR HANDS ON IT? At the moment this issue is only available to subscribers, but we will shortly make it available for individual purchase. Enjoy! //Tomas Nihlén, Editor in Chief

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This presentation from Universal McCann is worth spending 15 minutes on:

//Tomas Nihlén, Editor in Chief

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Whether or not this is progress I will leave up to you to decide, but it’s still a fact; without the Internet you would never have seen things like this:

//Tomas Nihlén, Editor in Chief

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The popular Facebook group “5,000,000 against the new version of Facebook” raises an interesting question; Who owns the brand, you or your customers?

This protest groups is set out to boycott Facebook for one day to make their protest even louder. They want the old design back and they are stopping at nothing to get what they want.

So what do you think about this? Should Facook give in to the protesters or stick to their guns?

//Tomas Nihlén, Editor in Chief

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I have just watched Trendhunter.tv (their first episode) which is about viral videos 2008. Some of the videos they show aren’t actually from 2008, but hey they are all viral hits. I thought I would share some of the ones from 2008 with you and when I was picking them out I realized something… A lot of them have the word f**k in it. Does that mean this is an ingredient for a viral soup? Well maybe.

1. F**K, Hillary and Obama does it too…

2. F**K, Mashup of a younger Bill O’Reilly (not that suprised)

3. F**K, Sarah Silverman and Matt Damon tell the world

4. F**K, Even “Mini-Gordon” has got a filthy mouth

I guess they are just like the “Regular everyday normal guy”?

Conclusions: With the f-word and one or two celebrities you might hit the viral runway. And you do understand with the f-word we mean “fuck” right? (hoping for a viral blog post…)

- Linda Pierre, Urban Lifestyle

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Chris Pirillo has become sort of an expert on live video after recording his life in front of the world a while back. Here he is at an event talking about what he learned from the project:

We will write about live video in the next trend report due our this week. For info about how to get your hands on it just shoot me an email at tomas@urban-lifestyle.se. To check out an older issue just go to www.UrbanLifestyleReport.com, register as a new user and download.

//Tomas Nihlén, Editor in Chief

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Found this great video through Mark Klamberg.

//Tomas Nihlén, Editor in Chief

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What are the best tools to keep track of the upcoming US election according to you?

//Tomas Nihlén, Editor in Chief

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This is how Vegas.com takes advantage of the timing to get attention:

//Tomas Nihlén, Editor in Chief

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There are 3 interesting posts about social media at the moment that I would like to promote:

1. A great (and pretty long) list of federal US governments that use Twitter from Diva Marketing Blog. Would be interesting to see more of this here in Europe. How about your country?
2. Is Twitter a great platform for collecting creative minds for marketing campaigns? Well now there is an “agency” called The Twitter Agency that’s built around Twitter. Seems to be more of a crowd sourcing project than ageny, but interesting.

3. ViralBlog writes about how Nike uses widgets to spread viral videos. A great way for brands with a big collection of video material that otherwise would collect dust on a shelf.

Update: The Twitter list seems not to be sanctioned by the federal governments, what a shame, see comment below.

//Tomas Nihlén, Editor in Chief

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