We’ve all seen it before: that tweet your favorite celebrity sends out over Twitter, that status update your former childhood friend announces on Facebook, or that blog post about the latest political scandal made on the Huffington Post. Social media continues to advance in the technological world and has become rooted in many aspects of our everyday lives. Who could have predicted that social media would become such a powerful tool for the business industry?

Social media has now integrated with the business industry and is currently on the rise for its popularity among a wide variety of users. Marketers use it to generate quality leads and ensure future sales and profits for companies. Business-to-business companies, also known as B2B’s, use social media to get ahead in their industry and become leaders within their own realm of the business world. Even human resource employees use it for purposes of social networking to create more job opportunities. Business men and women have finally come to realize that social media has become one of the leading tools in creating a successful public relations campaign with the most wide-ranging audience.

Ford has recently used social media as the driving force for their “Ford Fiesta” campaign, where they gave 100 individuals their newest car model, the Fiesta, encouraging them to blog, tweet, flickr, Youtube about their experiences and travels for six months. Ford has strategically decided to market the Fiesta entirely through social media, something unprecedented in the car industry but one that they executed with much success. They far-exceeded everyone’s expectations when they reached a high of 50,000 potential customers, 97% of which were never Ford car owners.

Due to the increasingly dynamic needs and concerns of businesses, many predict that 2010 will become the year where social media really takes off and becomes a mainstream device for business purposes. Marketers have learned that social media offers a more efficient way for profiling specific information that consumers actually seek. It is also helping marketers maintain and develop potential leads that consumers are interested but not yet prepared to purchase goods and services. Even the current participants of the entering workforce have taken hold of social media as a means for marketing themselves and attaining business connections. Social media has become a mechanism through which employees can easily encounter more resources of better quality and can improve their ability to share knowledge and information between users.

All in all, the theme here seems to be clear- social media has attained great recognition as a fundamental business device within our society and its influence continues to grow and advance. It is estimated that by 2014 all B2B firms will spend $54 million alone for social media efforts, a whopping $43 million dollar increase since 2009. It appears that as more and more people come to realize the true capabilities of social media and how they or their firm can benefit from these capabilities to become leaders within their an industry, its progression will only continue forward. So tweet away my friends… go ahead post a blog, because social media might just be the key to a prosperous future for our businesses of today.

You say you want a food revolution? Well, my friends, come join us at the table.

Last week, the White House released a report that outlines steps to fight a national epidemic—childhood obesity. According to the report, “one in every three children ages 2-19 is overweight or obese.” As part of their suggested changes, the report is calling for food companies and junk food makers to go on what amounts to an “advertising diet.” Food companies are being asked to regulate all forms of marketing to children, and food retailers should avoid in-store marketing that promotes unhealthy products. This includes promotion of popular media characters. Could this be the end for Count Chocula and the Silly Rabbit?

Alas, the report is stirring up the ongoing debate among marketers, government leaders, and the general public—is advertising the sinister force wooing our kids into the obesity pit? We’ve seen this same argument in violent videogames and oversexed movies, among others. Advertisements have undoubtedly become a prominent form of persuasion. Young people view more than 40,000 ads per year on television alone. But will these “suggestions” create the right recipe for change?  After all, there are several other significant parts of the childhood obesity equation (i.e.: parents).

It’s clear that America is in the midst of culinary crisis. Our nation’s children are the first generation not expected to live as long as their parents. Though the Let’s Move campaign, First Lady Michelle Obama is tackling the cause, becoming a change leader alongside other food ambassadors like Michael Pollan and Alice Waters.

But while its 120 page report is certainly creating attention, in order to see real change, Let’s Move should integrate both top down and bottom up strategies—tapping the resilience, creativity and commitment of the whole system—from farm to fork. Grassroots efforts, such as Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution and Slow Food USA’s Time for Lunch campaign, show action and are often more appetizing approaches.

It will be interesting to watch how (and which) food companies and marketers will react.  Maybe they’ll brush the advice aside. Or perhaps they will see this as an opportunity to change their own eating habits and bite into a new marketing approach.

We’ll just have to wait and see…

With access to endless amounts of audience research niche marketing is more prevalent and calculated than ever before. Companies target moms, kids, and even grandparents, but are they forgetting someone?  Based on an article in BrandWeek the answer would appear to be yes.

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, singles, as in the unmarried, spent $2.2 trillion in 2008. With a growing market of over 110 million single Americans out there, why not target singles as a unique and important demographic? After looking at the numbers some companies are beginning to do just that.

Recently, Norwegian Cruise Lines announced that their new ship set to debut this July will feature single occupancy cabins. Hasn’t this been done before? The surprising answer is no. While some cruise lines have “singles cruises” where guests can troll for dates on the ship’s deck, none offer single occupancy cabins for their traditional cruises. If you were to travel solo on these trips you would have to take a double occupancy room and of course pay double the price.

Coldwell Banker debuted an ad campaign aimed at single home buyers, with good reason. According to National Association of Realtors, single women accounted for 21 percent of home purchases in 2009. Coldwell Banker has even called singles the “new wave” of home buyers.

With staggering statistics that continue to grow, perhaps it’s time to use market segmentation at its best and include singles.

Just Ask a Woman states: “Letting singles go unnoticed is just leaving money on the table.” So why aren’t more companies following the campaigns of Coldwell Bankers and Norwegian Cruise Lines?

Singles are clearly on the rise, but there is still speculation about whether or not it is cost-effective or effective at all to segment by one’s relationship status. Do people self-identify as singles or do they even want to be associated with that lonely phrase? There’s only one way to find out. Put it to the test. With the likes of Norwegian and Coldwell Banker taking the first step, we’ll probably have some good insights soon.

Who knows niche marketing and the singles set could be the perfect marketing match and live happily ever after.

At an on-campus eatery yesterday at the University of Pennsylvania, I was surprised to find options for lunch that are rarely offered at a dining hall. A pizza, stacked with vegetables and a pesto sauce on whole wheat crust being one. I asked the dining hall employee why the pizza had no cheese, a necessary evil in any slice I would order, and he replied, “It’s Earth Day.” I nodded, puzzled. “I’m sorry…what?” I probed. “It’s pasteurized.”

Forty years since the advent of Earth Day, it seems that everyone is cashing in on the holiday. Yesterday, Earth Day consumers could buy Greenzys, a stuffed animal collection introduced by FAO Schwarz made from soy fibers, or take a Gray Line Sightseeing tour to “green” destinations in New York City. Earth Day, simply put, has become a marketing and revenue gold mine. Activist Denis Hayes organized the first Earth Day, and in a recent interview with The New York Times said, “This ridiculous perverted marketing has cheapened the concept of what is really green.” So what is an eco-activist to do? Accept the nature – no pun intended – of this newly commoditized holiday, steeped in consumerism, because for the first time, people are actually paying attention? Or return to the Earth Day of 40 years ago, when no one seemed to care, but at least factories weren’t pumping more carbon into the atmosphere to make Greenzys?

It is a difficult choice, but it seems green enthusiasts have begrudgingly chosen to accept commoditization in return for social visibility. And as a result, companies with “green” marketing initiatives seem to be raking in the green. All except for dairy producers, I guess, because it’s pasteurized – which I’m still not sure I really get.

As Stuart Elliot advertising columnist for the New York Times, wrote on Sunday, many of Super Bowl XLIV’s commercials focused on the familiar, by providing Americans with a comforting sense of nostalgia during tough economic times. Viewers enjoyed fan favorites, from the majestic Budweiser (now InBev) Clydesdales to the wise-beyond-their-years E-Trade babies.

But one particular ad from an unlikely source, stood out from the classics for many audience members watching commercials during the third quarter: Google’s “Parisian Love” ad turned the familiar Google search page into an ad that had viewers doing double-takes, primarily because Google never advertises on TV (except for a few cable spots for its web browser chrome) and it had rarely done any brand advertising to consumers.   During and after the game, the spot was widely, tweeted, blogged-about and re-posted on a variety of social media sites including facebook, twitter, and linkedin.

The ad was as simple as Googling “Google Super Bowl Ad.” Literally. Designed to show the power and user-friendliness of Google’s search engine, “Parisian Love” documented an American’s successful quest for love in Paris–as implied through the queries he typed into Google’s search bar. Viewers watched as phrases that ranged from “study abroad paris france,” to “impress a french girl,” to “churches in paris,” to “how to assemble a crib,” appeared in the search bar, bringing up pages of results. The searches demonstrated Google’s versatility by exhibiting its ability to recognize and correct incorrect spelling for search terms, as well as to transform entries such as “what are truffles” and “translate tu es trés mignon” into helpful results.

Though Google’s Ad may have taken viewers by surprise, it also likely seemed familiar to YouTube users. As Google CEO Eric Schmidt wrote on Google’s official blog, “Parisian Love” began as part of a series of online videos Google created, and had actually been on YouTube for three months. So how did it end up on TV during the Super Bowl? “We liked this video so much, and it’s had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience,” Schmidt wrote.

For those who did not see the ad on YouTube before Sunday, tech blog readers and people who follow Schmidt (ericschmidt) on Twitter would have had access to some clues from the social media rumor mills.  At 4:16 p.m. on Saturday, Schmidt tweeted, “Can’t wait to watch the Superbowl tomorrow.  Be sure to watch the ads in the 3rd quarter (someone said “Hell has indeed frozen over).”

So it turns out that maybe the ad wasn’t so unpredictable or unfamiliar after all and viewers who discovered “Parisian Love” while watching the Super Bowl may have been some of the last people to find out about the ad–rather than some of the first. Perhaps this is a sign that social media sites like YouTube will expand their uses beyond generating buzz and awareness, and will begin to serve as testing grounds for ads that will pop up again in the near future.  Who knows, maybe next Super Bowl we’ll all be able to expect the unexpected.