The number of companies not doing anything with social media gets smaller and smaller by the day, but that doesn’t mean that business has social media figured out.

Despite the increasing comfort that many companies and marketers have with social media, questions still linger about efficacy and ROI.

Andrea Fishman, VP of global strategy and partner at interactive agency BGT Partners, however, believes that some of the challenges companies face in using social media is based on the fact that they’re applying the AIDA (attention-interest-desire-action) model. According to Fishman, “The problem is that the AIDA model tends to be linear in fashion.”

Instead, she suggests, companies can use social media to shorten the buying cycle by defocusing on this linear process and applying social media in more thoughtful ways:

…stop thinking of how to apply social media to your current channels. Instead, take a step back and assess all they ways your audience may be impacted by social media – and develop new content, offers, and experiences that take advantage of the disruption. Use the two-way nature of social media to engage in conversations that accelerate the buying cycle. Create “social only” offers that take advantage of the immediacy of the Internet. Use sentiment and activity data to spot trends sooner – and apply that knowledge to your product pricing and promotional strategies.

These are all good suggestions, and many companies are increasingly realizing that social media works best when it’s not kept in a silo. As the second screen phenomenon shows us, consumers are increasingly interacting with brands and content across multiple channels, often at the same time. So to get the most out of each channel, it pays to look at how the channels can work together.

But can social media, properly applied, really accelerate the buying cycle? Perhaps. But this, in my opinion, is a red herring. The challenge with social media, as with most channels, is not creating attractive new content, offers and experiences that can entice consumers to take some action. That’s often quite easy if you’re willing to bend over backwards. Instead, the challenge is to drive meaningful action in a way that’s profitable and sensible over the long haul.

The group buying market is a great example of this. Daily deals force a shorter sales cycle by offering consumers a product or service at a hefty discount for a limited time. For many businesses, this results in hundreds or thousands of sales in a single day. But the deals aren’t always profitable and if numerous anecdotes and studies are to be believed, most of the customers don’t stick around.

With this in mind, companies should consider that social media may add a wrinkle to the familiar AIDA model, but that doesn’t mean that in social channels they should look to drive ‘action’ no matter the cost.

The internet has arguably been the most exciting new development for advertisers in the past 50 years, but that doesn’t mean that online advertising is without its problems.

Arguably, one of the biggest problems is a misalignment of the interests of media buyers and media sellers, with the latter often not appearing to care much about the value the former receives.

But some digital media sellers are making an effort to be more fair with the advertisers who pay the bills. Case in point: Hulu.

As reported by AdAge’s Michael Learmonth, the online video powerhouse, which pulled in more than $400m in revenue last year, is moving the ad beacons that count video ad views to the end of videos to ensure that its advertisers are only charged for ads that have been viewed in their entirety.

The change, which also affects ads shown through the Hulu Plus subscription service, is not surprisingly something Hulu advertisers have been pushing for. Obviously, no advertiser wants to pay for an ad not seen, but many have no choice but to.

So why did Hulu agree to what is arguably a more equitable arrangement with advertisers when demand for its ad inventory is so high? The answer: it was able to.

As AdAge’s Learmonth notes, Hulu’s ad completion rate is 96% — a stunningly high number in the online video space. There are a number of reasons for this. For instance, Hulu doesn’t let users skip pre-roll ads and the nature of long-form content gives users less of an incentive to skip an ad. That makes Hulu an attractive advertising platform for brands, which don’t just get warm fuzzy feelings from knowing that their ads have been viewed in their entirety. According to John Nitti of Zenith Optimedia, “Vendors with greater video completion rates [see] greater brand lift and greater message recall.”

The fact that just 4% of ads are not viewed to completion means that Hulu can afford to give advertisers a better deal. In other words, Hulu executives can still sleep comfortably at night without charging for ads-not-viewed. Hulu is not going to lose much money with this move, and it will probably make more money in the long run because it’s helping to ensure that advertisers see high value in the ads it displays.

Contrast this with Facebook, which is increasingly looking to monetize in the run-up to its IPO. The social network’s moves may bolster its bottom line in the short term, but they put advertisers in a position where they’re increasingly paying more for less.

Whether Hulu-like moves become more commonplace remains to be seen, but it does offer a strong reminder to publishers: if you’re confident in the ads you’re selling, taking action to prove it isn’t all that difficult. Abused advertisers should take note of that.

Thanks to the incredible popularity of the world’s social network, soon-to-be-publicly-traded Facebook is top of mind for advertisers both large and small, many of which have been pouring more money into Facebook advertising campaigns.

But how are those Facebook ad campaigns treating advertisers?

According to ad agency TBG Digital, which looked at several hundred billion impressions across campaigns for more than 200 clients, the cost for a thousand impressions on Facebook has increased substantially (41%) in the past year, but over the past quarter, click-through rates have dropped by nearly double digits (8%). Ads sold on a CPC basis have also risen in price during the same period.

Somewhat surprisingly, that apparently doesn’t concern TBG Digital CEO Simon Mansell, who told Mashable, “[Facebook has] gone from four to seven ads on a lot of pages, so even though click-through is declining, that’s okay. If you isolate that and point to to you could say it’s a negative thing, but I think that’s a bit of a red herring.”

But is it?

Facebook is certainly aware that its ads frequently deliver clicks at paltry rates; numerous advertisers have shared their Facebook experiences publicly over the years. Yet in the run-up to its IPO, Facebook is making it clear that it doesn’t feel it owes advertisers any favors, and as part of that has decided to stuff more ads on its pages.

And why shouldn’t it? Yes, creating more ad inventory is dilutitive, but so long as advertisers are willing to pay more for less, and the agencies helping them don’t see a problem with paying more for less, Facebook wins.

Needless to say, savvier advertisers and agencies will recognize that it’s not their job to pad Facebook’s bottom line at their own expense. At the end of the day, the only ad campaigns worth running are profitable ones, and when profitable campaigns become less profitable, paying more for less is a recipe for said campaigns to quickly become unprofitable.

Yes, advertisers arguably can’t ignore the world’s largest social network, but when Facebook campaigns don’t make dollars, they don’t make sense, and when they make fewer dollars, they make less sense. ‘Like’ it or not.

Once again we’ve put together the most senior and influential job moves in the US.

This time we cover influential moves from Johnson & Johnson to Avon, a CEO resignation at Best Buy, a new VP of Social Media and Media Relations at MasterCard Worldwide, new hires at the Brunswick Group and a new president of global consumer marketing and COO at Ogilvy PR.

Avon Products has appointed former Johnson & Johnson VP of Pharmaceutical, Consumer, Corporate Office of Science & Technology, and Information Technology divisions, Sheri McCoy, as Chief Executive Officer. She will be taking over the role from chief executive Andrea Jung by the end of April.

Best Buy CEO, Brian Dunn, has resigned after only three years in his role. This marks the end of 28 years with the electronics chain where he started as a store manager and worked his way to the top. Director Mike Mikan will replace him as interim CEO until they find a replacement.

The Brunswick Group appointed two new partners – Robert Moran, former president of US operations for Edelman’s StrategyOne and Samantha Lucas, Burson-Marsteller’s chair of US Brand Marketing Practice and interim CEO for PivotRed.

ClimateWorks Foundation hired Julie Blunden as Chief Executive Officer after a role as Executive Vice President of the SunPower Corp. 

Dish Network Corporation has nabbed 11 year Procter & Gamble veteran James Moorhead to become their new CMO.

iQU hired Adam Swart as Director of Social Media where he is responsible for marketing and social strategy.

MasterCard Worldwide welcomes Marcy Cohen as VP of Social Media and Media Relations to focus on advancing their social strategy. 

CRM firm, Merkle, has brought on Tom Quinn as its new VP and chief digital revenue officer. He will report to Dave Paulus, EVP of business development, and Patrick Hounsell, chief digital officer.

Ogilvy PR appointed 21-year Edelman veteran Mitch Markson as president of global consumer marketing and COO to integrate PR with direct, social marketing.

Commercial bank Rockland Trust hired former Sovereign Bank PR director Ellen Molle as VP and PR manager. Molle will focus on building the bank’s reputation and manage strategic planning, and PR activity analysis. Previous to her role at Sovereign Bank she worked for over ten years as a broadcast journalist for ABC News’ Nightline.

Syndicate Media Group has made two new hires. Marc Duron is their new director of hospitality and Teddie Davies has joined as an influencer marketing manager.

USA Today has promoted Mary Byrne to Managing Editor, Sports after working for them since 2004. Before that she spent seven years at the Miami Herald.

Yesterday, Google issued its quarterly results for the first three months of 2012.

On the financial side, it was all good, with Google delivering impressive performance for a company that by the tech industry’s standards, is gray-haired. But there was also some bad and ugly relating to the company’s share structure and how it’s publicly characterizing its performance outside of search.

The Good

Google may no longer be the new kid on the block, but that doesn’t mean that doesn’t have any growth left either. Revenues were up 24% year-over-year, to $10.65bn, and Google earned $2.89bn in net income, up from $1.80bn in the same quarter last year. Revenues from Google Sites and the Google Network grew by 24% and 20%, respectively.

Google’s impressive ability to produce cash is apparent on its balance sheet, which now shows $49.3bn in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term marketable securities.

The Bad

When Google went public, it implemented a dual-class share structure that ensured its two founders and then-CEO Eric Schmidt would retain control over the company’s affairs. “We are creating a corporate structure that is designed for stability over long time horizons,” the founders wrote.

Thanks to “day-to-day dilution from routine equity-based employee compensation and other possible dilution, such as stock-based acquisitions”, however, Google sees the potential for this dual-class share structure to be undermined. So yesterday it announced a new class of non-voting stock that will be listed on the NASDAQ and all existing shareholders will receive one new share of this stock for each share of stock they currently own.

This is an effective two-for-one stock split, something Google notes some shareholders have been begging for, but its real purpose is to ensure that Larry Page and Sergey Brin can have their cake and eat it too.

Supporters might argue that Google’s dual-class share structure has served it well thus far, but there’s good reason to believe that what Forbes contributor Eric Jackson calls “paranoid governance” is making the company less innovative as it looks to compete outside of search.

The Ugly

Google is a phenomenal company. It’s still the world’s top search engine and it basically has a license to print money. But when it comes to its non-search initiatives, the company arguably has a problem being honest with itself and the public.

Case in point: the company’s claims around the number of Google+ users. Google is now touting that Google+ has 170m users, but that figure appears to basically count everyone who logs into a Google account because, according to Google social chief, Vic Gundotra, Google+ is “really the unification of all of Google’s services, with a common social layer.”

If Google is going to ask its shareholders to trust its founders with the steering wheel, it’s going to need to be a lot more transparent about how their attempts to make Google a big player outside of search are truly faring.

Apple’s products contrast sharply with the mid-century General Motors cars that brought the jet-age into people’s garages. And yet, beginning in the 1920s, GM was able to snatch market dominance away from Ford by better catering to people’s fantasies – much in the same way that Apple has been able to poach market share from Microsoft and others. 

2012 isn’t 1952, and cars and computers are not the same, but being able to sense and articulate a vision is still the job of marketers. What’s our vision for our own future, today? And why do so many people want to use their minimalist iPhones to take altered pictures of their friends?

The textbook argument in favor of fantasy in product design is the story of how Ford came to be surpassed as the largest auto manufacturer by General Motors. Henry Ford refused for years to offer the Model T in any color besides black, and “had come to believe that he was in the business of building Model Ts, when in fact, like every other business executive, he was in the business of satisfying consumers.” Eventually Ford’s only product became outdated, and between 1921 and 1927 the company’s market share plummeted from 55% to 10%.

In contrast, GM spent more money on marketing than any other automaker, introduced the annual model change, and innovated the corporate management structure necessary to make “dynamic obsolescence” possible. For the 1948 Cadillac, GM freed the designer Harley Earl to adorn it with tailfins inspired by a fighter plane – crazy, fantastic, and… useless?

No. Partly because they were introduced on a Cadillac, tailfins functioned as a distinctive mark of prestige – but mostly they were popular because they captivated the imaginations of people enraptured by the new technological possibilities of the Jet Age. In the 1950s, reinterpretations of aviation design were spread throughout mass culture; the tailfin was functional in that it allowed people to consume their visions of future, and live within the dream. It created a sense of historical belonging, and participation in a common narrative. Design is in large part a psychic function, and that function is real.

There’s no doubt that the resurrection of Apple from 1997 onwards has been largely due to design. At the outset, their iMac caused a stir with color; more recently the designer Jonathan Ive has lead the brand into a Dieter Rams-inspired functionalist style. Their successes, like the iPhone, stood out against the backdrop of what Ives has dismissed as “products that want you to be aware of how clever the solution was.” 

It’s a fair appraisal of the market that they entered. But it’s also excessively reductive and facile to suggest that minimalism is always better. Many self-consciously styled tech products that superficially exaggerated their functions have been quite successful such as the products below.

Fantasy is a feature, and it is useful: if we can’t imagine where we’re going, we’ll have no idea what we will need to do to get there. Tech gadgets that wear their solutions on their sleeves tell us stories about ourselves; they remind us who we are, and help us place ourselves in a progressive historical narrative.

So what about Instagram? Is it useless? Again, like the tailfins, no.

There is a stark coldness to the gaze of our million-pixel phone cameras, our tinny flashes, and our instant uploads. We do not perceive our world in the suspended animation with which it can be captured by high definition cameras. Sure, we can perhaps see it at the same resolution, but we do not psychically engage with the world as though it were a recorded image: in our minds there is blur, there is our own psychic tinting and filtering.  It’s no revolution to point this out – abstract impressionism is almost a hundred and fifty years old.

Instagram artfully mixes precise capture with our perceptions. Instagram opens up the possibility for expressive impressionism, through which we can better share what we saw in the way we saw it. Strict, photorealistic literalism can show us the materiality of what was happening in a shot, but what Instagram and other photographic tools can accomplish is to silently convey the emotional narration of the photographer.

Again, in the words of Jonathan Ive, “a big definition of who you are as a designer is the way that you look at the world… you’re constantly looking at something and thinking… in that sense, you’re constantly designing.”

Though it’s not as big a game changer as Apple or GM, what Intagram does is allow us to design the way we share our vision of the world. In some places, we are shifting away from the dictates of other’s design, and into our own: and there’s plenty of room for companies that allow us the flexibilty of personal expression to become market leaders in the digital space.

Once again we compile the most senior, surprising and influential job moves in the APAC region.

This time we discuss a four-strong bolster for Block, a new chief exec for Digital Music Distribution, a well-earned promotion at Grey Australia and new blood at Oddfellows.

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Block has made a raft of new hires including Nathan Teoh as senior creative from Marketforce, Maegan Brown as junior creative from Curtin University’s School of Design where she was named graduate of the year in 2011 – plus Brody Macleod and Sanne Butterfield to the account services team.

Digital Chameleon has brought in former digital sales director at APN News & Media, Matthew Bates, as its commercial director. 

Digital Music Distribution, the joint venture between Universal Music Australia and Sony Music Australia has appointed former Sensis GM Mark Shaw as its new chief executive.

Foxtel has brought on Bruce Meagher as its director of corporate affairs just a day after its merger with Austar, where he previously worked, was approved by the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission.

Grey Australia has promoted Luke Waldren, managing partner of the creative agency’s Melbourne office to the role of CEO.

M&C Saatchi Sydney has hired former BBDO New York associate creative director Mike Condrick as a senior copywriter. 

Oddfellows has hired Sarah Booth as an account planner from her role as insights manager at New Zealand Lotteries, and Matt Geersen as digital art director from Profero Sydney. 

REA Group has replaced former Foxtel CEO Richard Freudenstein with News Crporation’s Hamish McLennan as chairman of its board of directors.

TBWA Hakuhodo has promoted Chris Iki to COO, replacing Luis DeAnda, who is relocating to LA to take another role within the group.

Tribal DDB Korea has lost its GM David Meister, and will now be led by chief executive of DDB Group Korea Craig Lonnee.

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Itchy feet? Why not head over to our jobs board to check out the latest roles.

Hiring? Free posts on the jobs board are included with gold, platinum and diamond membership plans.

In a move widely anticipated, the United States Justice Department today filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and some of the largest book publishers over allegations that they colluded to raise ebook prices.

The publishers named in the lawsuit are Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin and Macmillan.

According to Bloomberg, Simon & Schuster, Hachette and HarperCollins are settling the lawsuit, while sources indicate that Penguin and Macmillan are prepared to fight the Justice Department. Apple, which saw its market capitalization hit $600bn yesterday, has refused to engage in settlement talks and is also expected to fight the charges.

As Bloomberg explains, at the heart of the controversy is how book publishers sell their wares. Apple has employed the agency model, which lets book publishers set prices for their books, or in this case, ebooks.

As part of this, it included “most-favored nation clauses” in its agreements with publishers, which required the publishers to provide Apple with the lowest prices offered to Apple’s competitors.

While the lawsuit doesn’t seek to forbid the agency model — it’s specifically targeting alleged collusion around pricing between Apple and publishers — the government apparently prefers the wholesale model, where retailers set the price of books, and if the Justice Department gets its way, it could have a dramatic impact on the development of the ebook market.

That market is booming. As we reported last week, a new Pew Internet & American Life Project report shows that 21% of adults in the United States have read an ebook in the past year, and thanks to the rapid adoption of e-readers and tablets, that number is set to grow considerably. That means the stakes couldn’t be higher as the Justice Department looks to have a say in how ebooks are being priced.

Driving? There’s an app for that.

At least that’s what automaker Chrysler is hoping to hear in the near future thanks to latest version of its Uconnect software.

Starting with the 2013 models of the Dodge Ram 1500 and SRT Viper, Chrysler’s 8.4-inch touch screen media center will support downloadable apps. A press release for the 2013 Ram 1500 explained:

Ram truck owners will be able to access select, certified in-vehicle applications. Driving-relevant applications will be introduced over time and are designed specifically for in-vehicle use. The certified applications are easily controlled with natural voice recognition or steering wheel controls to keep drivers focused on the road. The responsive 8.4-inch touchscreen includes the award-winning user interface designed by Chrysler Group Human Machine Interface engineers, featuring large icons and visual cues allowing consumers intuitive control of system features.

Apps “are updatable over the air”, ensuring that drivers have the latest features as they become available. The Uconnect media center connects to the internet over a cell connection, which supports an in-vehicle WiFi hotspot.

While Chrysler apparently hasn’t yet revealed which apps will be available initially, Chrysler isn’t the only automaker looking to make the driving experience more interactive.

GM and its OnStar subsidiary, for instance, were one of the first to look to connect apps with vehicles and earlier this year, OnStar announced that it will be launching an API for creating apps that operate via the OnStar device, providing developers with an ability to build driving-related apps similar in nature to the ones it appears Chrysler’s Uconnect will support.

Obviously, the app ecosystem for automobiles will be different. The requirements around security and certification, for instance, will almost certainly always be more robust, realistically limiting the size of this ecosystem in terms of developers and apps. But the potential for the app-ification of the car is huge and fewer apps and developers doesn’t necessarily mean that this ecosystem won’t eventually be huge when it comes to dollars.

If you were asked to think of one company that is defined by its use of algorithms, you might name Google.

And for good reason: the search giant’s algorithms are not only at the heart of its success, but for many, they’re the source of constant hope and fear as changes to them can literally make or break businesses.

But another prominent name on the consumer internet might also be a viable contender for the title ‘algorithm company’: Netflix.

In a post on its blog, Netflix revealed details around the recommendation algorithms it uses. Note the plural ‘algorithms’. Netflix personalization science and engineering staff members Xavier Amatriain and Justin Basilico explain:

Personalization starts on our homepage, which consists of groups of videos arranged in horizontal rows. Each row has a title that conveys the intended meaningful connection between the videos in that group. Most of our personalization is based on the way we select rows, how we determine what items to include in them, and in what order to place those items.

Take as a first example the Top 10 row: this is our best guess at the ten titles you are most likely to enjoy. Of course, when we say “you”, we really mean everyone in your household. It is important to keep in mind that Netflix’ personalization is intended to handle a household that is likely to have different people with different tastes. That is why when you see your Top10, you are likely to discover items for dad, mom, the kids, or the whole family. Even for a single person household we want to appeal to your range of interests and moods. To achieve this, in many parts of our system we are not only optimizing for accuracy, but also for diversity.

That’s just the beginning. Netflix’s algorithms also factor in awareness, freshness, similarity, and social connections, amongst other things.

Why the sophistication? Miraculously, Netflix says that “75% of what people watch is from some sort of recommendation.” From this perspective, it’s not a stretch to say that Netflix’s business today is driven by the ability of its recommendation algorithms to make good recommendations. Which sort of explains why the company created a million-dollar challenge with the goal of improving its recommendations by what appeared to be a small margin.

While most companies aren’t as big as Netflix, many businesses large and small will increasingly find that algorithms are a crucial part of serving customers effectively. From helping customers find the right products, to reducing fraud, to delivering services more efficiently and cheaply, there are arguably few businesses that can’t benefit from a Netflix-like approach.

The challenge of course, is increasingly not data. Thanks to the big data trend, more and more companies are collecting that. The challenge is performing the type of analysis that Netflix-like algorithms perform. With this in mind, the really important trend to watch may not be big data, but rather big analysis.

Nokia and Microsoft’s sharp-looking new phone, the Lumia 900, is coming out today, and while there are no visible signs of panic, both companies desperately need a winner.

Nokia has been struggling for years now to compete in the rapidly changing mobile market, and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 OS has achieved only 2% penetration. Both companies are in danger of being locked out entirely, and need a smash hit.

So far, the results of their labors look pretty good. But will that be good enough? Nokia lost $1.4b in 2011, which includes a fourth quarter cash payment of $250m made by Microsoft. If the Lumia isn’t a breakout, is Microsoft willing to keep Nokia afloat?

 Here’s a look at how all the pieces are coming together:

The device is nice and the OS is all right

Physically, the new Lumia 900 is lovely. Nokia has developed it’s polycarbonate unibody design through several iterations now, and the look is unlike anything else on the market except for, perhaps, a second generation iPod Nano. The fit and finish are reportedly superb – a sharp contrast to the chintzy feel exuded by most Androids. The colors of the AMOLED screen are richer than an iPhones, though some reviewers are complaining about inferior resolution. Photographs are through an 8mp Carl Zeiss lens (which means nothing), and they look merely OK.

The Windows Phone 7 OS is visually attractive, and is capable of competing with iOS and Android. First-time smartphone buyers (and there will be many of these over the next few years) will not be unpleased. Design fiends who prefer the look of Windows Phone 7 may convert. Android nerds and iPhone partisans will not, but that’s hardly surprising.

There are early complaints about the number of apps available in the Windows shop: 80,000 and growing.

Evaluating an app store by it’s quantity of apps is a mediocre metric, but it isn’t meaningless. App quantity indicates the enthusiasm of a development community, if not necessarily the quality of it’s labors. More Microsoft money is being spent to develop an “app campus” in order to encourage developer platform adoption.

The potential for powerful Xbox Live integrations is intriguing. If enough Windows Mobile phones are sold, this connection could be the site of some exciting action.

Carrier partnership is strong

The Lumia 900 will be available through AT&T at a price of $99, with a two year contract. The carrier is giving the phone “hero” placement as it’s first big LTE phone, is permitting it to be used as a wireless hotspot for up to five devices (no doubt in part to highlight speed of new LTE network), and, as Matt Rosoff of Business Insider notes, is making the exclusive free phone for AT&T employees. This special treatment comes at the reportedly low, low cost to Nokia of $25m of Microsoft’s money.

AT&T is undoubtably pleased to have a potential knock-out product that doesn’t come with as many strings as working with Apple has. 

Hey, isn’t this like the Palm Pre?

Absolutely. The Palm Pre was given similar “hero” treatment by Sprint, which actually paid for the privilege in the form of marketing spend. Getting the Lumia into the pockets of AT&T employees is a smart move – one of the complaints made by Palm was that Sprint sales reps didn’t know the product, and couldn’t convey the finer points of it’s unique WebOS. 

The Pre was also positively reviewed by tech bloggers, positioned as an iPhone alternative, and heavily marketed. It didn’t matter. Palm was subsequently purchased by HP, which recycled WebOS for use in their TouchPad tablet, which was positioned as an iPad alternative, heavily marketed, and also a humiliating failure.

The Digital Marketing: Microsites + Social Media + Video Campaign

Palm was widely mocked for attempting to out-cool Apple with arty, conceptual ads directed by Tarsem Singh that featured an early New Wave hit by the band Freur, and were probably derived from Ridely Scott’s famous work for Chanel in 1980.

Nokia and Microsoft aren’t playing that uptown game, at least not right away. Nokia has been making a large PR push targeting “influencers.” The first several Lumia ads in mid-March portrayed the phone as the rugged choice of youthful male extreme sports enthusiasts under the slogan “Focus on Amazing,” and exhorted viewers to sign up for trial phones. This was conducted through the main Nokia Facebook page and the web property Nokia Connects, which has been building the Nokia brand while focusing on photography. 

Newer ads, released several days ago and picked up widely by gadget blogs, go negative on the iPhone. There are three of them: they’re painfully unfunny, and are aimed squarely at Apple, which is portrayed as an arrogant corporate monolith. This is one example:

 The videos push three critiques of the iPhone:

• The screen is hard to see in sunlight
• It breaks easily
• If you hold it wrong, it loses signal

The first point, about the screen, is probably a defensive positioning. Though the argument is correct – the iPhone does wash out – few people seem to be complaining about this issue. The bigger problem for Nokia in comparison with the iPhone is the lower screen resolution of the Lumia. The second point, about resistance to breakage, is a position of strength for Nokia. The third point, raising atennagate, is a little weird, because the iPhone 4S fixed this problem. But Nokia is willing to take what it can get, and perhaps there are still some low-hanging fruit out there who will find this ad compelling.

These ads direct to a microsite, Smart Phone Beta Test, which has three programs:

• To instill a sense of impatience, and connect it to a date. This is accomplished by the countdown timer and video of man waiting in an office, doing nothing. 
• Distributing the three videos
• Hub for a Twitter influencer campaign focused on Beta Testers

As of 4/4, the Beta Testers microsite has been shared 1,287 times on Twitter and Liked 3k times. The hashtag for the Beta Testers Twitter campaign, #betaphone, has been tweeted 126 times and the @smartphonebeta account has 650 followers.

These aren’t huge numbers – they’re a little fizz that can’t hurt. The Lumia also has premier placement on Nokia and AT&T’s websites. AT&T’s Facebook also manages to squeeze mentions of the product in to it’s messaging mix. But curiously there’s not a word about the phone on any of Microsoft’s digital marketing presences except for it’s Windows Mobile site.

Time for a party

Today, for release day, Nokia is executing a Times Square takeover in NYC, which means coordinated digital billboards – hopefully clever ones that can be intereacted with via text or other means. A “special guest” is performing –  and AT&T reps are claiming that the Lumia 900 is “above anything we’ve ever done.”

UPDATE: The party was a splashy, big success, with lots of cool billboards and Nicki Minaj.

The verdict

The Lumia 900 is a really nice-looking phone, but it’s not revolutionary. The marketing is understated. Nokia and Microsoft are playing it cool. They don’t want consumers – or anyone else – to spend time thinking how close to the edge they are, and they don’t want to set up the Palm Pre narrative of this is our do or die phone.

There’s no show-stopper campaign that gets in front of the product – the PR and marketing for the Lumia 900 is very specifically targeted and articulated, and seems to be generating interest. Early adopters might buy this and be proud of it. Average AT&T store shoppers in for their first smartphone may “discover” it, and be seduced by it’s lovely form. 

Despite what the reps say, this isn’t an iPhone-sized blockbuster. It’s a really nice phone, and Nokia and Microsoft are hoping that it sells accordingly. With enough support from AT&T, it might.

Unfortunately for a slow-burn strategy, it’s not clear that the targets Nokia and Microsoft are struggling to hit now will be relevant in, say, a years time. The mobile device market is poised for greater convergence between laptop, tablet, and TV functions.

Apple is in a prime position to pull the strings tighter between it’s iPhone, iPad, computers, and Apple TV. Google and it’s Android partners will be able to cobble a competing product together – and we’ve still yet to see what will come out of their Motorola acquisition. Amazon is lurking in the background as a wild card. RIM is a dead duck.

Without Microsoft, Nokia would be almost completely out of runway – the tragic backdrop for all of these events is that the company is slashing R&D spending and letting employees go.

Microsoft is in a curious position. It’s still Microsoft. It has plenty of cash. It also has a lead on the race into the connected living room in the form of the Xbox. And now it’s intimately involved with a mobile hardware manufacturer.

If the new Nokia phones fail to sell in the US and the company can no longer continue to operate independently, Microsoft is in position to harvest the assets and follow Google and Amazon as they attempt to Apple-fy into end-to-end digital service providers. They might not want to do this – liscensing is the story of Microsoft’s success, and is what led them to market dominance – but they have the option open. And it might become necessary.

Yesterday, United States President Barack Obama signed into law the JOBS Act, which may be the most significant update to securities regulations since Sarbanes–Oxley was passed in 2002.

One portion of the new law, the CROWDFUND Act, has been creating a lot of buzz in Silicon Valley for months, as it will make it legal for startups the ability to raise money in small chunks from large numbers of non-accredited investors.

The CROWDFUND Act has plenty of supporters who believe crowdfunding could revolutionize startup investing. Skeptics argue that crowdfunding will have unintended consequences, from fraud to a bubble of epic proportions.

So who is right? Unfortunately, few of the articles and blog posts about the CROWDFUND Act appear to be written by individuals who have taken the time to read its text. As such, much of the discussion around the future of crowdfunding and the impact it will have is ill-informed.

So what does the CROWDFUND Act really say, and what does that mean for the startup ecosystem? Here’s what you need to know.

The Details

Funding Portals

Not surprisingly, a whole host of companies have popped up in recent months and weeks seeking to cash in on the crowdfunding craze. Many of them are positioning themselves to be Kickstarter-like intermediaries, connecting companies and investors, taking a cut of the action in the process.

The CROWDFUND Act requires that these so-called ‘funding portals’ register with the SEC through one of multiple means, and burdens them with certain obligations. Those include implementing procedures to reduce fraud, such as performing background checks on company directors and executives, and making sure that investors don’t invest more than they’re permitted to under the law.

Beyond the obligations the newly-enacted legislation explicitly spells out, the CROWDFUND Act tasks the SEC with establishing more detailed rules for funding portals — rules that these portals will be required to comply with.

What you need to know

There are certainly going to be interesting opportunities for crowdfunding portals, but far too many are jumping the gun in an effort to get into this nascent space. It’s not clear that many of the wannabe intermediaries launching websites will actually have the financial and legal resources to register as funding portals under the CROWDFUND Act.

As many of the rules and regulations around funding portals won’t be known for months, entrepreneurs interested in raising money through crowdfunding and investors interested in buying shares in crowdfunded startups should probably take a wait and see approach before getting involved with any company claiming it’s going to be a funding portal.

Disclosure Requirements

All companies seeking to raise money will need to disclose certain information, such as the legal status of the company, the names of directors and officers, a description of how the funds raised will be used, how the price of the company’s stock was determined, the company’s capital structure, and legal terms associated with the securities being sold.

Additional information will be required based on the amount of money a company is looking to raise:

• A company seeking $100,000 or less will have to provide an income tax return for the most recently completed year (if any) as well as financial statements which are “certified by the principal executive officer…to be true and complete in all material respects.”
• A company seeking $100,001 to $500,000 must provide financial statements that have been reviewed by an independent public accountant in accordance with “professional standards and procedures” or specific procedures that the SEC establishes specifically for this purpose.
• A company seeking more than $500,000 are required to provide audited financial statements.

Every year, all companies will be required to provide to their investors “reports of the results of operations and financial statements of the issuer, as the [SEC] shall, by rule, determine appropriate” and if that’s not enough, companies will need to “comply with such other requirements as the [SEC] may, by rule, prescribe, for the protection of investors and in the public interest.” That, of course, leaves the door wide open for the SEC to clamp down if fraud becomes a problem.

Needless to say, companies will incur costs in complying with all of the above. An attorney will reasonably be required to put together the initial paperwork. CPA firms can charge thousands of dollars to review financial statements and audited financial statements often cost upwards of $10,000 to produce. For companies raising $100,000 or less, the financial disclosure requirements are less onerous, but it’s worth considering that a chief executive with good judgment will be hesitant to certify that her financial statements are “true and complete in all material respects” without the involvement of a CPA.

What you need to know

There’s no such thing as a free lunch and the CROWDFUND Act isn’t going to change that. Raising money through crowdfunding and keeping up with compliance will require both time and money.

Based on the requirements spelled out in the CROWDFUND Act, companies hoping to raise money should probably be prepared to spend tens of thousands of dollars on attorneys and accountants, making them the two parties which may stand to gain the most from this law.

Liability

Crowdfunding will give entrepreneurs and owners of existing businesses a new means of raising capital, but it doesn’t come without risk. Under the JOBS Act, investors can bring suit against a company they’ve invested in for material misstatements and omissions. Liability extends to the company’s directors and principal officers, so individuals at the helm of crowdfunded companies will be taking on a significant amount of responsibility when they accept investment.

What you need to know

It didn’t take the lawyers long to pounce on Groupon when it made an accounting blunder and crowdfunded startups shouldn’t expect attorneys to give them a free pass either. Keeping the Is dotted and the Ts crossed is going to be a must for crowdfunded companies, and inexperienced business owners and those who skimp on competent legal and accounting counsel could easily find themselves facing financial ruin at the hands of their own investors.

Investor Restrictions

The investment limits placed on individuals have been widely discussed, but individuals considering participating in crowdfunding should also be aware of the less talked about restrictions that will apply to the securities they purchase.

The most important: securities purchased through a crowdfunded offering cannot be sold or transferred for one year unless they are sold back to the issuing company, an accredited investor, a family member or as part of a registered offering. In other words, crowdfunded investments are likely to be illiquid for at least one year from the date on which they’re purchased.

What you need to know

Dumping a stock that you’ve fallen out of love with or that’s plummeting in value is generally easy when the stock is publicly traded, but investors will find little room for buyer’s remorse once they put money into a crowdfunded company. In a worst case scenario, investors may have no way to exit an investment before it loses most or all of its value.

Key Takeaways

So where does all of this leave crowdfunding? There are four important takeaways interested parties should take away from the CROWDFUND Act.

Regulations are dead, long live regulations.

Regulations that once prevented companies from raising capital from non-accredited investors through public channels are going away, but that doesn’t mean that the regulations the CROWDFUND Act creates are trivial. Funding portals and companies alike will still have plenty of rules to comply with. In the end, those rules may not be sufficient enough to prevent the fraud some are worried about, but they will require those wishing to participate in the crowdfunding ecosystem to jump through more than a few hoops.

It will take money to raise money with crowdfunding.

Starving entrepreneurs looking for an easy way to fund their dreams will probably be disappointed by crowdfunding. With the disclosure rules mandated by the CROWDFUND Act, it’s hard to see an entrepreneur or business owner getting an offering off the ground with less than a five-figure investment.

What’s more: there’s no guarantee that the investment will pay off, as the CROWDFUND Act requires that an offering reach a certain threshold of investor commitments before would-be investors are obligated to put their money up. That means some companies could actually lose money when they prepare offerings that aren’t successful.

There may be fewer investment opportunities than expected.

There can be little doubt that some companies will turn to crowdfunding to raise capital, but the time and money required to comply with the CROWDFUND Act may mean that far fewer opt to go the crowdfunding route than crowdfunding’s supports expect.

Technology startups may have a tough time.

Much of the discussion around the crowdfunding portion of the JOBS Act centers on the law’s impact on technology startups. But it’s not clear that the attention is well-placed.

Technology startups with traction or an experienced management team typically don’t have a problem raising funding today, particularly in Silicon Valley. On the flip side of the coin, it’s questionable as to whether idea-stage startups without revenue, traction and an experienced management team will be able to muster up the money, paperwork and interest required to get a crowdfunded offering off the ground.

With this in mind, there’s a strong argument to be made that the companies most likely to stand out in the crowdfunding crowd will be established small businesses with some traction and a plausible need for expansion capital.

Once again we’ve put together the most senior and influential job moves in the US.

This time we cover influential moves from PayPal to Yahoo and Google to Twitter, a new president at Campbell Soup, new hires at Comcast and a new chief marketing officer at Target.

Campbell Soup Company has promoted Irene Chang Britt to President of Pepperidge Farm after serving as Campbell’s Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer. Before her time at Campbell Soup, Britt was Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Salted Snacks division at Kraft Foods. 

Cloud9 appointed Tania Goldszmidt as Chief Customer Officer. Previously, Goldszmidt was with Cisco Systems, where she worked on the company’s commerce and cloud solutions.

Comcast Corporation has a new Chief Communications Officer. D’Arcy F. Rudnay, Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications for Comcast, will now hold both roles.

Ellen Breslau has joined Grandparents.com as Senior Vice President and Editor-in-Chief after her role at Woman’s Day as Executive Editor. 

Lifecrowd hired Jacquie Phillips as co-founder and Head of Product. She joins them from Google where she served as product manager for Google Offers and lead product manager on Boutiques.com.

MWW Group has brought on René Spellman as its VP for youth marketing and entertainment. Prior to her role at MWW, Spellman advised on youth and federal engagement and strategic communications for the White House Council for Community Solutions.

Digital media company, Outcast, brought on board Stephanie Dolgins as Chief Marketing Officer. Before joining Outcast, Stephanie was the Head of Marketing for Jetsetter and a Senior Vice Present at AOL, where she oversaw Women’s and Lifestyle Programming.

Plantronics has hired Marilyn Mersereau as Chief Marketing Officer. Before joining Plantronics, Mersereau had been Cisco Systems’s Senior Vice President of Corporate Marketing. 

Renesys Corporation appointed former CMO of Golfsmith, Michael Miller, as Chief Marketing Officer. Miller comes to them after his last role at Global Crossing as Vice President.

RotoMetrics has appointed Robert Spiller as its new president and chief executive officer after leaving his role as president and CEO of SCT International, a high-growth provider of security and anti-counterfeiting technology for commercial and government customers.

US drama firm RHI Entertainment has rebranded as Sonar Entertainment as a move to separate from founder Robert Halmi Sr. RHI Entertainment’s co-chief executive Stewart Till has been named CEO of Sonar in his stead.

Target hires Jeffrey Jones II as its new Chief Marketing Officer six months after Michael Francis left to become the president of J.C. Penny. Jones joins Target from the advertising agency McKinney, where he was partner and president. Previously, Jones also worked for Coca-Cola, Gap, MarchFirst, and Leo Burnett Worldwide.

Twitter welcomes Google’s Director of Global Communications and Public Affairs Gabriel Stricker as its new VP of Communications

The Warnaco Group has nabbed Karyn Hillman from her role as Senior Vice President at Gap to become its Chief Merchandising Officer for Calvin Klein Jeans and Calvin Klein Jeans Accessories.

Worth New York, a division of The Worth Collection, hired Wendy Selig-Prieb as President. Selig-Prieb is the former CEO of the Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club.

Amanda Pires has left PayPal for Yahoo to join her former CEO, Scott Thompson, on April 16 as a replacement for current Senior Vice President of Communications Eric Brown, who is leaving the company.

When Colorado politicians pushed an affiliate tax designed to bolster their state’s revenue on the back of out-of-state retailers, one thing was certain: the effort would backfire.

After all, we’ve known for years that states which have tried to find a way to collect sales tax on out-of-state internet sales fail to raise revenue.

The latest state to learn that the hard way is Illinois. When it passed affiliate tax legislation, it saw major retailers like Amazon and Overstock terminate their Illinois affiliates, giving successful busineses dependent on affiliate fees a good reason to flee for other states. Adding insult to injury, we now know that the tax hasn’t raised a cent for the financially-troubled state.

Colorado politicans, perhaps aware of the failure of affiliate taxes in other states, decided to take a different approach when they passed legislation in 2010 designed to ensure that residents of its state pay use tax on purchases from large out-of-state internet retailers. Instead of trying to force out-of-state retailers with in-state affiliates to physically collect sales tax, Colorado’s legislation sought to force out-of-state retailers to report purchases from Colorado residents. With those reports, Colorado’s tax authorities would be able to pursue the use taxes residents are supposed to pay but rarely ever do.

Colorado’s new tax law was temporarily blocked while a lawsuit questioning its legality worked its way through the court system and now, that dispute is one step closer to resolution after a US District Court Judge declared the law unconstitutional last Friday.

In issuing his opinion, US District Court judge Robert Blackburn wrote that the so-called Amazon tax would “impose an undue burden on interstate commerce” and that “enforcing a reporting requirement on out-of-state retailers will, by definition, discriminate against the out-of-state retailers by imposing unique burdens on those retailers.”

The state of Colorado may very well appeal the decision, so it would be premature for the retail and affiliate groups who led the fight against Colorado’s law to declare victory. But given the evidence that trying to tax out-of-state sales on the internet is a fruitless exercise — evidence which has only grown since Colorado passed its law — perhaps state officials will take a step back and reconsider just how much their coffers realistically stand to gain from tax laws that are as foolish as they are unenforceable.

It has been nearly a year since we began producing our Australia and New Zealand Internet Statistics Compendium and to date, it’s had some 2,000 downloads – indicating an enormous hunger for data and insight among marketers in the region. 

The past few months have seen a number of interesting reports looking at the ANZ digital landscape (including our own State of Digital Marketing in Australia in association with Marketing Magazine), but it is social media data that really seems to be the hot topic. So, here’s a rundown of the latest social-related insight in Australia and New Zealand.

Overall landscape

Social media is very much at the forefront of the latest report from Boston Consulting Group, The Internet Economy in the G-20: The $4.2 Trillion Growth Opportunity. According to BCG, Australia sits alongside countries such as the US, the UK, France and Germany in a cluster it terms as ‘Social-mainstream and mature.’

Despite Australia’s relatively small population (just short of 23m people), the country boasts an internet penetration of nearly 80% and sees about 90% of those online using social – ahead of similar-sized, Canada. 

Unsurprisingly, much of social’s popularity is due to Facebook, which reaches more than 50% of the overall population: around 11m people (according to Socialbakers). Add in Facebook’s user base in New Zealand and the total for the region is pushed to more than 13m people.

Social business 

Businesses in Australia are becoming increasingly socially-driven. Our State of Digital Marketing in Australia report found that three-quarters of Australian client-side marketers are using off-site social media and that 77% of organisations expect to increase investment in this area over the next 12 months. To complement this, more than half of Australian client-side marketers plan to increase their investment in social media technology during the course of this year. 

The AIMIA / Sensis report from last year also found echoes of this among businesses, where they reported that 25% of medium-sized businesses and 50% of large businesses have an active social media presence. 

They also found a disparity between the use of social media by businesses, with the majority (79%) of large organisations utilising social media for dialogue and communications with customers, whereas a similar proportion (76%) of small businesses use social media in the context of comments, ratings and reviews. 

Finally, on average across all business sizes using social media, an enormous 97% cite that they expect investment in the channel to directly contribute to an increase in sales.

Social media and mobile

Mobile phones and tablets are helping push social media too. According to GSMA’s recent Asia Pacific Mobile Observatory, mobile penetration in Australia is 125% and this abundance of devices is having an impact on how all media is consumed.

In February, mobile ad network InMobi released a series of reports on mobile media use across a number of regions. According to the network, 26% of daily media consumption by mobile web users in Australia takes place on mobile devices.

When this mobile media time is broken down, social media is the favoured activity accounting for 34%, ahead of other pastimes such as games at 26% and entertainment at 9%.

Social commerce

InMobi also hints at the significant convergence between social and e-commerce on mobile devices during the purchase process, with 17% of mobile web users saying they have been provided with a better option when looking to mobile when shopping.

However, it is data from both Nielsen and Experian at the end of 2011 which highlight the best opportunity for those looking to social media to connect with consumers.

According to Nielsen, 24% of Australian consumers say they use social media to make purchase decisions.

Aussie shoppers are keen to engage with brands via social too, though Experian data published by Marketing Mag in December showing that 60% of Australian consumers stop engaging with brands if communications are poorly targeted.

Clearly there is scope for marketers and businesses to connect with a sizeable audience via social in Australia and New Zealand. As mobile becomes more integral to both on and offline purchases, it will make sense to focus on making the relationship between social media and the ecommerce channel as seamless as possible on mobile devices.

Yet, whether on mobile, tablet, laptop or PC, followers and ‘friends’ will be as quick to sever ties if the brand connection isn’t of significant value to them. Those hoping to establish the best connections with consumers need to use the social channel for unique, valuable, worthwhile content that really makes their investment worth it.