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My friend Kerstin (pronounced Cheer-sten) was an exceptionally beautiful girl with a year-long tan, long black hair, admired body and a movie star smile. She was the type of girl that always laughed and had a great time. A party girl by nature, Kerstin was fun! Though I was not best friends with her, when I would take trips back to Montana, I was always drawn to see her. She was the type of girl you meet once and never forgot.

Last week while cruising on Facebook I saw a picture of Kerstin on my friend’s online bulletin board. She was in her Halloween costume looking striking. I smiled and then saw the picture caption which read “Rest in peace Kerstin. I know you’re up there smiling down. You are loved and missed.”

With my heart pumping, I clicked to Kerstin’s profile and to see hundreds of comments from friends and family about how she will be missed. Without warning I entered Kerstin’s virtual grave site.

Kerstin died tragically last month in a car accident while driving to work. Being out-of-state in Portland, I never received the message. I had to find out on a social network.

Her Facebook page is filled with last thoughts from her friends. Loved ones write poems and contemplate how tough life is going to be without her. Friends from early childhood and random acquaintances honor her life by adding comments. Two months after her death, people still tag her pictures, leave comments on her wall and share inside jokes.

“Cheery… You would have loved the party your family threw! Everything was perfect! There were so many people and all of them were dressed to the nine, just the way you would have wanted it. Being able to meet all of your friends and family was amazing! It just made me feel that much closer to you. You left an impression on all of us.” - Willow Mariah (Missoula, Mt.)

With the technological trends reshaping how our society operates, I never imagined how it would change the way we mourn. Is this a healthy way to honor a passed loved one, or will it make it harder to get over such an untimely death? I didn’t attend Kerstin funeral, but fortunately I am able to pay my respects—even if it is only virtually. Perhaps she is reading my comment from above. I like to think she is.

A friend of mine gave me a small package wrapped in newspaper the other day, my Christmas present about a month late. I didn’t care because I wasn’t expecting anything, and was super-excited to unwrap two 16-oz. cans of Brawndo, “The Thirst Mutilator.”

If you know anything about Mike Judge’s film “Idiocracy” you can appreciate how amazing it is that this product exists in real life. One of the ongoing jokes in the movie is about a product called Brawndo, an electrolyte-laden energy drink that flows out of drinking fountains and has completely replaced water, even for watering plants. To quote the movie and the back of the can, “Brawndo’s got what plants crave! Brawndo’s got electrolytes. And that’s what plants crave. They crave elecrolytes. And that’s why plants crave Brawndo. Not water, like from the toilet.”

“Idiocracy” itself is somewhat of an underdog movie (having been snubbed by 20th Century Fox, the studio that created it) but it has since seen some success on DVD, at least in the circles I run in. The film follows a time-traveling Luke Wilson 500 years into the future, where humanity has devolved to a point that Wilson is the smartest man alive. Television shows have names like “Ow, my balls!”, courtrooms are basically run like episodes of Jerry Springer and corporations like Carl’s Jr.’s have slogans like “F*** you! I’m eating!” It is likely that the heavy parody of corporate culture is responsible for 20th Century Fox pulling all advertisements, movie trailers and press kits from the film and releasing it in only 125 theaters instead of the typical 2500-3000.

It was a movie that Internet nerds had been following and it just dropped off, eventually showing up on DVD about a year later. It is by no means a great movie, it’s awesomeness is also off-set by some heavy handed-narrative and weak acting. Nonetheless, it is a feel-good movie, full of small moments and details that will only continue to grow it’s cult status.

So how did this fictional product from a failed movie become a real product? Redux Beverages, the California beverage maker behind the scandalously named “Cocaine” energy drink that local newscasters were scaring grandmothers with when it was released, saw an opportunity to cash in on the cult following of the movie. In a press release for Brawndo, Redux explains the precedent set by Mike Judge’s earlier film “Office Space,” whereby Milton’s fixation on a red Swingline Stapler created such a demand for the product that Swingline actually started producing them.

Time magazine ran an article about the red stapler in August 2003: “Once the film was released, buyers began asking for the red stapler. But Swingline didn’t make it. ‘We concluded we really needed to put a red stapler on the market,’ says Bruce Neapole, Swingline’s president. He says Swingline continues to sell thousands each month of what it calls the Rio Red Stapler.”

In the same way that Swingline created a viable product with the red stapler, Redux has released Brawndo, hoping that it will appeal to fanatical consumers. It’s a weird case of reverse product placement where the products don’t exist at the time they become characters in a movie. This doesn’t happen very often and is a hard thing to predict, but it may be a trend to keep an eye on. It is especially impressive that Mike Judge has accomplished this twice in his last two films.

After Brawndo became a reality, viral marketing was the natural next step. Having recruited the voice of Mark Little, a writer for the Canadian sketch comedy group Picnicface, Brawndo’s advertisements essentially mimic the same style of Picnicface’s commercial for a fictional energy drink called Powerthirst.

The advertisement captures the ridiculousness of Judge’s future world, and quite frankly wins at being successful on the Internet, racking up about 300,000 YouTube views so far. Having downed a can of Brawndo in the course of writing this blog entry (see image above), I have to say it is an above-average tasting energy drink, though that isn’t saying much because most energy drinks are disgusting. At this point the appeal of Brawndo is mostly to people who have seen the film, and it’s unlikely that you’ll see a can unless you know someone who’s ordered it online. Redux is seeking distributors, however, so if you own a business do everyone a favor and order a couple of cases.

This last week, myself and a few others members of the New Media team went on a book tour stretching across a few states on the East Coast. The book we were selling is aimed at an older audience than any of us, and we learned very quickly that we had to completely change our frame of mind in order to make this tour a successful one.

Coming from a generation of Internet-aholics, we thought that pretty much only focusing on online PR would mean a successful tour would occur—after all, this is how we get all of our news. Well, it became clear pretty early on that while our online PR efforts were bringing some people in, and contributing greatly to our optimization and search engine ranking, the fact that our core audience was (on average) about 60 years old, meant that most of them were coming because they heard about the signing though the (old-fashioned) grapevine.

Once we did secure some traditional PR coverage, we saw our successes increase exponentially. This was definitely a huge learning curve for myself, as I find myself having the tendency to believe that everyone does things the same way I do. I learned that traditional PR does still have a valid place in this world, and that I really need to be able to take a more focused look on the audience, and determine from there what kind of PR avenue is the most beneficial to all.

We’ve all heard the stories of employees not hiring smart, talented, aspiring college students due to their (gasp) inappropriate Facebook/Myspace accounts. Look out Gen Y, these stories are not fables or urban legends, but realities in the wonderful world of Web 2.0.

As I mentioned in my previous entry “Personal Branding 101,” we should think of ourselves as “Mini-corporations.” With the advent of social networks we have a unique chance to advertise our brand like never before. Think of entering into social sites as if your company is going public. If you were a public corporation you would strive to highlight your finest attributes while desensitizing your poor qualities.

With our professional and social lines blurring, managing your personal brand is more imperative then ever. You do not know who is looking at your page, so practicing common sense and checking your site often is key. Below is a list of advice as you strive to elevate your personal brand

1) If you use the sites to communicate your feelings and frustrations use caution. Don’t tell the world about your problems and sadness. Your sob stories should not be surfacing on the net. Do you really want to be the pathetic brand? Use an actual paper diary if you need to get things off your chest.

2) DELETE inappropriate messages and pictures. If you think, ‘wow my boss would be disappointed if he saw this,’ get rid of it. This doesn’t mean you can’t show pictures of you having fun and enjoying some drinks- in fact some organizations might think of you as a “stick in the mud” and “boring” if you don’t. Just don’t cross the line of being offensive and immature.

3) Set the controls to “private” so only people you know personally can access your account. Keep in mind, however, that just because your boss isn’t a “friend” doesn’t mean there aren’t ways for him or her to see your account

4) Balance your site. Don’t add a bunch of graphics, application and pictures just because you know how. It makes your site look cheap and gaudy. Think when you create a Power Point Presentation. Chances are you refrain from adding most graphics, colors and transition slides because it is unappealing.

5) Users can become too active by posting thousands of pictures, belonging to numerous groups and adding many applications. This intense amount of participation gives the impression that you have nothing better to do then play on social networks.

6) Have fun, connect, be cautions, balance and enjoy!

A couple of weeks ago, I listed the first five steps to effectively market your blog. I went over choosing a URL, blogging software, design, keyword research and optimization, and now have a few “more technical” steps to add.

For 1-5, click here.

6. Enable automatic trackback and ping functionality—A trackback is a way to notify a website when you publish an entry that references it. This is a great way to spread the word about your blog. Pingbacks allow you to notify a blog about an entry when you link to them in the content.
7. Enable feed tracking—Use an application such as Feedburner Pro to publicize your content and make it possible for readers to subscribe. Feedburner can also tell you a lot about your readers, such as where they are coming from and what they read when they’re on your blog.

8. Link to authoritative blogs and the sort—Linking to similar blogs and websites as resources to your readers is not only a great way to position yourself as a great resource, but also to attract the attention of these other blogs and sites that may be able to reference you. Great link bait.

9. Keep it organized—Organize your blog entries by categories and keywords. If a reader enjoyed something that they read months ago on your blog, you want them to be able to easily reference it.

10. Keep a watchful eye—Use web applications such as Google Analytics and ClickTracks to keep an eye on your readers. These applications can tell you what pages they are reading on your blog, how long they spend on pages, and other bits of information that can help direct your content. This is the best way to find out what your readers want.

If you don’t know about Digg.com, you surely don’t spend enough time on the Internet. While I say that as if it’s a bad thing, I guess that’s really just more of a reason to read this blog. That said, by definition (per Wikipedia) Digg is a community-based popularity website combining social bookmarking, blogging and syndication in a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control. Sounds boring, right? Actually, quite the contrary, as Digg is probably the best thing to happen to the Internet since Al Gore and Google. That might be a bit of an overstatement, as YouTube, pop-up ads and e-mail marketing communications from Nigeria are revolutionary achievements in their own rights. Nevertheless, Digg is extremely insightful and can do wonders for marketers and ad folks alike.

All moderately funny jokes aside, Digg is something everyone in the digital world needs to know about. There are a number of community-based popularity websites on the Internet, but Digg is unarguably the most popular. Why? Probably because Digg did it right from the beginning by enabling its users to pick what makes it on Digg’s front page. Sure, not everything on the front page of Digg is newsworthy, but you better believe that whatever article, picture or video makes it on the front page is going to be seen by tens of thousands of people. Take for example Apple’s iPhone-if the cell phone’s announcement wasn’t the second-highest “Dugg” item this year, would it have been such a big hit? I venture to say yes; nonetheless, with nearly 25,000 Diggs under its belt, I’m sure there was some impact.

So, I guess the question you need to ask yourself is -”how do I (you) get on the front page of Digg?” To tell you the truth, there isn’t a straight answer to that question, or fa magical ormula to get on Digg’s front page, but it can be done, either purposefully or by accident. For something to be truly Digg-worthy, it needs to be at least one of the following:

1. Shocking - Which entails being funny, disgusting or just plain wrong; either way it needs to be something the reader feels like he/she needs to tell their friends, and possibly the world, about.
2. Important - The definition of what is important is up for debate, but in order for someone to Digg your piece, it must be truly newsworthy. Beware, “Net Surfers” are savvy and if you try to trick them you might still make the front page of Digg, but in the inverse of what you were trying to do.
3. Insightful - The item at large has to encompass applicable information, something new to the reader and be easy and fast to implement.

In the end, breaking into the Digg culture isn’t easy, but with some amount of effort, strategic thinking and a bit of luck, it can be done and the results can prove to be invaluable.

On a Portland-y note for today’s entry, I present you with a video of “Evil Bee,” a song by the local group Menomena.

The video has been online for a couple of months now, exclusively on the PF Flyers website. As of today, October 31, the exclusive hosting privilege appears to be up, at least according to their site. PF Flyers, if you’re unfamiliar, is a company that has been making stylish shoes for the last 70 years. Through this exclusive hosting agreement, PF Flyers underwrote the video, which is entirely animated and entirely awesome. By doing this they have associated themselves with the band’s scrappy indie appeal and made their site a destination for music and animation fans alike.

Past Menomena videos have all been entertaining but this one certainly takes the quality up a notch. It is exciting to see a company supporting a band in such a productive way. PF Flyers clearly realizes that they don’t need to make a shoe commercial with a Menomena soundtrack—rather than simply licensing a song they have found a way to add value and credibility to their brand without compromising the band in any way.

Aside from the PF Flyer’s page which explains the arrangement, or the actual page the video is played from, the video itself has remarkably little branding. The only hint of PF Flyers involvement is the Pablo Ferro-esque title cards at the end. It’s a refreshing, mutually beneficial take on the business of advertising and music videos.

It truly is an exciting time to be entering the world of online PR.  Not everyone is quite sure what they’re doing, or the most effective way to do it, which amounts to a lot of slip-ups.  On the flip side, there are a lot of triumphs as well.

When a company succeeds in the online PR game, the response is immediate.  Due to the speed with which a blogger can post, when a campaign takes off, someone, somewhere is writing about it.  Be it AdWeek or your Uncle Ed, when the fingers start typing they don’t stop, and if it’s good news you better believe you’ve hit the online jackpot.

But if it’s bad news… watch out.  A downside to the aforementioned speed with which things can post is that before people even research a single word, they have already posted their opinion on the matter. With no editorial hierarchy in place to check for those silly little things called ‘slander’ and ‘libel,’ its been extremely easy—and common—for reputations to be ruined in a single afternoon.

So be careful out there–the world wide web can be a dangerous place indeed.