Emily Brill: Your Pitching Nightmare

MTV has pitched the wrong girl. Emily Brill, New York socialite and weight loss success story, was e-mail pitched on a casting call for a show where girls lose weight to become models. According to the pitch, "models will endure twelve weeks of physical fitness training to get down to their ideal size...models must put their best foot forward at all times while staying focused on losing weight."

The pitch backfired, and now Emily published an angry post about it on her blog. This illustrates one of our core Axioms: do your research!

VP Madness!

Love him or hate him, you have to admit Obama knows how to talk to Gen Y. Now he's taking social media to the next level by announcing his VP on Twitter before he tells the press. He will message all of his "followers" at the same time, the time isn't specified but it will be before the convention. Cell phone addicts can text "VP" to 62262 to receive the news.

10 dumb viral marketing campaigns

This makes for a very entertaining read. Check out the 10 dumbest viral marketing campaigns here.

Then vote for which one is the dumbest here!

I got Barack-rolled...

If you are a YouTube fanatic or have friends who are, it is likely that at some point in the last few months you have been Rick-rolled.

For those of you who don't know what being "rick-rolled" is, here is an explanation of the phenomenon from Yahoo answers:

An internet prank or joke. Rick Roll, Rick Roll'd or Rick Rolling is an internet spam trick in which people post a link to a Rick Astley video on Youtube, but say the viewers of the video are being led to another video, usually proof of unconfirmed gaming news or trailers.

For example, a friend sends you an email saying "Hey, check out the new Harry Potter trailer here!" You click the link and end up on YouTube watching Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" video.

Today on Twitter while reading tweets, I got Barack-rolled. Check out the video here. I'm sure this will get a few million views by the end of the week.

Olympic Power

Milo of Croton, the original Olympic star.

This article from the Times details the endorsement power that ex-Olympians have in marketing. Apparently it's a "for life" gig if you win once, or at least it can be.

I run a trivia contest on Monday nights, and when asked "who won the most gold medals in Olympic history?" no one, in all four rooms of the restaurant, knew the answer. (It was Raymond Ewry for track and field.) It's strange how in such a timeless event, even the most important stars are forgotten for the new faces. Star power is perfectly reflected by contracts; athletes who were once the face of Adidas or Nike are now pushing Cabot cheese.