Coke has long associated its brand with happiness — even dedicating entire websites to the philosophical meaning of the word, and calling the contents of a can of cola “140 happy calories.”

Now, the company is taking advantage of a happy coincidence — the fact that part of its logo happens to look like the Danish flag — to welcome people to Denmark, recently voted the “happiest country in the world” by the United Nations.

In honor of the Danish tradition of greeting arriving visitors by waving flags, Coke’s local agency, McCann Copenhagen, created an interactive airport ad that dispenses flags. Coke says it’s purpose is to “let Coca-Cola and Denmark spread happiness together.” The below video of a case study shows people’s reactions to the machine.

Little kids and elderly people jubilantly waving flags as loved ones rush to greet them, all made possible by Coke. We’d categorize this as a highly creative branding win.

Every brand on Earth is chomping at the bit to place official ads on the rapidly growing Instagram, but parent company Facebook continues to proceed with extreme caution.

While Mark Zuckerberg says he is very encouraged by the expansion of the image-sharing network, he clearly does not plan to open the commercial floodgates until he’s good and ready. In his own words, Instagram must first focus on “build[ing] community” before determining how best to use its considerable potential as an ad/marketing forum. We can see why Zuckerberg prefers to take low-risk baby steps, no matter how impatient advertisers may be.

In the meantime, brands and their social media teams should be quite happy to learn that they do have more promotional options on Instagram thanks to the newly introduced function “photos of you,” which allows users to tag any other existing account—be it a friend, a celebrity, a local business, or a big-name brand—in their own pics. Amateur lensmen and brand managers alike will receive notifications when others tag them, and they can then choose whether to display these images on their own public feeds.

Can you say “pre-approved user generated content?”

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We always knew we didn’t belong in Abercrombie; being accosted by overpowering cologne while dodging deer antlers and shelling out a year’s worth of allowance on a sweatshirt never particularly appealed to us. But then again, we weren’t blonde, lead cheerleader, and built like, well, we usually say “an Abercrombie model”, so we were pretty sure A&F didn’t want our business anyway.

Turns out, we may have been right.

When speaking with Business Insider last week, Robin Lewis, co-author of The New Rules of Retail, claimed that A&F CEO Mike Jeffries “doesn’t want larger people shopping in his store, he wants thin and beautiful people. He doesn’t want his core customers to see people who aren’t as hot as them wearing his clothing. People who wear his clothing should feel like they’re one of the ‘cool kids.’”

So what exactly deems a kid cool enough to earn the privilege of wearing the A&F brand? In a 2006 interview with Salon, Jeffries said, “In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids…We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”

So who’s automatically excluded from this “cool” group? Girls above a size 10, apparently. Abercrombie doesn’t even list women’s XL or XXL on its size chart. According to Lewis, the only reason Abercrombie offers XL and XXL men’s sizes is likely to appeal to beefy athletes. Read more

PR industry experts are inundated with columns and advice about how clients should manage their personal brands. Much of that input is common sense: don’t get coked up and crash your Porsche, don’t beat your girlfriend and land in jail, don’t get drunk and start tweeting. Most of the public is able to avoid these situations. (Thanks, moms.)

Nevertheless, brands love spokespeople. Brands need spokespeople to provide that human element that connects with the complex psychology that is consumer behavior. From Donald Trump to Eva Longoria, personal branding is big business, and a dangerous one, because all humans are fallible. But if there were ever a control in the experiment of personal branding, it would be Tim Tebow. The guy is as clean as a bag of cotton balls.

In fact, Tim Tebow’s personal brand is so sterling that even without a job—he has yet to be picked up by an NFL team after being dropped by the New York Jets—his sponsors aren’t worried at all. ESPN, Nike, TiVo, FRS, Fox Sports and Jockey are all on board with whatever happens next in his career, even if it doesn’t include football. Those brands are even lining up to retain his services after he hangs up his cleats. That’s personal branding done well. But there is more to successful personal branding than avoiding mug shots and visiting children in the hospital.

There is authenticity. Tim Tebow lives according to the values he espouses regardless of what his handlers, agents and PR people do. Tim Tebow runs the Tim Tebow show (which is his life), and his fans adore him for it. In a parallel universe, Charlie Sheen fans feel the same way about his personal brand. For some reason, many PR experts struggle with this idea of authenticity. So do young celebrities like Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus; it’s hard to be authentic when you are still wrestling with who you are and the trappings of becoming an adult. Read more

“Mount Gay is made with a rhythm and style that hasn’t changed in 310 years” according to Erin Newby, head of strategy at Radical Media, the brand’s agency charged with its repositioning. Sir John Gay introduced the rum in Barbados in 1703 (B.C.), that’s before cola, or even ice. So the liquor had to stand on its own merits rather than being part of a mixed cocktail.

Newby appeared on a Creative Week panel along with Mount Gay’s global brand director and others from Radical Media’s team on Tuesday in New York to discuss the repositioning strategy and launch of its Black Barrel product. The multimedia effort included new graphics, print ads, video and redesigned website that brought the brand’s history to life. Their brand ambassador program is now spreading the word about Black Barrel.

Strategic evolution: Mount Gay’s earlier print ads featured product shots with the tagline “the rum that invented rum”. The agency tapped further into the brand’s history as the world’s oldest rum, which became a natural strategy, Newby said. The new line, “There’s a time and a place” captures the brand’s provenance and its slow double distillation process in copper stills. Mount Gay’s M.O. is “rum is ready when it’s ready, not before.”

Competition: “Everyone else focuses on flash and beach scenes”, said Justin Wilkes, Radical’s president of media and entertainment. Their biggest competitors include Bacardi and Captain Morgan. Added Fannie Young, Mount Gay’s global brand director. ”We wanted to position the brand in a more premium space.”

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According to a new Accenture Interactive report, Turbulence for the CMO, four in ten top marketing executives feel they are unprepared to meet their objectives due to a lack of funding and inefficient business practices. In light of these challenges, 70 percent of the executives polled believe that corporate marketing will undergo a dramatic shift within the next five years, and that in order to keep up with changing expectations and an increasingly complicated customer environment, their organizations must focus on digital marketing and analytics.

“Marketing executives are growing increasingly concerned that tight budgets and the lack of a clear strategy for implementing digital technologies are hurting their company’s ability to compete in the digital age,” said Brian Whipple, global managing director of Accenture Interactive. “There is a clear performance gap between the demands of the marketplace and the ability of marketing organizations to apply the digital technology talent required to be more effective.”

This shift in focus is translating into changes in two major areas: increased investment in digital capabilities, and improved collaboration between in-house and agency marketing and communications efforts. Here’s how the results of the survey break down regarding those two major categories:

Increased Investment in Digital Capabilities:

• 66 percent of marketing executives said they will allocate at least one quarter of their budget to digital marketing next year.
• 23 percent said that more than half of their spending will be dedicated to digital marketing.
• 48 percent said they would spend more on managing customer data.
• 40 percent will increase spending on web analytics.
• 39 percent will spend more on marketing analytics.
• Half of the executives polled said they plan to initiate an internal reorganization to become more digitally focused, while over half said they plan to hire more people with the necessary digital skills.

Improved Internal and Agency Collaboration:

• 55 percent of marketing executives said they were satisfied with the level of collaboration with their outside agencies. However, the rest of the results indicate a less positive experience.
• Only 36 percent said that their agencies execute flawlessly.
• 36 percent said that the agencies are not able to deliver what they promised.
• Only 44 percent said that agency partners help marketing executives transform their marketing organization.

This indicates that greater collaboration between in-house and agency efforts may help smooth the transition to digitally-focused marketing. Read more

How are people supposed to associate Diet Coke with thinness when the vending machines are so darn hefty?

At least that seems to be the thinking behind Coke’s new Slender Vender, the thinnest beverage-dispensing machine the weight-obsessed world has ever seen. The new design, meant to demonstrate that Diet Coke is “fit and elegant,” not only encourages soda drinkers to think thin, but even brings the beverage to places it’s never been before. In the promo below, we watch as the dainty, sleek machine is wedged delicately between park benches, hair salon tables, treadmills and, of course, bulky vending machines.

Oh, and cans? Forget cans! Those shapeless cylindrical containers are doing nothing for you — the Slender Vender appears to deal only in shapely bottles.

Pretty and accessible (and willing to dole out the sweet stuff to just about anyone that pushes the right button)? Add a cheerleading uniform to the mix and this vending machine is the girl we all hated in high school!

Viagra has had enough of counterfeit drugs stock blocking its game. Pfizer Inc., the maker of the little blue pill, is making a revolutionary move in the pharmaceutical industry by allowing customers to purchase Viagra pills online via the brand’s website.

This is an effort to curb the illegal and potentially dangerous sales of counterfeit pills claiming to be Viagra, or to be as effective as Viagra. These counterfeits have ruled the digital space with relative impunity and so Pfizer has decided to compete with these cheaper knock-offs on their own turf.

Though the digital transaction will still require an authorized prescription from a doctor, more reserved customers will be spared awkward conversations with their pharmacists—Hi Joe, so got any big plans this weekend?—when procuring the drug.

The public has grown comfortable with purchasing just about anything online, especially if it can save money in a struggling economy. So Viagra, which has lost billions to counterfeiters and claims to be the most counterfeited drug on the planet, must create a powerful digital footprint with its new sales and distribution strategy.

Business is all about supply and demand, and in this public relations contest between Viagra and fraudulent purveyors, we’re guessing trusted brand recognition will prevail over dubious price points with customers. Men are willing to cut financial corners when it comes to many things in their lives, but this isn’t one of them.

While many companies may reward employees’ loyalty, New York City real estate company Rapid Realty is asking for a lifelong commitment in exchange for a bump in pay; any employee willing to tattoo the company’s logo on their body will automatically receive a fifteen percent raise.

Selling your own skin as billboard space? Crazy, right? That’s what we thought, but apparently at least forty Rapid Realty employees have already deemed the bribe worth the body art.

Stephanie Barry justified her decision with hard-to-deny simplicity, telling CBS: “I was like, why am I throwing my money away when I could give myself from $25,000 to $40,000 for the same amount of work?” And she’s not alone. Since there are no size or location restrictions, workers have gotten creative, one person getting inked stealthily behind her ear.

Not everyone is buying in, though. When CBS asked non-Rapid Realty-employees if they would do the same thing at their jobs, responses ranged from “[the reward] would have to be extraordinary” and “It’s a scar for life. I have enough of those.”

What about you, readers? Would you be a walking billboard for a hefty pay raise? Tell us in the comments section.

We know sex sells, and we’ve seen non-profits from PETA to the American Public Health Association use provocative tactics to garner attention and raise money, but porn website Come4.org is hoping to corner the market on the idea of being bad to do a little good.

The adult website, which describes itself as “the first user-generated, nonprofit pornography site devoted to funding charitable and ethically driven projects” is being unveiled with the help of Being, the Paris office of ad agency TBWA. The agency created a 90-second promotional video called “The Lover”, which introduces the world to Come4′s first charitable initiative—helping to fund the Asta Philpot Foundation, which is committed to raising public awareness about the sexual rights of disabled people.

Come4 describes its mission and intentions this way:

“‘Sex’ is the top word searched on the Internet. With nearly billions of yearly revenues, the sex industry is one of the greatest markets online. Unfortunately, it is also one of the less ethical and transparent ones…

The prevailing model is finalized to business, and thus it systematically aims at subjugating our sexual imagination to marketing standards. As a result, instead of reflecting the natural plurality of human sexuality, much of today’s online sexual contents foster a one-dimensional perspective which is often fake, violent, macho-centered, and in many cases barely legal. We believe that we, as a self-aware community, can do better than this, and that time has come to rethink critically the relationship of online pornography and society.

With Come4 we aim to ignite a new sexual revolution, one that has at its core people instead of money, respect for diversity instead of uniformity, and solidarity instead of selfishness. Our goal is to devolve at least 1 percent of the total revenue of the online sex industry to support ethical causes aimed at defending and promoting sexual rights. Provided no one is harmed and that everything is legal, is there any reason why these revenues cannot be used for better ends?’

We never thought the mission statement of a porn website would have us wanting to cheer, but…dare we say it…Huzzah! This is some seriously well-crafted branding; the company manages to describe exactly what’s wrong with its own industry, and then explain with earnest precisely how it plans to overcome and redefine the meaning and purpose of that business. We are, despite ourselves, impressed.

What do you think, readers? Is this something you could get behind (no pun intended), or is this mission statement the equivalent of a phenomenal political speech given by another smooth-talking-but-no-different-from-the-rest candidate?