“Hey,” you’re thinking, “can’t people do that already?” Yeah sure, but it’s not an eBay window! Derp. What does that even mean? It means every gimmick has a chance when it’s artfully done.

EBay is taking over four empty storefronts across downtown Manhattan on which people will be able to purchase any or all of 30 items presented from the new Kate Spade Saturday line. This is happening until July 7.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Time is of the essence.

The public, understandably, hates waiting for anything. We want our food fast, our deliveries now and the transactions in our lives to be instantaneous. Money comes with many benefits, but perhaps the greatest power money holds is that it can save us time. eBay, the once darling and maverick of the Internet, has now entered the time game.

The brand has just launched the eBay Now app where customers can order anything carried by partners such as Best Buy, Macy’s, REI and Target, and have it delivered within an hour. Yes, 60 minutes. The time it takes you to remember you forgot that digital camera with which you were supposed to film your interview with the star of the documentary you’ve been working on for six years. Time changes everything, and eBay is hoping that time with compel customers to pay for convenience.

Saving customers time is a marketing strategy as old as time, and has worked well for every business endeavor from convenience stores to pizza delivery. Anyone in the public who has been to a funeral knows the importance of time, and so we’re guessing eBay Now will be a popular app with consumers—particularly those consumers experiencing a moment of weakness upon discovering they’ve forgotten something important, something they need now.

Is the eBay Now app enough to catapult the brand back into the online superstardom? We’ll have to wait and see as the public decides. But we all have a friend addicted to eBay, and if addicts like one thing, it’s instant gratification.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This post was co-written by the author and his wife, Stephanie Coffee. 

Horrific events that shock and captivate entire nations, superseding all other news—tragedies like the Newtown shooting and last week’s Boston Marathon terror attack—are thankfully rare. And yet, as we all know, social media and the 24/7 cable news cycle have intensified the public’s focus on these national crises and their aftermaths.

Now that the Boston case has been resolved with amazing speed by state and local authorities, we can examine the media response to last week’s events from a PR perspective.

As communications professionals, we know that the public doesn’t just demand (accurate) news as it breaks in times of crisis. They also value reassurances and statements of support from sources they follow on social media—sources that include their favorite brands.

At least one brand has already demonstrated the dangers of an inept response. So what should public entities and the people who manage their accounts do?

What NOT to do: 

• Don’t tie the event into a promotion: Epicurious (which is usually a very good food site) gave us a perfect case study on Monday with its tone-deaf promotional tweet encouraging followers to buy specific Boston-themed products. We won’t go into why it was a terrible idea because that should be painfully obvious. As another example, who can forget Kenneth Cole’s infamous Egypt uprising PR Fail?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The first of the many, many stories we accumulated over the break is an interesting one: a list of 2013’s 27 “World Champions” of the global branding game, brought to us by Citi and Business Insider.

According to Citi, these 27 brands have beaten all others when it comes to creating “significant and enduring business models over the long term”–and we covered quite a few of them in 2012. Our thoughts on some of the winners after the jump:

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Target says it has taken steps to correct the problems that customers experienced with past collections, particularly the Missoni line. Among the changes: a different launch time, making the collection available in fewer stores, and better estimates for demand.

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Guilty as charged: A new study by Women at NBCU right in time for the shopping season shows a big change in women’s shopping habits, with more than 75 percent considering a retail product’s resell value at the time of purchase.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Sims Social, a new online game, is coming to Facebook.

Research over the past three months conducted by Women at NBCU’s Brand Power Index found that more women than men have at least one gaming app on their smartphone; 75 percent of women versus 67 percent of men. Women be gaming!

Moreover, the research showed that those brands that offered games during that time period saw a spike in their Brand Index score. For instance, Stouffer’s launched a game on Facebook, “Farmer’s Harvest” in Farmville, with promotions and moved up from number 363 to number 303.

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Facebook's Zuckerberg, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt

The big message to come from the Internet business leaders who gathered in France for the e-G8 meeting this week was “Leave the Internet alone.”

Hosted by Publicis chief exec Maurice Lévy and serving as a prelude to the Group of 8 summit currently under way, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Eric Schmidt, John Donahoe, chief executive of eBay, and Groupon founder Andrew Mason were among the digital bigwigs in attendance for the e-G8. They also had an audience with G-8 world leaders like British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has called for some regulation of the Web.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The auction

The hat has its own Facebook page and became an Internet meme that propped the hat on the heads of everyone, including heads of state.

The hat’s designer, the famous milliner Philip Treacy, has gotten ample attention for the hat, telling HollywoodLife.com that he wasn’t told what to design, but was inspired by “beauty and elegance.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

A high-profile charity auction from such a worldwide event (estimated audience of the royal wedding – hundreds of millions people) is a good thing for eBay. Although the sale of its former holding Skype raised its stock a little, lately, it has only been in the news lately with things like some guy’s Camaro recovered after being stolen in 1975.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Some tech publications are reporting that both Google and Facebook are interested in owning Skype, which had been purchased for $2.6 billion in 2005 by eBay but was never really integrated on the auction site.

So what does this mean from a public relations standpoint?

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Women at NBCU

Notable on the list is “One A Day” by Bayer, which jumped 241 spots with a website that encourages visitors to sign up and share for better health. PlayStation Move from Sony Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii also moved up.

Car brands, including Ford (#5) and Honda (#9), had a good showing as well. NBCU attributes their higher rankings to the use of social media to introduce new car lines. It’s also tied to the “power of the purse” that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said was “so self-evident” when she spoke at last month’s NBCU event on marketing to women. Chrysler, which also moved up in the rankings, was also represented at that event.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Called Ruth: Edelman Integrated Marketing (in honor of Ruth Edelman), the unit currently has 70 staffers and work will span across consumer, health, technology, and service industries. Talent for the new unit consists of in-house specialists as well as others selected from across the branding, advertising, and marketing industries. Ruth will work with existing Edelman clients and partner with new clients and companies. Clients include eBay, Pfizer, Samsung, and Starbucks. Offices are located in Washington D.C., New York, Seattle, and Chicago.

Ruth is the latest addition to Edelman’s list of specialty firms including MATTER, focused on sports and entertainment marketing and StrategyOne, Edelman’s research services business.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.