If you’re a startup, sorry, but PepsiCo is not your monetization strategy. Your partner? Sure. Your adviser? Absolutely.
Shiv Singh, the global head of digital for PepsiCo Beverages, delivered that message loud and clear during Ad Age’s Media Evolved conference in New York on Nov 15th. It’s a message that Mr. Singh has been preaching of late, as he tries to inform the industry of PepsiCo’s evolving approach. The company’s strategy, he explained, is to get in on the ground level with companies that could become the next Twitter via its Digital Labs program. In the case of Foursquare, for example, PepsiCo first teamed up with the company when the service was in its infancy. Today, Foursquare has more than 10 million members worldwide.
“The fact that we’re there through the journey, young consumers appreciate that,” Mr. Singh said. “It’s authentic.”
Signal Snowboards regular feature ‘Every Third Thursday’ sees the team put their design and engineering skills to the test by crafting a unique snowboard. In the past, they have made one with a paintball gun, one with a boombox, one that doubled as an electric guitar and one using LEGO. This time they celebrated Steve Jobs with an Apple-inspired snowboard. The iShred has an aluminum unibody with a cut-out illuminated Signal logo and space to slide in an iPad. Watch the video below to see them making the iShred, testing it out on the slopes and then using the iPad for a bit of FaceTime afterwards:
Evelyn Lauder, a member of the Estee Lauder cosmetic company who helped create the pink ribbon symbol for breast cancer awareness, died Saturday in New York City. She was 75.
Lauder died from complications of ovarian cancer at her home with her family by her side, the company said.
The Vienna, Austria, native fled Nazi-occupied Europe with her parents, eventually settling in New York City.
As a college freshman, she was introduced to the man she would marry, Leonard A. Lauder, the son of Estee and Joseph Lauder, who co-founded the cosmetics company. Lauder joined the family business and rose to be senior corporate vice president and head of fragrance development worldwide.
We’ve accomplished so much since Election Day 2008, but let’s make sure we finish the job together in 2012. Election Day 2012 is exactly one year from this week. That’s why we’re not waiting to build this campaign. Watch the video, then commit to volunteer and say you’ll show your support in 2012.
Since Election Day 2008, we’ve:
• Saved over one million jobs in the U.S. auto industry
• 20 consecutive months of job creation
• Took the fight to Al-Qaeda
• Reduced and secured nuclear weapons
• Passed health reform, lowering costs and insuring 32 million
Over the last 4 years, we’ve seen and live during some of the most interesting times in history. A lot has been accomplished and our beloved President wants to keep the momentum going for the year and term to come.
This movement needs you in it. We need you to finish the work we started. We’ve ended combat operations in Iraq and all of our troops will be home for the holidays. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is history. Comprehensive health reform is becoming a reality and already one million more young adults have health insurance because of it. And after a huge battle, we’ve put new rules in place to protect consumers and our economy from recklessness on Wall Street.
All of this is thanks to you and the work you’ve done. You proved the cynics wrong by helping build a movement for change but we have so much more to do. This is a moment that demands everything we’ve got to put people back to work and rebuild an economy that works for everyone. You’re our new generation of leaders and we’re stronger together than we can ever be on our own.
The White House gets a Halloween makeover in anticipation of trick-or-treaters to arrive at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and the White House pastry kitchen prepares 4000 gift bags to be handed out by The President and The First Lady for Halloween.
A|X Armani Exchange unveiled the grand finale to its year-long 20th anniversary celebration with the A|X VIDEOMIX – an interactive, create-your-own music video fashion show application, for the iPad and iPhone, that merges fashion and technology.
The A|X VIDEOMIX puts you in the director’s chair, allowing users to select their “run of show,” choosing from a selection of music tracks, backgrounds, A|X 20th Anniversary Collection looks and models including Alessandra Ambrosio, Marlon Teixeira, Francisco Lachowski, Milou Sluis and more. iPhone and iPad users will then be able to shop and share their A|X VIDEOMIX with friends via email and social networks. After the show has been viewed, users can “like,” comment and rate A|X VIDEOMIX creations, which will permit special access to behind the scenes videos, footage of models preparing for the show, and more.
To mark this special occasion, Mr. Giorgio Armani has created his own A|X VIDEOMIX, “SuperShow.” You can view it here.
Fashion seen in A|X VIDEOMIX will feature looks from the A|XX 20th Anniversary Fall Collection. The Fall Line will be available through October, then A|X VIDEOMIX will be updated to incorporate looks from the Armani Exchange holiday collection, with a special focus on gift giving for the holiday season.
Publishers, don’t start skimping on your iPad editions now. Magazine and newspaper apps’ quality seems to be the most important factor in their success with consumers, according to the first annual “The State of the App” report from McPheters & Company’s iMonitor service, drawing on iMonitor’s evaluations of 3,000 apps from publishers around the world.
Quality has a higher correlation with the magazine and newspaper-app revenue than a wide variety of other variables including price, subscription availability and audience demographics like age and income, the report says.
IMonitor gauges quality by rating how well apps work, whether they crash, how long they take to download, the presence of video or audio, design, navigability, interactivity, social-media capabilities and other factors. Apps’ total ratings also reflect the quality of the ads they carry.
Warren Buffett’s animated web series that teaches children about money, Secret Millionaires Club, is moving to TV this month and Jay-Z will be guest-starring in the first episode due to air on October 23rd. In the episode, Jay-Z invites four students to his office and praises their hard work at school, then gives them tips on how to become successful when they grow up.
Also launching is “Learn and Earn,” an initiative to teach students a series of lessons on financial literacy. The program is providing teachers with over 100,000 educational kits, and putting a collection of materials online that can be downloaded for free. There will also be an online competition, the “Grow Your Own Business Challenge,” which is designed to spark students’ entrepreneurial ambitions.
Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson will appear on this Sunday’s 60 Minutes — his first interview about his upcoming book, due out on Monday and already #1 on the Amazon bestsellers list.
CBS has released a preview of the interview, in which Isaacson tells 60 Minutes anchor Steve Kroft that the late tech mogul refused cancer treatment that might have saved his life, finding the notion of surgery intrusive. Instead, Jobs opted for a combination of diet, spiritualists, macrobiotics — “roots and vegetables”, as Isaacson describes them — and waited 9 months to begin treatment in earnest. By then, the cancer had spread from his pancreas to the surrounding tissue.
