Hasta La Creative!

Air New Zealand promotes its no-hidden-fees policy with an ad where pilots, flight attendants and baggage jockeys sport nothing but paint in lieu of uniforms.

– Magnetic poetry a la Twitter.

The One Show is debuting a Green Pencil award to honour “the one piece or campaign that best represents the highest standards of excellence in the field of environmental advertising” (…aaaaaand rake in more preliminary entry dosh).

– Russian inet firms + football clubs = 4eva.

Like the Robinson’s robot from Lost In Space, someone has obviously been warning “The Suits” at MySpace “Danger! Danger! You are losing users!”  To MySpace’s credit, they listened, and have introduced new user features (Profile 2.0), revised their music section, and launched a “connect” feature. They also announced that they had ousted their CEO to bring in a former Facebook exec, Owen Van Natta. (No one is quite sure what happened to ever-friendly Tom…)  Additionally, MySpace is offering a beta version of MySpace Local which provides some of the functionality of Twitter, like; “Where can I get a great Tuna Sandwich in Kansas City?”

To be honest, other than the music search on MySpace, it’s been dead to me. And the music portion, until lately, wasn’t the simplest to use: if you sift through enough crap, you could find a among the shattered glass: One listen to A Fine Frenzy and you’ll know what I mean. However, the newly revamped music features on MySpace are far better than what they had, and leagues beyond anything Facebook has to offer.

Yet is it too little, too late? Should MySpace have made these changes mid-year 2008 when they knew Facebook was coming on hard? Facebook overtook MySpace as the largest Social Network in existence, and it’s not showing any sign of slowing down. (My mother, in her 60s, recently added a Facebook account to keep up with the “kids;” we are all over thirty.)  So, Facebook’s growth, in addition to the growth rate of Twitter (1300 percent from 2008 to 2009) leaves MySpace with difficult challenges to overcome. (See the graph, below, courtesy of Compete.)

Will MySpace Lose Their Space?

It’s doubtful in the near term, but it will depend on Van Natta’s leadership, innovation, and speed. MySpace will also need to rollout MySpace II carefully, not offending current users but also regaining previous members. The other huge benefit for MySpace: it’s owned by NewsCorp, the same company that owns Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Post. With that kind of breaking-news potential backing the site, it’s possible that MySpace may emerge as a combination between Digg and Facebook, with an awesome music application, online dating services, and the Twitter-like MySpace Local application.

Another hurdle for MySpace is to overcome its “ghetto” feel when compared to Facebook. Facebook is branded thoroughly on every page of the site whereas MySpace has multiple skins that can be utilized; some from third party vendors that cause the pages not to load correctly or even hang your browser. Additionally, MySpace is not positioned like Facebook in regard to the “employment” factor. Facebook is setup to “brand” yourself to potential employers…which means that tend to keep it clean of profanity in the headings, as well as use actual names rather than online IDs. But, then again, maybe that is part of its charm. Facebook has experienced their share of problems; they’ve disenchanted some of their members with sweeping changes to their privacy policies (although later rescinded), and have changed the user interface, much to the chagrin of many. In fact, many demand that the “old” Facebook be brought back. Finally, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, seems to be a wild card that holds the future of the site in his hands, as evidenced by the mysterious departure of Chief Financial Officer, Gideon Yu. Yu’s departure was the latest change of several in the upper ranks at Facebook, “whose employees and investors are anxious about Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s plans for the social-networking site.”

MySpace’s biggest challenge is to implement their changes quickly; not only to maintain their 130 million current members, but to also reel in former users that broke rank. MySpace and Flixter were the only two Social Networking platforms to lose users from 2008 to 2009.

Jeff Louis is a Strategic Media Planner, Project Manager, and New Business Coordinator. His passion is writing, contributing to BMA as well as freelancing. He’d love to hear from you: linkedin.com/in/jefflouis or twitter.com/jlo0312.

AT&T makes a deposit into karmic collections in this collaboration with TOMS Shoes, a cause-based shoe firm that gives one pair of shoes away to a needy kid every time you — yes, you! — buy a pair.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a good healthy debate on the truth and merits of Photoshopping celebrities to wash away the ugliness of their realities and the less than ad-worthy attributes of their physical self.

You tell us when you’ve figured out what’s intimate about letting MySpace users orchestrate, then monitor, your marriage. O_O

Victims of Office Space probably remember the unforgettable reference to the O face — that almost embarrassingly vulnerable expression guys make when they’re stuffing somebody full of meat popsicle.

DDB/Vancouver’s interpretation of arm wrestling, on behalf of BC Dairy Foundation.

POLL TIME!