This is crowd sourcing in a small way, implemented by the FDA through an unusual approach. Always known as being overloaded and understaffed, the FDA has established the “Bad Ad Program” in which it has asked medical professionals to review and report back to the FDA via anonymous email address, any marketing material that is not complaint with fair balance or suggested for use through off-label marketing as established by the FDA. 

The FDA has been in the news a ton lately with tremendous scrutiny on an Ann Taylor blog nailing them for incentivize customers to write about a brand, they have issued severe warning letters to many pharma companies for improper marketing and now again with this HCP enabled review committee.  What’s next for the FDA – time will tell.  As partners to all of our pharma clients, we MUST ensure all of our media and creative efforts are fully compliant.

Read up here:  FDA Deputizes Doctors

Not to be outdone in the iPhone apps department, Yahoo! is getting onboard with a few additional apps of their own.  Yahoo!’s recently launched Sketch-A-Search and Yahoo! Search App take Google’s Mobile App to the next level.

The Sketch-A-Search allows users to quickly find restaurants (other categories to launch on an ongoing basis) simply by drawing a circle around the general area on a map.  This comes in handy when you have neither the zip code nor the name of the area where you’re searching.  Once an area of the map is identified, a list of restaurants appears on the screen; by clicking on a restaurant one can read reviews, see pictures, prices and can even narrow down by type of cuisine, ambience and/or rating.  It’s fun to play with too.

The Yahoo! Search App offers “a fast and beautiful experience that integrates voice search, embedded maps, and information from Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Movies, Yahoo! News, and other sources that appears directly in the results.”

Read more…

Recently Google announced an exciting new update to their mobile offering where participating retailers like Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm with listings in Google’s Product Search can not only indicate their proximity to users who are searching for them on their smart phone devices and list available items, but can also specify whether or not an item is in stock and at which location. Just look for the blue dot and click on the “In stock nearby” link, and you will be taken to the seller’s page, where you’ll see whether the item is “In Stock” or has “Limited Availability” near you.

Google is also accepting retailers interested in participating.

Read more…

Experian® Hitwise® announced last week that Google accounted for 70.95 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending Feb. 27, 2010. Yahoo! Search, Bing and Ask.com received 14.57 percent, 9.70 percent and 2.84 percent, respectively. The remaining 73 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.94 percent of U.S. searches.

Important to note is that Bing increased its share of US searches for the third straight month.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while–The news that Pepsi has cancelled their entire $20M Superbowl budget is a few weeks old now but still generating a lot of buzz….some say this is officially the beginning of the end for traditional advertising, but either way this is a great example of how our business is changing. Consider two things: 1) in 2009 Pepsi was the largest Super Bowl advertiser, and 2) the Super Bowl budget cancellation was followed by an announcement that Pepsi plans to increase digital spending by 60% from 2009.

The refresh project is a Corporate Social Responsibility program aimed at creating a “movement” instead of a campaign. The program will reward consumers who create big ideas for improving their communities. Starting 1/13 users can submit their big ideas on the website (refresheverything.com), and then on 2/1 the public will be asked to vote—grants are  awarded every month to the winners to make their ideas a reality.

With this monumental shift towards the digital space (which will also tie in Hulu) you have to wonder…is TV still the most important medium?

If you’ve already booked your plane tickets for the holiday’s (and are NOT flying Jet Blue) then be sure to check out their latest Facebook promo. The site features a list of must-have items if you’re traveling on other airlines, creating the ultimate flyer’s collection!

Contagious Magazine, based out of England, just released their 2009 Most Contagious report. The free report includes the most contagious trends, campaigns, innovations, and technologies leveraged in the last year.

Click the link to download the PDF….worth the read, and your time: Most Contagious 2009

ThinkVitamin has a great article on the DOs and DO NOTs of promoting, running or protecting a brand.  I have listed out my favorites or what I believe to be most important, but make sure to click here and read the full article, there is a lot of good info for anyone involved in running or promoting a brand.

What to Do:

• DO: Define your values
• DO: Be transparent
• DO: Bridge the gap between online and offline

What Not to Do:

• DON’T: Ignore your brand
• DON’T: Half ass your brand development
• DON’T: Put your interests ahead of your users

If you are in Tokyo through January 19th, I recommend you check it out.  The installation was created by Tokujin Yoshioka.

E-commerce giant, eBay launched an interactive map that provides a visualization of all U.S.-based buyer and seller transactions that occurred on eBay on Black Friday.  eBay says the map visualization is based on eBay sales and purchases occurring in approximately 33,000 U.S. ZIP codes.

Promotional Page: http://www.ebayholiday.com/black-friday

via. Techcrunch