Here’s a good video by Royal Caribbean in which they throw out some stats about vacation time and how we’re wasting it.

It’s always good to take a break from your work once in a while–both mentally and physically. So the next time you think you need a vacation but are reluctant to take one, do it anyway.

I think this video is a creative use of some statistical data and an effective way to market a brand. The fact that it was useful and I learned something from it makes it very memorable.

What do you think?

Amazing use of the white-board here by Steven Johnson. Innovation is an important aspect of business, and it’s creativity like this that will cause me to buy this book when it comes out.

Here’s a video interview from Rise to the Top featuring Matt Sitomer, Chief of Staff at VaynerMedia. This should give you a glimpse of what VaynerMedia is doing and how innovation and social media fit into the equation when consulting for top brands.

Twitter is undergoing some significant changes.

Here’s a video accompanying an article Mashable put out the other day entitled, Here Comes the New Twitter.com. I invite you to check that out, as well as this article by Alex Payne, a former Twitter employee. This should give you a good recap of how Twitter is changing.

I don’t know what to think about this yet. When I get a chance to use the new Twitter interface for a bit I’ll let you know how I feel about it, as I’m sure most people will…

Your thoughts?

It’s Friday, so I decided to share something I thought was really cool.

If the technology in this video actually exists by 2014, I will be filled with joy and happiness. Love innovation!

Seesmic is doing something really cool right now that I think you all should check out. They’re releasing 30 videos (1 each day) to teach you how to build your own brand online. I haven’t gotten a chance to watch them yet, but when I do I’ll try to post the best ones here for you, but definitely check them out.

You can find the videos on their blog.

Gary Vaynerchuk posted this video on his blog a little earlier today, and I thought it was really interesting so I decided to share it. Gary talks about how he has the strange feeling that social media is going to get re-branded at some point because it doesn’t really feel like media. He equates this to how we all used to refer to the Internet as the World Wide Web.

After watching this, I have to agree with Gary on this one (not that I’ve ever disagreed with him in the past). I care a lot about social media, but what I care about isn’t the ‘media’ part so much as the ‘social’ aspect of these technologies. In fact, rather than thinking of media in terms of news platforms and information, I tend to think of it as being similar to multimedia–audio and video content that engages audiences.

Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a re-branding of the term ‘social media’. In fact, we are merely the early adopters of a new and innovative form of technology. As this integrates further and further with the Internet’s landscape, it will be really interesting to see how it is portrayed on the grand scale.

What are your thoughts on this recent topic? Leave your ideas in the comment section below!

Surely you’ve heard of Old Spice’s recent social media campaign. In case you hadn’t, it involved “The Most Interesting Man in the World 2.0″ creating over 180 personalized videos for fans. These videos, according to Mashable, received nearly 6 million views and 23,000 comments. As far as a social media campaign goes, I’d say that’s pretty successful.

This got me thinking. As more and more companies are beginning to see the positive impacts of viral marketing, where do we go from here? Will we be seeing more and more creative social media campaigns?

I hope so. Regular ads (like via television) are dead to me. I don’t even find a lot of the Super Bowl commercials funny or interesting anymore. Companies are slowly adopting social media as a part of their marketing plans and I couldn’t be happier. I think it will be interesting to see where this all goes, especially as TV and the Internet converge.

Where do you see advertising headed? What are your feelings about viral social media campaigns?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on  Twitter and in the comment section below!

I watched this TED video last night and found it pretty interesting. In it, Clay Shirky talks about ‘cognitive surplus’ — the shared, online work we do with our spare brain cycles. He cites examples in which we can create a more cooperative world.

Leave your thoughts in the comment section.

This video features David Brier, veteran branding specialist and award-winning designer. He discusses what makes some logos work while others fail, as well as the value in developing the right brand.

Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.