Eric Shutt

Barack Obama inspired his way into the White House in 2008 with a message that resonated on the streets of Washington, DC. Since then, depictions of the President have popped up across the nation's capital.

Here's how the Prez has been depicted during the first four years on the streets of the seat of power:

As we all try to finally decide the officially best and worst Super Bowl ads of 2012, there's one clear winner -- and it's Facebook.

Top commercials are now sending us straight to the company's Facebook Page, rather than their website -- for a chance at a Like, and a lasting connection with fans.

Commercials like "Bud Light: Rescue Dog," "General Electric: Building Something," and "Pepsi Max: For Life" completely replaced the typical website mention with a reference to the company's Facebook Page.

Bud Light: Rescue Dog

General Electric: Building Something Big

PepsiMax: For Life

• Website: 52 (57 percent)


• None: 21 (23 percent)


• Twitter #Hashtag: 11  (12 percent)


• Facebook Page: 10 (11 percent)


• YouTube Channel: 1 (1 percent)


• Text Message: 1 (1 percent)

20th Century Fox: "Star Wars" The Epic Saga Begins

Budweiser: Eternal Optimism

Chrysler: Halftime in America

Players from Google's display advertising team presented seven predictions on the outlook of display advertising for 2015, as part of Google's "Watch This Space" campaign, to close the program at Advertising Week's IAB Mixx Conference and Expo.

The expected trends were presented by Google Vice President of Product Management, Neal Mohan, and Google's Barry Salzman, Managing Director of Media and Platforms for the Americas.

What are Google's seven predictions for display advertising in 2015?

Twitter Chief Operating Officer Dick Costolo hit the stage at the IAB MIXX Conference and Expo this week for an interview with Advertising Age Editor Abbey Klaassen to talk about Twitter's vision for web advertising and monetization.

Costolo emphasized Twitter's commitment to prioritizing users and the user experience over a desire to quickly generate cash revenue.

"We're very careful about how we roll out our monetization products because we put the user first," says Costolo. He cites the company's "nearly religious belief" in an engaged user base, and that the revenue will "follow from there."

Super Bowl commercials say everything about American culture. Ads tell us a ton about what's up, right now.

This year we had a chance to watch, comment on, and share Super Bowl ads more than ever before. Every 2010 Super Bowl commercial is online, on demand at NFL Fan House, Hulu Ad Zone and the appropriately titled YouTube Ad Blitz.

The aftermath is amazing. It's entertaining to watch marketers clamor to claim the #1 spot. For days after Super Bowl XLIV, the top video on Unruly Media's Viral Video Chart was Google's Parisian Love. The #1 video on NFL Fan House was Doritos: Dog Gets Revenge. Monday the #1 video on NFL Fan House was E-Trade Baby's Jealous Girlfriend. On the same list today E-Trade is no where to be found.

Who's The Best?



By many accounts this year's unlikely (since they rarely advertise at all) #1 Super Bowl commercial was Google's Parisian Love, which AdAge discredits. AdAge makes a good point that different audiences respond differently to different media, and that the Super Bowl crowd is not obsessed with the Internet - so online buzz may not be a real measure of effectiveness here.

AdAge may also miss the point that people are just paying more attention to the internet now.

Sure, the Google spot got great buzz, is ranked #1 by the go-to industry standards, and it drew tons of press and media coverage. But AdAge still asks, Just How Popular Was Google's Super Bowl Ad, Anyway? Maybe the ad was meant to woo its watchers, a crowd on the cusp of greater interest - and seed the idea of Google's incredible usability in the minds of football fans across the country.

Fox Sports did a Top 10. They even did a Worst 10. Of course, they did. One Fox Sports reader wrote back: "I'm tired of having to choose from a list... I want to vote for who I want.. It's a unfair vote.."

"By the late 1970's ... the ghetto became America's most acute social problem. American mass media was filled with panicky stroies of marauding gangs and so-called "welfare mothers." Suburban white Americans feared the imagined threat emanating from the ghetto.

Again, Coke offerred a utopian moment of healing built around a "pause that refreshes." Drinking a Coke now provided a magical salve that symbolically healed the racial divide in American society.

"The confrontation in the dark tunnel conjured up the growing nightmare of the ghetto in the collective imagination of the majority white population: the physically intimidating black man who threatened an innocent white child. But we soon learned Greene's meanness was just an affection, that he was actually a sweet guy who could show real affection for the small white kid. The ad offerred a story of racial healing for a country that couldn't contain it's racial conflict. In this way, Coke again helped the nation momentarily forget its real problems that were then devistating its cities" (Holt. How Brands Become Icons, p.25-26).

Graffiti draws a remarkable counterpart to marketing and advertising. Memorable street campaigns take the same creativity, consistency, branding and visibility needed to make marketing work.



Street artists are marketers gone rogue (also a popular theme of the year) - developing and executing creative concepts, many with a specific and often populist tone. Like it or not, the closer you look, the more of a message there is to see in the details of graffiti.













DC represented big in 2009, and themes in our graffiti and street art reflected important, meaningful local issues: problems of homelessness, DC's non-state status, and few (but expanding) outlets for public art. Check out a full photo set of the year in DC graffiti on Flickr.

These are the freshest names and stand out styles in DC graffiti:

Names Up Everywhere:

JAKE



CHE



MOE



REZIST

Click here to see a Flickr photo set of the year in DC graffiti.

A full photo set of the year in DC's graffiti is posted on Flickr.

Something missing? Leave a comment and links to pics of your favorite DC graffiti!

Under the thematic banner of "Fueling Interactive Advertising's Creative Revolution," the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) convened top talent for NYC's Advertising Week "to articulate their visions for unleashing the full power of digital media."

If it comes as no surprise to industry insiders, presenters at IAB's MIXX Expo confirmed that the vision of advertising's future is now squarely focused on social media.



"Today we need to find an audience, entertain them, and measure them," said Steve Wax of Campfire -- an agency that later won 4 IAB interactive advertising awards. "We have to stop making old things in new places ... we have to stop thinking only [return on investment] and be historic," said Colleen DeCourcy, Chief Digital Officer of TBWA Worldwide.

1. Luddites: Those who still think social media is a fad.

2. Magpies: People who believe any social media effort will work.
3. Lawyers: Those who require too much process for approving social media content.
4. Hogs: Staff who won't provide cross-departmental content to repackage for the web.
5. Misers: Those who think social media is free.
6. Lousy products: Transparency in social media exposes user dissatisfaction with poor products.

1. Be opportunistic and responsive: Ashton Kutcher beat CNN to a million Twitter followers by seizing the chance to be the first, and actively engaging with his audience.

2. Authenticity: The million dollar home page worked when its purpose was authentic -- to raise money for a student's college tuition. When it was redone to raise money for the student himself, it flopped.
3. Relentlessly measure and optimize metrics: Zappos built its new brand and sold over 400,000,000 pairs of shoes by capitalizing on search marketing that relied on interest in previously established brands to drive sales on the Zappos website.
4. Be social: Starbucks' My Starbucks Idea effectively engages Starbucks' customer community in a direct conversation with the brand.
5. Ads are content: Burger King has seen incredible marketing success by turning content into commercials -- like the Whopper Freak Out videos, and the infamous Whopper Facebook Friend sacrifice.

1. Have an ideal and an idea: "When advertising is driven by a higher calling -- a higher sense of purpose -- that's consistent with the brand's equity, we get amazing returns in creative," said Watson.

2. Use the land you're given: Context matters. "Ads are viewed in the context that the creative is delivered," Watson says -- not as stand-alone elements.
3. Creativity can come from anywhere: 30,000 submissions from 108 countries were received by Hugo Boss for their new cologne advertising campaign. The winner was an 18 year old from Thailand.
4. Keep it simple: Pringles recent online ad campaign deliberately featured a stripped-down, simple graphic layout to keep the focus of the ad.

1. Don't use census based demographic targeting. Zip code targeting is an imperfect science, and geographic demographics move too quickly to measure for digital advertising. Plus, it's impractical as it doesn't target sub-groups within geographic areas -- making it impossible to target based on gender, or reach minority groups within a specific location.

2. Don't use offline studies to predict online interest. The time required to process data and apply it to online advertising takes too long given rapid shifts in the online marketplace.
3. Casale's system is "smoothed sight-level demographic intelligence." A rolling 3 month window of a specific website's use statistics gives an accurate view of overall trends in user behavior. The method uses real, up-to-date info unique to a specific website. The data matches actual user behavior, not how users might act.

1. The recession has created large white space for advertising on the web.

2. Users are allowing distribution to become more targeted. Sites like Facebook and Hulu allow users to choose, rate, and even reject on-screen advertising.
3. Content always trails distribution. Creating good outlets for distribution will attract quality content to follow.
4. Future content brands start now.
5. Content management systems are the new ad systems.

Presidential politics coursework taught me that right now it's all about identity politics. Has been for a while -- reaching voters with an image that best reflects and represents our self-concept. There's more to it than that, obviously. But not much.

People vote based on personal identity, not on self-interest. People even vote directly against very practical aspects of self-interest on issues like economics and authority.

George W. was able to win the presidency -- twice -- when our middle class rural white community bought into the Bush Doctrine despite his offering little or no financial advantage -- and the disadvantage of losing some ability to control our own lives by institutionalizing the view of a Unitary Executive, with power more concentrated than ever before in our history.

What was gained was only a perceived advantage of economic and social control, by electing a personal icon some thought better represented those goals, and a president we all really wanted to grab a beer with.

The first presidential candidate to figure out how to use television in a political campaign won the election. It was Richard Nixon, in 1968. Before blogs, we could read about this stuff in books -- unless sufficient side commentary was available on television, of course. The Selling of the President 1968 hasn't hit the big screen yet -- but it should. No worries, chances are we'll be able to Netflix it soon enough.

If you're like me and you don't read books, then you definitely dig the prime social networking, creative art, and viral video series that punctuated the 2008 campaign media scene.

Social media doesn't change identity politics -- the consequences of which, as we've seen, can be bad. But they can also be good -- and social media can open new access and add extra transparency to the political process. It can reflect our identity in a more genuine, less manufactured way.

Internet. It's the new television. DIY style.

In 2008, Obama for America hired Facebook co-creator Chris Hughes to help design the social networking structure and new media strategy that would win the general election. "Their use of social networks will guide the way for future campaigns," Hillary Clinton Campaign Internet Director Peter Daou told the New York Times last July.

The campaigns coincided with a nation inspired to create our own celebratory social media content -- from across the country to Washington DC.

Artist Shepard Fairey -- noted for his street work, creative dissidence, and common-ground style -- designed an iconic campaign portrait image that has come to symbolize a new face of progressive change for America.



The craze has even come to allow you to create your own Fairey-style portrait and fully immerse yourself in an identity piece that's shaping our culture. And he hit the streets of DC with campaign charm that takes the day. Thanks, Shepard.

Similar styles popped up during the election, like Warhol-style renderings of Obama -- which is ironic since the famous screen-print portrait series is seen as an attempt to deconstruct pop-culture icons and illustrate their manufactured reality.

And the artistic print that connected our streets to the Internet and back to politics is just a touch of the social media that helped to tip a change.

Months before the Democratic Primary was finally decided between Obama and Hillary Clinton in June, a chorus of musicians came together to produce the Yes We Can video that took off on YouTube. It soon spawned a fitting counterpart clip to balance McCain's campaign message: No, You Can't.

Not to be out shined, viral video reflected our affinity for the leading ladies that came -- or so some hoped -- to represent a new, apparently sexy, vice presidential role. Congrats, Joe.

Salon.com's Live! Nude! Puppies! The Year in Viral Video begins by noting, "among other things, 2008 will be remembered as the year that professionally produced Web video finally trumped amateurs with webcams." Saturday Night Live's Sarah Palin Hillary Clinton skit gets mention, and we'd have been as happy with hockey mom family flick Head of Skate- - or everyone's favorite vice presidential-almost, Paris Hilton. Not to mention Obama Girl.