Lady Gaga's Marketing Mania

Lady Gaga is all over the place - from her music to signing million dollar marketing campaigns. This month she signed deals with some very successful companies - both Google and Starbucks. That makes her a must see where she'll be next kind of gal.

Maybe it's just that Google and Gaga run of the tongue easily. She just signed a 10 million dollar partnership with Google Chrome to be the "face" of the new laptop line coming out this summer starting June 15. Gaga is already the star of the Google Chrome web browser commercial. Watch the video here.

Also, starting this month, the world's largest coffee shop chain will partner with the megastar for a large-scale online promotional campaign. The plan is to have Lady Gaga will engage with fans in a scavenger hunt across Starbucks' numerous digital proprieties, such as Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. The campaign will run through June 3, and coincides with the release of Gaga's new album, "Born This Way." Scavenger hunt participants can collect prizes, stream the new album, download new songs and watch exclusive videos from the in-store digital networks. Another brilliant PR campaign both both businesses.

So, what's with everyone wanting to be tied to her? The fact is Lady Gaga is possibly the most in-demand artist currently worldwide. This is for several reasons: She's got an army of fans, she knows how to attract attention, She's reportedly engaged in the deals that carry her name, and she's not shy about working with anyone. Another reason, her label-Interscope-shares in the revenue gained from such partnerships through a 360 deal with Lady Gaga. This makes perfect sense as to why everyone wants a piece of her. Don't be surprised to see her popping up a lot more throughout 2011.

Is RentAFriend.com Taking Social Networking Too Far?

Need a friend? Instead of wasting time trying to meet someone the old-fashioned way, why not just pay someone to spend time with you?

I stumbled across this website, maybe you've heard of it, RentAFriend.com. RentAFriend.com is a website that allows you to rent, or should we say hire, local friends from all over the US and Canada with prices ranging from $10 to $150. You can rent a local Friend to hang out with, go to a movie or restaurant with, someone to go with you to a party or event, someone to teach you a new skill or hobby, or someone to show you around an unfamiliar town.

I was amazed to find out that this site has been around for about six months and already has 200,000 members.

It's not a dating or escort service. According to the web site's founder, he screens each potential member's information before it's made live on the website, and if anything is sexual or sketchy, he immediately bans them from the site.

Even though some of the suggestions for the site seem rather practical, many of them seem a bit like a crutch. Has social networking changed real-life interaction to the point where we need to pay someone to be a real-time friend? Is this the next step in social networking fads that continue to kill, you know, being social?

Check the website out for yourself: http://www.rentafriend.com/

Use Twitter to Get Ahead, Not Just Play

A common reason given by those who have yet to try Twitter: "I have nothing to say." The truth is, you don't have to post a message to get the most out of Twitter, you can just join and see what others are saying.

At its best, the social medium is a perpetual, personalized news service about topics of your choosing, whether it be health care reform, tech news or the latest episode of "American Idol," filtered and sent to you by people who care a lot about what you care a lot about.

Even the most prolific users say Twitter has become more useful as a way to tap into the discussions of the day and than can be used to broadcast their own thoughts. They believe that once you get pulled in, you might just find you have something to say after all.

Biz Stone, Twitter's co-founder, suggests that naysayers simply log on to Twitter's home page and search for a topic they are interested in, whether it's their favorite sports team, the name of their company or a topic in the news. Within a minute, they understand the appeal, he said (The New York Times, 3/9/2010).

Twitter users write 50 million messages a day. For those of you who haven't tried Twitter out, here are a few ways to make Twitter work for you:

• If you don't have anything you feel is important enough to say, you can learn a lot from others on Twitter just by following them. Depending on who you follow, after checking Twitter for a bit each morning by lunch you can know most of the top trend topics of the day, just by reading the feed you see on Twitter.
• Search what is being said about a specific person, place or thing at that particular time or recent past.
• You can follow leaders who post about politics, religion, fashion and food. People with shared interests become your editor and Twitter becomes an alternative RSS feed. Find those people by searching Twitter directories, like WeFollow or Just Tweet It, and by following people whom others repeat or mention.
• Stay up to date on news stories A lot of messages include a link and after awhile a popular news story will bubble up after being retweeted enough.
• You can create lists of people you follow to keep your interests separate. For example, you can create a list of celebrities you follow, a list of coworkers you follow, a list of friends you can follow and a list of news people you follow. This way their tweets will not be thrown all together on your homepage.
• Once you're on Twitter, you can post questions when you don't know who to ask. For example, ask about a restaurant you're thinking of trying or how to use an iPhone application and you'll be sure to get answers.
• Find out what is going on in a certain area. Now you can limit your trending topic tweets to certain cities or countries.

Academy Awards Edition

I truly enjoyed the 82nd Academy Awards. I thought they started off on a good note and entertained me the entire time. If you want to check out who won last night, click here.

Neil Patrick Harris started with a song-and-dance number, setting the theme, no on wants to do it alone. Continuing in that theme, the two hosts, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin descended from the sky and warmed up the audience with little teasers.

They worked their way through the nominees with edgy jokes.

• In 'Inglorious Basterds,' Christoph Waltz is obsessed with finding Jews. Well Christoph," gesture to the audience, "the mother lode."
• 'Precious,' "it really was the only film that lived up to its video game."

There were many Meryl Streep references and shots of a stone-faced George Clooney, but Martin and Baldwin were funny throughout. They were unafraid to appear in a double Snuggie backstage and introduced presenters with flair, "He directed ' A Single Man,' she weighs a single pound, Tom Ford and Sarah Jessica Parker", and did their best to keep things moving.

Other highlights from the night in my book included:

• A John Hughes memorial which displayed a montage of work he had done and monologues from a few people Hughes made famous.
• A very nice, yet simple, memorial to all the actors, actresses, musicians, producers, editors, PR, etc. in the film industry who passed in the last year. However, I was surprised that Farrah Fawcett was left off the list. I wonder how come.
• Teams from the 'So You Think You Can Dance' performed to the scores up for Best Music - Original Score.
• In my opinion, great speeches came from Oprah Winfrey, who praised Gabourey Sidibe for her nomination for best leading actress, Sandra Bullock who gave an emotional and hilarious speech, in which she thanked, among many others, those who supported her when "it was not fashionable," and Mo'Nique who won for Best Support Actress; she always gives a moving an powerful speech.
• I laughed out loud when Ben Stiller presented the award for best makeup in full Na'vi, down to the tail. He was hilarious when commenting that he dressed up like this and 'Avatar' wasn't even nominated in this category.
• The first win for a woman for Best Director - Kathryn Bigelow, Director of 'The Hurt Locker' "I hope I'm the first of many," Bigelow said. "I'd love to just think of myself as a filmmaker, and I long for the day when a modifier can be a moot point. But, I'm ever grateful if I can inspire some young, intrepid, tenacious male or female filmmakers and have them feel that the impossible is possible."