For those who care about fashion, Vine has provided a great way to follow along with every aspect of New York Fashion Week. Social media’s newest video app let’s you mash-up a 6-second reel of whatever you’re experiencing to share on Twitter and Facebook. Vine was used at NYFW to showcase everything from the shoes to the crowds. Despite the insane weather out east, thousands have showed up to be inspired and wowed by fashion’s top brands. Below are some of my favorite Vines I came across over the past week.

Backstage at Helmut Lang

Slow motion screen at Rag and Bone

Barney’s New York window displays

Fashion blogger Man Repeller gives her view of some pumps

Kate Spade New York inspiration

Backstage at Jason Wu

CrowdsOnCrowdsOnCrowdsOnCrowds

By Morry Mitrani

Facebook has finally been able to provide something that the Internet behemoth Google has not been able to: personalized results.

Online search has become such an integral part of the we way discover things that it makes sense that Facebook would utilize its massive database of personal information to create more relevant search results. Facebook knows exactly what you and your friends like because you’ve been feeding it your personal data and preferences for years.

Last night I was craving Mexican food, but wanted to try something new. I work with a lot of cool Austinites, so I decided to get some recommendations from them!

Google has made a fortune off of search engine marketing. It’s time that Facebook gets a piece of the pie. Mark Zuckerberg says this is only the beginning, and that we will see some great advancements of Graph Search within next few years. By applying the search feature to their mobile platform, Facebook would be able to reach their fast growing mobile users and will certainly make a profit. Facebook hasn’t mentioned how Graph Search on mobile will be used yet though, nor has it mentioned how it will be monetized.

Graph Search allows for extremely relevant targeting opportunities. Although no new ad capabilities have been announced, Zuckerberg foresees great opportunities for Facebook due of Graph Search. This in turn creates great opportunities for advertisers. Facebook’s current method for SEM is to provide a sponsored result when searching for something using the old search feature. Now that Graph Search provides more relevant results than we’ve ever seen, a sponsor could hone in on almost exactly who they’re looking for.

If you haven’t yet, I suggest you go to here and join the waiting list for Graph Search Beta. Go exploring!

The last post about the Super Bowl, I promise. And this post is not really about the Super Bowl, it’s about the breakthrough that is REAL. TIME. TWEETS. As you may know, Beyonce blew out the power at the Super Dome, and sent the Super Bowl and all its fans into full-on p(f)andemonium. The commentators were strangely quiet, the stadium was blindingly dark, fans forgot who they were rooting for and…people started to tweet about things…AS. THEY. HAPPENED.

Yep, I know: Crazy, but true.

@footballdad71 said “who turned out the lights?”

@kimmyknowles said “oh yes she did just blow the power out.
#beyonce”

And @Oreos even tweeted, encouraging people to relax, reminding them that you can dunk in the dark. And it had an image.

Some suggest Oreo hi-jacked the Super Bowl. Some go as far as saying it was the tweet heard round the world. I say…“Seriously, people?” It’s 2013, and we’re this excited, nay, enlivened by a contextual tweet? That’s what the platform was built for. To talk about things as they happen.

My colleagues think I’m drinking haterade, that I’m just too digital for my own good, and they tell me it’s amazing because the Oreo post was like art directed, and approved by the marketing team and junk, within minutes. But let’s be real. It’s an Oreo sitting against a faded background, with one line of copy. And while fearing sounding too glass-half-empty, I really think this whole hooplah about the tweet heard round the world is a true reflection of a great portion of the advertising industry. Slow, to the party, and even slower when it comes to chugging the beer.

I’m not making fun of Oreo- or the people that use Twitter to be quick and clever- I think it’s smart. I’m making fun of the fact that it has been treated like it’s a breakthrough, or innovation, of maximum unseen before proportions.  It’s really just an example of a tool used simply and wicked smartly.

It just took the industry seven years to get there.

Every year, SXSW attracts hundreds of bands hoping to make it to the next level of their musical career. In 2012, we were fortunate to meet rock-n-rollers Heartless Bastards, who played our Industry Party. We caught up with them this month to see what they’ve been up to since last March. They are gearing up for a West Coast tour, and they’ve worked on the soundtrack for the film Winter in the Blood. Check out a performance from our agency theater, where they play one of the soundtrack songs, “Highline.”

The song is hauntingly beautiful and will stay in your head (in the best way possible). Who doesn’t love the upright bass? Let us know what you think of the song, and we’ll share your feedback with the band.

Our very own Marc Ferrino put together this hand drawn poster for the event. Awesome, right?

By Michael Griffith

GSD&M employees spend a lot of time frequenting Whole Foods. A LOT. But do you think between the whole wheat breakfast tacos, inspirational and international lunch choices, the occasional coffee break or late night trip for a cup of organic mushroom vegetable soup that you can guess which meal gets the most attention? You might be surprised. But I doubt it.

I get it. I really do. The idea of having your brand/message viewed by one-hundred million plus people simultaneously is intoxicating. Visions of your market share getting more juiced than Lance Armstrong pre Tour dance in your head. And honestly, who doesn’t want to be at a party, point to something on TV and say, “I did that.” But here are a few off-the-cuff reasons you shouldn’t do any more Super Bowl advertising IMHO:

1) You’re more than likely not going to make an ad people absolutely love let alone talk about for generations. Imagine if Paramount, Columbia, Universal, Sony, etc. all tried to make blockbuster, Academy Award winning movies all to be released on say, July 4th every year. Wait, they do do that and with all their resources from Spielberg to De Niro most of those movies aren’t blockbusters or Academy winners. There’s only one Citizen Kane and there’s only one Apple 1984 ad.

2) The cost. OMG the cost. And I’m not just talking the media buy or the production dollars. A Super Bowl spot is probably the most obsessed-over, time-sucking, double-guessing endeavour one can undertake in advertising. Thousands of hours (in your building and your agency’s) are consumed by this beast that could be doled out to dozens of other projects.

3) Those dozen of other projects give you dozens of chances to be great and win. You might even spend less money.

4) Super Bowl ads were the best bet from a time when TV was the best game in town. Those days are long gone. Most of your consumers will have the internet in their hand or pocket during the game. In fact, they have that internet with them 24/7/365. Use it. It’s cheap and very effective. But then you know that. You just seem to forget once a year.

5) Conversations with you are better than conversations about you. Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Vine, etc. are your friends.

Of course, there are strong arguments to be made for running a Super Bowl spot: earned media, prestige, 100 million plus viewers, etc. But in today’s media and consumer landscape, these reasons aren’t nearly as strong or cost effective as they used to be.

All that said, the Iron Man 3 spot pushing to Facebook was brilliant. A $3.8 million 30 second spot (really only needed to be :15 at half the cost) drove people to watch a free 1:30 spot online. That was followed up by a Facebook sponsored story that as of this posting was shared more than 46,000 times, liked 61,000 times and commented on 5,100 times effectively leveraging the Super Bowl spot into millions of cheap, targeted additional impressions. Then again, everyone wants to see Iron Man 3. Good luck beating that with your shrinking ad budget.

PS  Then there’s Oreo with an on-the-fly tweet that was free and retweeted over 14,000 times. Twitter is always faster and cheaper than TV. (http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelysanders/how-oreo-got-that-twitter-ad-up-so-fast)

Last year, my open letter to the CMOs of GoDaddy and Teleflora criticized their blatantly sexist Super Bowl tv ads. Sadly, these two companies weren’t the only offenders. Happily, I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

During the game, thousands of tweets tagged with #notbuyingit called out the advertisers who fumbled so badly. Even better, the hashtag’s creators, MissRepresentation.org, provided online instructions to help website owners pull their domain registration and hosting from GoDaddy, thus effectively putting their money where their tweets were.

This year, the #notbuyingit movement continues, with online activists encouraging Super Bowl viewers to leverage the power of social media and let advertisers know they’re boycotting products and services that stoop to gender representations that are offensive, harmful and just plain dumb. There’s even a handy cheat sheet listing the twitter handles of all the major Super Bowl brands and their ad agencies.

Speaking of which, as an advertising creative I’ve yet to experience the joy — and anxiety — of coming up with a Super Bowl spot. I know it’s not easy, especially with the added pressure of knowing that your work will be seen by exponentially more people than usual, and critiqued in a very public forum. But I believe that as an industry, we should and can work harder to generate advertising that’s fresh and smart and attention-getting and compelling. A few may contend that some measure of sexism and stereotyping in Super Bowl spots is just par for the course, and unavoidable. But I’m #notbuyingit.

See the good, the bad and the ugly of this year’s Super Bowl spots.

Spoiler alert: You will need a tissue for the Budweiser spot.

Samsung Mobile USA

Go Daddy “Perfect Match”

Dunder Mifflin “Paper War with Cat”

E*TRADE “Save It”

Beck’s Sapphire

Kia “Space Babies”

Speedstick “Unattended Laundry”

Budweiser “Brotherhood”

Axe “Apollo”

Volkswagen “Get In. Get Happy”

Century 21 “Wedding”

Audi “Prom”

Taco Bell “Viva Young”

Toyota “Wish Granted”

Hyundai “Stuck”

Cars.com “Dramatized Focus Group”

Bud Light “Lucky Chair”

Calvin Klein teaser

Mercedes-Benz “Soul”

Tide Stain Save Infomercial

RIM Blackberry teaser

SodaStream International “Effect”

Skechers Man vs. Cheetah teaser

Coca-Cola “Coke Chase”

Best Buy Sneak Peak

Gildan Activewear “Getaway”

Mio “Whistle”

Pepsi NEXT “Party”

Doritos: 2 fan favorite spots will run

“Express Checkout”

“Fashionista Daddy”

“Fetch”

“Goat for Sale”

“Road Chip”

A new ban on food photography has been enacted in some of America’s big food cities, most notably, New York, that aims to make the dining experience more enjoyable for all diners-rather than just those with an iPhone and an instagram account.

Chefs, owners and restaurateurs are laying down the law on food photography, claiming that the flashes, posing of plates and in some extreme cases, tripod-positioning, can be distracting to other diners.

Here is the only reason why I could be pro-ban: if you’re the type of foodstagrammer who takes obnoxious flash photos of your food, your pictures are already terrible and no one wants to see them anyways.

Where I take issue with the ban is for those undercover photographers, like myself, who enjoys snapping little keepsakes for memories and envy-inducing purposes.

Food is good, I love food. You know what I like almost as much as food?  Making my friends jealous.  Robbing me of the opportunity to rub in my friends’ faces that when they were eating ramen, I was eating hama chili is almost as bad as robbing me of the hama chili all together.

While I completely understand the idea of the ban on deplorable levels of food photography, those imposing it are ignoring the unbelievable role image sharing plays in growing a business.  Social sharing is key in the taste-making game, and without it, you’re no more exciting to diners than every other 5-star yelp-rated restaurant in the city.

If this ban picks up in Austin, which I doubt it will, I have to wonder… if the masses can’t instagram it, will they eat it in the first place?

Do you watch Glee? Are you embarrassed to admit it even if you do? Well, I am not afraid to publicly declare that I watch the musical dramedy from time to time. So you’re in good company (cue sigh of relief). I was attracted to the show for their various cover songs they’d put together. Sure, there’s a serious “ham” factor, but for the most part these kids are incredibly talented. The arrangements are fun and different, frequently mashing up two great songs. Call me egocentric, but one of my favorites was covering two Adele songs “Rumour Has It” and “Someone Like You”.

In the most recent episode, the crooners took on Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” but what caught my attention was the slowed down, acoustic style version they chose to perform it with. As a cover song aficionado, I could appreciate that they chose Jonathan Coulton’s version of “Baby Got Back”, but soon felt betrayed when I saw online that the people at Glee chose NOT to seek permission from Jonathan Coulton the way the would from other artists. Coulton took to the internet (with the same Robin Hood vengeance as the Oatmeal) and is raising money for a charity with his cover of a Glee’s cover.

This battle isn’t unique to Glee, in advertising this happens all the time. Agencies avoid paying artist licensing fees in hopes of getting something close to the real thing. In many cases things come back to haunt them in the form a law suit from Mr. Tom Waits (or other smart artists). And while I’d pay good money to see Tom Waits perform on the witness stand, $2.6 million is a hefty fine (see Tom Waits v. Frito Lay).

I spoke to our VP of business affairs Jo Ella Mathis about this issue who told me “We secure a musicologist report for all work produced here, including stock music…Our music vendors do not want litigation at their doorstep and will openly tell an agency when they can’t come as close to a published track as the creative team may want.”

It’s a sensitive subject that business affairs takes very seriously.

Cover songs are making art of other people’s art. You need to follow the same precautions you would take licensing original work. If it’s a cover that you’re after, it adds an extra level of complexity. Otherwise, Tom Waits, Jonathan Coulton, heck — Sir Mix-A-Lot will be coming after you.

On a lighter note, here’s a playlist of some of my favorite covers that I didn’t know were covers and other covers that just make me happy.