The Super Bowl is around the corner. Do you know what I like the most? Ads.

It is the advertising world's shining moment.

This year commercial slots go for a whopping $3.5 million a pop.

Brands fight for game's captive audience. They burn messages with humor. Yes, ads had better be funny.

Also, as always, storytelling is key.

For me, above's two ones are among the best in past editions.

Watch the last video that has gone viral on YouTube.

A musician plays a beautiful piece on his viola and suddently the Nokia ringtone interrupts the concert. See his reaction.

Sometimes the easiest story is the most successful in terms of marketing. Is Nokia behind this video?

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By the way, the original version of the Nokia ring tone was part of the guitar piece "Gran Vals", composed in 1902 by Spanish musician Francisco Tárrega. Play it and enjoy it. You will love the music!

Time-lapse videos are very succesfull in YouTube.

In the above's 290-second video (over 1,3 Million views) you can see 6,237 pictures spliced together to create a fast-paced montage. Each two-second scene is comprised of about 40 to 60 photographs.

It is made by a San Francisco-based photographer Kien Lam, who spent 343 days traversing the globe and visiting 17 countries.

He used a Panasonic Lumix GF-1 camera and edited the footage in Adobe Lightroom, Adobe After Effects and Final Cut Pro.

(See more time-lapse engaging videos in this URL).
 

Crowdsourced "Star Wars Uncut" project has finally debuted. It accounts almost 1 Million views in three days!

It is a remake with fan-generated scenes that recreates the Star Wars movie.

Video editor Aaron Valdez and sound designer and mixer Bryan Pugh picked the best 15-second segment scenes.

The organizer Casey Pugh encouraged fans to participate in the project two years ago.

Creativity is huge, although the result is somewhere in between awful and amusing, as Mashable says. 

What is clear is that this kind of movie is only possible because of the existence of the Internet and their fan communities!

We all attend many conferences, events and shows during the year, and that means a wealth of opportunities for connecting people you only communicate via email, as well a chance to pitch your story to the media.

There are things that we busy entrepreneurs forget time after time  -as a result, we spend too much time looking at other people's products:

• Book as many face-to-face meetings as possible each day. When you meet someone the second or third time, and feek like you know each other, that's when the big integrations happen. 
   
• Showing up early before the event start is perfect opportunity to meet people before things get too hectic.
   
• Be your product and your brand. If you wear your company t-shirt, you will strike up a conversation quickly and create a presence. Bring a few extras to give out.
   
• Stick to schedule, organize, focus. Go where the people you want to meet are. Read blog posts about conferences in your field. Ask partners, journalists and VCs where they will be.
   
• Follow-up with the connections you've made and work those relationships for when you meet them again.
   
• Don't have a booth? Tap into your partners to see if you can share their space.
   
• And the key rule: Never forget that it's not a holiday!

How one of the World's largest organization as the United Nations can optimize its media tools to reach specific social media objectives?

I couldn't attend this conference on December in New York, so I cannot offer my perspective.

However, this recorded webcast gives many clues and it is worth watching. Enjoy it!

I'm one of those folks who texts while walking in Manhattan. A very risky habit not to be proud of.

Above's short film, produced by Casey Neistat, a New York-based filmmaker, reflects the phenomenon.

More than 1,000 pedestrians visited emergency rooms in 2008 after they were injured while using a cellphone to talk or text. That had doubled each year since 2006, according to a study conducted by Ohio State University.

"Let's stop acting like hollowed-out zombies, with BlackBerrys and iPhones replacing eye contact, handshakes and face-to-face conversations," he writes. 
 

                   
I have discovered this app which has turned out into a viral success.

Free app Voxer is the next WhatsApp. I totally recommend it. 

It turns your iPhone or Android into a live Walkie Talkie. You push to talk, text and send photos.

Once downloaded (iTunes here, Android here), users can synchronize the app with their existing phone's address book or Facebook friends.

Voxer was founded by a veteran entrepreneur Tom Katis, a decorated U.S. soldier. His idea originated during an ambush in Afghanistan when he needed a medical team in the middle of a fireflight; he needed a way to talk to everyone all at once, and the government-issue walkie talkies weren't doing the trick.

Competitors to Voxer are HeyTell and TalkBox

This kind of audio messaging will replace the SMS message?
 

Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, Redbox... With so many outlets to find a particular movie is time-consuming homework.

GoWatchIt.com may be the answer if you try to find out if a movie is available and where and how to find it.

You can be also be notified when it becomes available.

Users prefer to view a story than watch product features.

Google has realized that it needs to tell its story in an emotional way in order to connect with its users and find sources of revenue beyond search ads. The New York Times wrote about it last week.

They must be heartwarming video stories. “If we don’t make you cry, we fail,” Lorraine Twohill, Google’s vice president for global marketing said.

Google’s television new ads are meant to evoke curiosity and emotion.

• This sentimental branding effort started with the 2010 Super Bowl ad about a young couple falling in love. Beforehand Google tested a dozen versions on YouTube and chose to broadcast the one that received the most views.
   
• For Chrome, Google produced an ad in which a father sent multimedia messages to his baby daughter.
   
• For Google+, the story is about a man placing the woman in a social circle titled “love of my life”. He stars out in her circle called “creepers”; over time, though, he graduates to “book club”, “sky house” and eventually “keepers”.
   
• Another Google+ ad, which was broadcasted just before Christmas, shows the Muppets in a Google+ Hangout video chat singing along the Queen and David Bowie.
   
• A newspaper ad featured the Dalai Lama joining Desmond Tutu by Hangout after he was denied a visa to visit South Africa. 

On Ace Metrix’s list of the most effective television ads for the Web sites this year, Google ads took five of the top 10 spots.

So you want to publish your own e-book and spread it all around the World?

There are some useful tools out there:

• Amazon has a Kindle Direct Publishing service, with tutorials for properly formatting and uploading your e-book and sell it in the Kindle store. This page talks also about the royalties you can earn and Amazon’s share of the profits.
   
• Barnes and Noble has its own publishing platform called PubIt to distribute e-books in its Nook bookstore. The PubIt accepts files in the ePub format. It has tools that convert Word, HTML, plain text and RTF files into ePub. Barnes and Noble takes a percentage of your book’s list price.
   
• An e-book distribution service like Smashwords can help you to spread your work into Apple’s iBookstore, Sony Reader store, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and many more.
   

Wanna give the perfect talk?

Because I'm preparing a TED-style project I took some time to examine the most viewed talks. (Above is the top one).

I noticed several things:

• Speakers talk about very serious or fascinating topics, contributing to the TED conference.
   
• Successful speakers tend to user fewer slides and more props.
   
• Half of the most popular talks don't even use slides at all.
   
• Since the maximum time you are give for a TED talk is 18 minutes, the speakers are forced to make just one point, and get to it immediately. They don't have any time for diversions.
   
• There are certain phrases or slides that must be incredible. They have to be brutal about cutting them out.
   

Social video is experiencing a tremendous growth.

Advertisers are becoming more well-versed in creating original video content and distributing it through social web channels.

They are moving out from experimental budgets into distinct programs with specific viewership, media goals and dedicated budgets.

Brands have realized that they need to create content that attracts, motivates and engages an audience, and thus inspire viral sharing for their campaigns.

Now let me share some of the best videos in viral advertising campaigns.
 

For many marketers generating online buzz is the ultimate goal.

At the top of the list is the ad campaign for E*Trade Financial called "Enzo the Tailor", which features a baby being fitted for a custom-made suit and talking about how his tailor could retire in Tuscany. The E*Trade's baby video series have worked very well.

Chrysler's ad featuring the rap artist Eminem and the city of Detroit (below) ranked second in online reacion.

More successful ideas:

• Snickers' "Logging" spot featuring Roseanne Barr and Ricard Lewis
• Volkswagen's ad featuring a young boy dressed as Darth Vader
• Mercedes-Benz's ad featuring the artist Diddy
• Nissan's ad called "Gas Powered Everyghing" showing people using everything items like alarm clocks and hair dryers
• Chipottle Mexican Grill's ad called "Back to the Start" tells the story of the industrialization of farming

Most of the campaigns made their debut during the Super Bowl 2011.

I love this animation ad.

It is a "Tron"-themed video for Duck Tape.

It is a low cost but memorable. Once again, it shows up the importance of creativity.