So, you may have heard about the big Yahoo-Ebay announcement today. Big news, but what's more interesting to me is what's buried way way down in the story...how Yahoo advertisers can leverage Ebay's skype to speak directly with consumers.

...explore building another marketing vehicle that would allow advertisers to connect with prospective customers on the phone instead of through their Web sites. If the experiment works, it would mark Yahoo's entrance into "click-to-call" advertising...

*Very* interesting. I bet Larry and Sergey aren't so happy today.

I received my PepperRubel T-shirt today, thanks Josh! Meanwhile, Ebay bidding for the signed version continues to climb.

I was home visiting family in Pennsylvania over the weekend and as things inevitably do, family and friends asked me about my work and tried to understand what I do. Fortunately for me, now that my work is focused and dedicated in the emerging media realm, I hear less of "Oh, I need a publicist, I'm writing a book..." or "I saw your commercial the other day." Now I hear, "Can you help me set up my WiFi?" or "Can you look at my iPod?" or, from those *very* advanced individuals, "Do you have blog?"

It's hard to explain marketing on the web or via mobile applications, partially because while everyone knows that marketing exists, many don't exactly know what it is let alone how it applies to the new technologies that people around the world use everyday to send and receive information.

The way that I've been looking at this area lately, beyond the fact that it's an opportunity in almost every way to influence buying decisions, build brand awareness/recognition/loyalty and drive trial, is as static vs. live.

Last week, at Syndicate, I stayed for Doc's presentation and he spoke at length about live searches. I won't get into that here - you can bug Doc for that;) However, the topic of static vs. live that he spoke about is exactly why PR is a critical partner for emerging media applications.

Online/mobile multimedia spaces are the exact opposite of the traditional product marketing world. In the past, big brand marketers would be unlikely to change a brands' logo or packaging unless the brand were in trouble. For instance, in the magazine world, the word "relaunch" has been a dirty word. Editors heard relaunch and waited for pink slips to be issued.

In this new world, relaunch is the formula for success. Anything that remains static, is old. Passe. Played. Just one week following a few myspace profiles and you won't recognize an individual's page from hour-to-hour or day-to-day. And same with the brands on myspace who are winning the battle of friends - they are smart enough to understand the formula that Madonna tapped more than 20 years ago. Give members a reason to come back. Change your look. Change your content. Change your image.

Now, the real stretch for marketers, is to keep changing without losing your brand identity or equity. That's the challenge in this live vs. static world; never lose your Brand Champion.

So how can PR help? In a fast moving world that's no longer "Pre-launch, Launch, Sustain" but rather, "Pre-launch, Launch, Sustain, Relaunch" - PR professionals finally have the chance to do what we've been saying we could do all along: relate to the public.

There's no time to change a pre-planned media buying schedule when your beta home page has been leaked two weeks before launch and consumer/media feedback spreads like wildfire. However, a smart PR team can quickly leverage that leak, respond to it and make it into an opportunity for the Brand.

And that's why this blog is called, pikpr;)

So my cameraphone depictions of the PepperRubel T-shirts may not be the "shots seen 'round the world," but they are now the shots seen 'round the Valley.

All that and I didn't even get a stinkin' t-shirt...

All I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is my fairshare.

People are seeing things...and it's not the Stormhoek.

First Parmet notes that Josh was seeing things at Syndicate yesterday.

I rolled into town later last night after a long day of traveling for business in the East Coast monsoon and headed to a blogger happy hour (thanks again, Britt!). I met a webrity or two and I started seeing things too:





Maybe I'll get a clue when I hit the Roosevelt later today.

Well, E3 kicked off yesterday, so it makes sense that everything I'm seeing today is related to gaming. I guess you could say that everyone's getting into the game....sorry, couldn't help myself;)

VH-1 announced they're getting into the gaming business, adding free game downloads to their site (and pay-for play trial), featuring some old skool favorites like "Joust" with new games that tie back to their new brand character, like "Escape the Paparazzi." I wonder if TV Land is smacking their sister station for beating them to the punch with an old school gaming revival?

But this took the cake for me. A clever viral marketing/branding tool created and stealthily seeded by the AI franchise or the genuine product of a superfan game builder? You tell me.

Continuing on my motif here of mobile phone applications, I found something else today that I think is GENIUS.

When I was in college we didn't have cell phones. THAT'S. HOW. OLD. I. AM.

Anyway, SOME of us, (names not included to protect the innocent) noticed that the waffle bar, the late night pizza's and the all-beer diet had packed on some lbs, and we made a pact that when we saw each other eating late at night, we'd ash our cigarettes on our friends food so they'd stop eating. When you're in college, approaches like this seem like great ideas...

This service sounds like a much healthier approach. The folks over at Sprint have created an interactive "teledieting" program for camerphone users to honestly report in to a nutritionist. Check it out.

Personally, I may take a page out of this dude's book and set up a Treadputer. It's something I've been thinking about for years and he beat me to it. Wave of the Future. Loves it.

Seems like I've been traveling all of the time lately, or not around my PC to update. I guess I don't have much of an excuse - I could update this little piece of online real estate via crackberry or even winksite ...but how realistic is texting a blog entry anyway?

Because I'm always on the go, I'm heavily reliant on my mobile devices. I definitely don't use my blackberry nearly as much as other crackberry addicts; primarily I tap it for work email and I limit responses on it as much as possible. There's nothing worse than being on the receiving end of a text-heavy "plain text" blackberry directive. I live in a People world, as much as I like to cop that I have a New Yorker intellect.

Therefore, it stands to reason that I am pretty much beholden to my phone. And my phone, I'll have you know, is pretty rad. I have the Verizon/UTStarcom 8940 and it's pretty much changed my life since I got in January. Not only does it have video recording capability, but I subscribe to VCast, so in the past, when I'd run out in the morning without having time to wait for a TV weather report, now I watch it on my phone as I'm getting ready. I can watch clips of the morning shows on my phone as I'm walking in btwn meetings, or even catch up on the entertainment shows and MTV news.

It's getting to the point for me, where my phone is becoming my secondary information source (behind the Internet(1st), and TV dropping down to 4th after print). With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that I love what Paypal is up to. I love the idea that if I go out to dinner and someone wants to put the whole bill on their card, I can simply transfer funds from my account into theirs via phone and not have to worry about running out to an ATM machine. I think it's fantastic that if I'm in an airport or a car hearing news of some sort of plea for non-profit funding, I can use my phone to instantly make a donation.

I mean, those little milk cartons and cardboard donation boxes from grammar school were cute, but I have a hunch that letting users text donations from their phones will reap greater sums than the pocket change of the past.