Click the image below for the full-size infographic!

Here’s their exact copy for the search:

Think you are the Next BIG Thing?

Calling curvy ladies everywhere! Our best-selling Disco Pant (and around 10 other sexy styles) are now available in size XL, for those of us who need a little extra wiggle room where it counts. We’re looking for fresh faces (and curvaceous bods) to fill these babies out. If you think you’ve got what it takes to be the next XLent model, send us photos of you and your junk to back it up.

Just send us two recent photographs of yourself, one that clearly shows your face and one of your body. We’ll select a winner to be flown out to our Los Angeles headquarters to star in your own bootylicious photoshoot. Runners up will win an enviable assortment of our favorite new styles in XL!

Show us what you’re workin’ with!

As a copywriter and as a woman, there are just so many things wrong with the wording of this campaign, including but not limited to the fact that not once do they use a positive or real adjective to describe plus-sized women. As one irate blogger says, it’s just “jokey, made up words like ‘junk’ and ‘XLent.’ Nothing that denotes attractiveness without a crude reference to size.”

Essentially, it was hard for me to take this campaign seriously, and apparently, I’m not the only one.

To Nancy Upton, a Dallas-based blogger, the contest was one big fat insult. “The puns, the insulting, giggly tones, and the over-used euphemisms for fat that were scattered throughout the campaign’s solicitation began to crystallize an opinion in my mind. How offensive the campaign was,” Upton wrote in a post on the Daily Beast. To Upton, “The company was co-opting the mantra of plus-size empowerment and glazing it with its unmistakable brand of female objectification.”

And not only did her words strike a chord with American Apparel’s Creative Director, Iris Alonza, so did the spoof photos she submitted to the contest. Upton teamed up with friend Shannon Skloss to take modeling pictures of her devouring fried chicken in a pool, soaking in a bath of ranch dressing, smearing an entire pie on her face and body, and other satirical situations.

Photo credit: Shannon Skloss

See Upton’s full submission here.

The irony here is that Nancy Upton won the contest, at least in popularity, but she won’t be modeling for the company anytime soon. The brand hasn’t announced their official winner, but in a scathing response to Upton, Alonza wrote:

“Oh—and regarding winning the contest, while you were clearly the popular choice, we have decided to award the prizes to other contestants that we feel truly exemplify the idea of beauty inside and out, and whom we will be proud to have representing our company.”

What she meant to say was, “We decided to pick a winner who already likes our brand in hopes that she will just sit there on her ‘full-sized fanny’ and look pretty, er…I mean, XLent.”

So what can we learn from all this not-so-XLent publicity that the “Next BIG Thing” campaign has garnered for American Apparel? To put it simply, tone is everything. And for a company who’s built their brand with what some have labeled as misogynist advertising, they probably should have steered clear of their “Hey, girl, we get you!” tone, especially for a target that’s been purposely excluded up until now.

*Made-up statistic pulled out of thin air to add some color to this post
**American Apparel (AA) threatened to file bankruptcy this year. With the belts of so many Americans loosening, maybe AA decided it was time to expand…literally.

Social media is hyperactive word of mouth, only there are so many mouths talking you need a way to know how your brand is influencing and who it is reaching. It’s not new news that brands want to connect with consumers. What is new to the speed at which they can track and affect their influence digitally. This media channel is a main conduit for brands to express their voice, promote new products and even tell a larger brand story. It’s not hard to see why and how social media efforts have become the most valuable back-channel way to communicate and build a following. (If your brand isn’t into it, work on that.)

So how do you track all your social media efforts? Who’s talking? How do we keep them talking? With Klout, the current leader in the “social analytics” provider, it all boils down to engagement based on click-throughs, comments, likes, retweets or how often your message is passed along. The number of services they track for you is growing (it now includes the top 10 digital forums, with 3 more coming soon).

Recently celebrities have been using Klout for PR pushes and testing. Brands are also reaching into the system to understand how their audience is listening or if they’re listening at all. They’re taking notes on what topics resonate and using that information to build a stronger brand presence and gaining followers as well as traction in the marketplace as a resource, leader or otherwise. Klout’s easy-to-digest “social analytics” has potential to build smarter partnerships, promotions and more believable categories of influence. Plus, you’ve got to love the dynamic nature of the data. In my opinion, “instant” is the new “ASAP.”

Don’t forget the perks for having influence. Klout Perks are great place for brands to highlight and use those influential talkers directly. It’s kinda like a social media pat on the back from brands to their fans. I’m on board—are you?

Who’s Talking?

Someone needs to spread the message. Called connectors, accelerators and influencers, they have deep and wide social networks and pass along information they care about to others. The key is to tap into the right people for your specific product or service. Here are three types of “go-to” people:

Enthusiast. The stereotypical brand advocate who serves as a passionate brand ambassador.
Local Expert. The know-all about a specific category—car or gadget nut, knows about new restaurants or TV shows.
Jack-of-All-Interest. An interesting know-a-lot vs. an annoying know-it-all.

What Are They Talking About?

First of all, forget everything you learned about traditional brand management. If this process starts by trying to convert a well-crafted brand statement into a word-of-mouth campaign, it won’t be successful. The product or service must be looked at through a different lens.

It’s not what you want to say about your product or service, but what consumers find talkable about it. Finding the relevance in a product or service is crucial. If it’s relevant, the more likely it will be deemed worth sharing. Once something is worth sharing, it has value. High-involvement categories tend to increase information value. The collision of talkability and relevancy becomes the social currency in the message.

Dig deep to understand the consumer. Think about what people like to talk about, why they like to talk, and how an actual conversation might transpire. Remember the book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus by John Gray? It’s quite appropriate when creating word-of-mouth messages.

When developing word-of-mouth messages directed toward men, think in terms of Guysmanship. Male word-of-mouth triggers tend to be competitive, fact-based and opinionated. Men talk to “show that they know” or “be first.” Look at ESPN or read the sports page—facts and opinions are expressed in sound bites.

For women, it’s all about Fempathy. Female triggers are more empathetic or deal with community building and emotional outreach. They talk “to help” and “to be heard.” And far from sound bites, their conversations are centered on shared experiences and expressed as complete stories. It’s Oprah and Lifetime and their stories of women facing their challenges, from the life-changing to the day-to-day.

So Get to It.

Find the right people to spread the word. Craft the right message that’s talkable and relevant. Activate it using the tactics most appropriate for the topic. There’s a world of technological options; be sure to find the tools that will best seed or spark the conversation. And remember, the true magic lies in the social currency of the idea—it’s what keeps the idea moving to others.

Recently Mountain Dew’s Green Label Sound elevated brand/band pairing with the release of “When Fish Ride Bicycles,” a new full-length from Chicago hip-hop group the Cool Kids. What’s different than other brands playing in this space? Unlike Starbucks Hear Music—which is essentially a music publishing house and not necessarily a full-blown label—Green Label Sound is behaving like the real-deal: signing artists, handling distribution, PR, partnerships (read: iTunes) paid media, etc.

What can Green Label offer that traditional labels can’t? The better way to ask that question is to put it in reverse. With the state of the music industry going through its biggest shift in well, ever, record labels have become less effective at helping artists distribute their work, build fan followings, and evolve. Marketing is a major component of artist success, and Green Label relies on Cornerstone, a NY/LA based promotions agency to help run the label. By tapping into this agency resource, and genuinely committing to the artists they bring on board (imagine the bad PR if a brand-backed label treated artists poorly) Green Label Sound gives other labels a run for their money—especially considering their primary focus likely isn’t money—by promoting artists who in turn elevate the brand’s street cred.

In other words, it’s a perfect manifestation of our Brand Patronage trend for 2011. While consumer brands have played in nearly every area of media for nearly a century, I suspect we’re at the dawn of many deciding to go beyond sponsorships and carve out dedicated business units to support the creation, distribution and marketing of entertainment: whether that’s music, games, movies, apps, or books. Undoubtedly they’ll be no shortage of artists and agencies waiting to sign-up to help.

And the video above fits that description to a T.

A proposed project from a couple of Miami Ad School students, Lisa Zeitlhuber and Katharina Schmitt, would create a plugin for the Google Chrome web browser that turns your spellchecker into a fundraising tool for UNICEF’s educational programs. Every time Chrome’s spellchecker catches you misspelling a word, the correction would be accompanied by an option to “donate your word” (at $0.10 a letter) to the program. Who’s going to be the hero that misspells “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis” for the cause?

(Speaking of places where things are regularly misspelled, you did see yesterday’s Twitterphobics Anonymous post, right? If you’re in marketing and are terrified of Twitter, there’s your vaccine.)

On top of everything else we love about this campaign, the “donated” words get aggregated into a graphic that spells out “education” as more contributions are made. Using Driven by Data to spell out the program’s progress? We think that’s f-a-n-t-a-s-t-i-c.

Today’s post is by Jaclyn Gordyan. Senior Art Director and perpetually curious mind, discover more about her at Upshot’s main site. Follow Jaclyn on Twitter @JGordyan.

All the Peeps, Jelly Bellys and Cadbury Creme Eggs have been eaten. So what’s one to do during the afternoon Easter lull? Kick it on the couch with the NBA playoffs and hit Facebook. Yup. Wait a minute, what’s this in my Facebook news feed- Bonobos is having an online Easter Egg hunt? For cash? I’m so game.

Bonobos (a high end online menswear store) offered Easter themed promotional codes, but you had to find them first. The promotion leveraged the idea of a digital Easter egg hunt but by making you work for the codes, it became a game. An addicting one. Oh look at that, it plays beautifully into our 2011 ‘Game On! trend’. Their promo codes were distributed in an unexpected way that effectively sparked their consumers’ curiosity. It was almost too effective, as the grand prize was found just 15 minutes after the promotion went live. Lesson for those launching a game- prepare for quick wins.

Back to the hunt. They don’t even sell women’s clothes, but had you better believe I was in it to win it. A ‘friendly’ competition between myself and friends heated up to find any code, but mainly the $500 egg. We happily (and feverously) surfed their site, fast becoming intimate with the product lines, and site navigation. This obviously added value to their brand by giving us a welcome distraction from the holiday afternoon lull. Alas, I lost*. The anecdote is just a small example of how consumers are willing to ‘play the game’ and engage with brands. So where was the ‘Golden Egg’? [SPOILER ALERT] It was right under our noses… err… fingers in the HTML code. You heard me correctly. A picture of a goose laying a golden egg with the promo code below it was created in simple text (see below). 

The only hiccup in this hunt was smart phone or tablet users were at a disadvantage having to jump through bigger hoops to see the goose in HTML code. But that’s what the other hidden $25-$100 promo codes were for. The brand still won with an inevitable lift in page hits and fans. Brilliant.

A few candy companies such as M&M, and Cadbury held online Easter egg hunts in years past, but their executions were obviously targeting different demographics.

*Note: My friend wasn’t the official winner as someone had already found & used the Golden Egg promo code. But he can still hold bragging rights over my head. Sigh.

• Social validation is the primary motivator on the web. We share on Facebook in order to receive comments and likes. We post to Twitter with the hope of being re-tweeted. We upload to Flickr so our photos will be favorited. Keep this in mind when considering how to motivate consumer behaviors.
• Why does 4chan stimulate such… um… “creative” output? Because there’s no identity and no archive; i.e. it’s anonymous and ephemeral. It’s a survival of the fittest of ideas, where the content is more important to the creator.
• Anonymity can be a powerful stimulus for creativity. The cost of failure is high when it’s tied to your real identity, which impedes risk-taking.
• When selling in boundary-pushing innovations, recognize when the pushback is emotional instead of rational. Data will not overcome emotional doubts.
• The Old Spice Guy’s “Response” campaign is perhaps the greatest digital campaign ever, but the creators don’t see it as an exercise in digital. They describe it as an integrated success story. It worked because the character had been established across a variety of media channels, including good ol’ television.
• Still skeptical about advertising in social games like Farmville? Keep this in mind: the average weekly audience of Farmville is 31 million players. For context, the average weekly audience for American Idol is 26 million viewers. Social games are the new soap operas.
• Did you realize that Hispanic consumers are far more likely to use smartphones than other ethnic groups? In fact, a VP at Nielsen went so far as to say that mobile is the entertainment access point for Hispanic consumers.
• What’s the right equation for generating word-of-mouth? According to General Mills, it’s all about expectations. If you don’t meet them, you generate negative word-of-mouth. If you do meet them, there’s no word-of-mouth. It’s when you exceed expectations that you generate positive word-of-mouth .
• If you trigger the right sequence of “baby steps,” you can generate significant behavioral changes in the long run.
• The challenge for traditional brands in the modern world is that branding has been all about perfection and maintaining control. In today’s world, information is ever changing, consumers are real people rather than idealized targets, and brands are seen as authentic when they’re imperfect.

Mind blown? No problem. We’re pulling together all the pieces from our SXSWrapup tomorrow.

Click the image below for the full-size Cracking the Code infographic!

• Awakening & Awareness
• Transparency & Traceability
• and Self-Sufficiency & Empowerment

As always, we encourage a family-style approach to our Smartshot webinars, so please be generous in sharing this video with colleagues and clients. And, make sure you follow us on Twitter (@upshotblog) for information on upcoming Smartshots.