A quick programming note: We will be covering the upcoming SXSW Interactive Festival via Upshot’s Twitter profile. Please follow @upshot_agency to get up-to-the-minute updates from Austin!
A couple lingering points from our Here and Now (with Foursquare) Potty Posting, before we get back to your regularly scheduled awesomeness.
One caveat that we didn’t get to in the [...]

After our “Cause Marketing Gets Bigger. And Smaller.” post from last week, a couple of subsequent examples popped that were worth passing along.
For starters, we mentioned that a number of cause marketing efforts were tapping the wisdom of crowds to generate unorthodox solutions to daunting social problems. PechaKucha, who we’ve profiled before, recently brought together [...]

Last week, Ad Age ran a brief article titled, “The Most Influential Cause Marketing Campaigns.” Much of the list is familiar; we’re all aware of the massive efforts like the Livestrong bracelets and Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty. However, some of the campaigns on the list took on a decidedly narrow mission, such as AmEx’s [...]

Is there any segment of the population more vocal than the sports fan?
It seems like anyone who is even minimally interested in a given sport will inevitably claim that they could do a better job of coaching the team, managing the franchise, running the league, or broadcasting the games.
About that last one: it’s time to [...]

In last week’s post about Copenhagen’s cycling railings, we casually mentioned Apple’s renovation of a Chicago subway station and KFC’s offer to repair potholes. As local governments continue to struggle (no really, Chicago, it’s not like any of us take the bus or train to work – keep slashing those routes!), brands have a rare [...]

If you haven’t already heard, our 10 Trends for 2010 are making their way around the interwebs at a blistering pace. (You can catch our press release here.) Click here to request a copy of your own by email, and be sure to share it with your clients, coworkers, friends, and pets. What? Maybe Mr. [...]

… is a broken meter that tackles homelessness.
Back in 2007, the Denver Road Home program thought of a quirky way to raise awareness (and a handful of spare change) for their 10 year plan to end homelessness in the city.  The program converted a malfunctioning parking meter into a piggy bank for the program, encouraging [...]

What’s a retailer to do when, as an act of political resistance, a bunch of pesky artists start squatting in one of their stores?
Embrace it, of course.
At least, that’s the approach taken by an Ikea store in Hamburg. Gentrification of the area has eliminated many of the homes and workplaces for artists and designers in the region, [...]

Hello friends! Apologies for the downtime – your friendly Source staff was returning from SXSW interactive and working on some fancy new surprises for the blog, so we got a bit behind.
Speaking of SXSW… we’re going to be passing along a ton of great stuff we picked up at the conference. For starters, we’re going [...]