Who doesn’t want to be treated like a rock star? We really couldn’t think of anyone, so we created 1-Day Wonder for our friends at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Biloxi.

Here’s the deal. By becoming a fan on Facebook, you are entered for a chance to be treated like a rock star for a day—free room, tickets to a show, dinner, drinks on the house, spa treatment, you get the idea. Each month, a new 1-Day Wonder will be selected.

So get in there and fan up. Who knows, soon you might be demanding a bowl of M&Ms with the brown ones removed.

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Our pals and sometimes partners-in-awesomeness, Struck/Axiom, recently helped Gatorade with its new social media command center.

The mission-control-like room features large screens with various social media visualizations, such that Gatorade marketing pros can monitor real time conversations not only related to the brand but its competition, sports nutrition, athletes and other popular culture topics its consumers care about. Here’s a YouTube clip overview.

Carla Hassan, Gatorade’s Sr. Marketing Director, says the goal of this project is to “take the largest sports brand in the world and turn it into the largest participatory brand in the world.”

What Hassan is really talking about is an unprecedented level of brand engagement. Brands by their very nature are participatory. After all, brands are merely the aggregate of consumer perceptions, and these perceptions are shaped by consumers’ interactions or participation with a given brand.

The difference today is that people have social media which acts as an amplifier. Anyone can be a media source and build an audience. Smart brands understand that and embrace engagement.

Congrats to Struck/Axiom and Gatorade.

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Here’s a sweet new toy that we’ve just launched for The University of Alabama School of Law. We’re working with the college to develop a social media program, and our first order of business involved creating an aggregator site that pulls all of their social media channels and content into one spot. The focus of the overall program is student recruitment, and given the core audience, social media is a logical place to focus. But you’ve got to do it intelligently.

So behold, The Open Brief. The site features a dashboard on the homepage, and the navigation/animation is pretty slick (if we do say so ourselves). Overall, a nice way to organize content.

C-Rowe rocked the design, and our friends at New Uniform slayed the code.

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Here’s a great illustration of social media’s relevance. In Chicago on Friday afternoon, needing something to do for the evening, I go to Twitter and ask: Anybody know of any killer live music happening in Chicago tonight?

Within minutes I’m getting suggestions, and seven minutes after my post, @trdunn writes: Check out The Drummers at @Schubas. Awesome venue with an awesome band tonight.

Boom. Plans made. Thankyouverymuch. As for the show, Drummer was great. But I really liked the openers, Royal Bangs. In fact, to keep the organic mojo happening, I’m going to politely ask you download their stuff.

Pay it forward, social media style.

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With social media and interactive, it’s very easy to get caught up in the technology. Let’s not forget that the idea is still what counts. Rather than rote utilization, how about injecting an idea and pushing the boundaries of what can be done? (Chuck Yeager meets the Internet.)

Take a look at the Coke Zero Facial Profiler. Here’s the campaign idea. Coke Zero tastes so much like Coke that “we should sue ourselves.”  Maybe you’ve seen the spots with the Coke brand managers asking lawyers to help them sue the Coke Zero brand managers. Amazingly simple, on strategy (it tastes just like Coke) and funny.

The Coke Zero Facial Profiler asks “if Coke Zero has Coke’s taste, is it possible someone out there has your face?” The application matches and connects people via Facebook. It’s a social experiment via social media.

Is it as buzz-worthy as the Whopper Sacrifice? Nope. But it’s still conceptual. And these are the projects that get the public’s attention, which is definitely not a coincidence.

UPDATE: Here’s something that I cannot believe I didn’t catch. One of our copywriters pointed out that the Coke Zero Facial Profiler site uses the line Find the Other You. Well, we produced a campaign several months ago that uses a similar line. There are social media plug-ins here as well–and, the coolest feature in my opinion, is the ability to receive text updates from the other you.

How did I not notice this?

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