MAZDA’S INNOVATIVE USE OF FACEBOOK

Mazda tried their hand at engaging with younger generations through the use of Facebook in a recent concept car design contest.  The Mazda Design Challenge asked Facebook users to help design the 2018 Mazda3, the manufacturer’s best international selling vehicle.

To wrap up the challenge, Franz von Holzhausen, director of Mazda Design and his team, along with contest winner, will create a clay concept car live at the upcoming LA Auto Show.  To enter, contestants submitted a 150-word description of their vision of the 2018 MAZDA3 and an optional sketch drawing. The Mazda Design team then judged each entry, choosing 10 semi-finalists.

Five finalists were chosen by the Facebook community, and each of the five finalists were paired with a Mazda designer to hone their concept, which was then judged and voted on in a second round by fellow Facebook members.

"The Mazda Design Challenge brought in a flood of cool, unique design ideas. The winning design concept is a fresh new way to look at the design of a vehicle," said von Holzhausen. "This competition was a tremendous success, and this entire process was really beneficial to my team and me to understand what design means to our target buyers. Now the hard part comes -- to see if we can actually build a full concept car on the show stand in 10 days and in full view of show goers."

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COCA-COLA’S DIY PORTABLE APPLICATION “COKETAGS” LETS YOU PROMOTE ANYTHING YOU WANT

Coca-Cola has launched CokeTag, a Facebook application that allows anyone to promote themselves and their interests via a convenient DIY portable application.  Coca-Cola describes CokeTag as a “personal, customizable widget for individuals, bands, bloggers, artists, and companies to share links to content they want to promote and drive traffic to anywhere on the Web.”

You can bundle links to on- and off-Facebook content in a convenient package, which is associated with and accessible from your Profile or Fan Pages and shared via Facebook private messages or Wall posts. Sharing viral or interesting links becomes easy via highly targeted personal networks for friends and fans.

You can bundle links to on- and off-Facebook content in a convenient package, which is associated with and accessible from your Profile or Fan Pages and shared via Facebook private messages or Wall posts. Sharing viral or interesting links becomes easy via highly targeted personal networks for friends and fans.

The CokeTag application features a self-service editor that allows you to control both the content and skin. Several levels of expandable menus enable easy navigation to specific content, while a built-in click tracker lets the creator know every time someone looks at their CokeTag and which links they visit.

Current Facebook distribution options includes: 1) Create and post your CokeTag on your personal profile page, 2) Create and post a CokeTag to any Facebook Fan Page you administer, 3) Grab and post any CokeTag that you discover on to your own personal profile, 4) Send a CokeTag as Facebook e-mail attachment, 5) Post a CokeTag as a Facebook Wall post.

Currently in beta form, CokeTag is the result of a partnership between The Coca-Cola Company and Linkstorm, an advertising technology company pioneering a new approach to social networking, online marketing and publishing. Initially built for Facebook, CokeTag will later be available across OpenSocial sites (MySpace, Bebo, etc.) and eventually to all Blogging platforms and everywhere on the Internet.

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