Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

...The first episode of "Fanta For The Funny," which rolls out Friday on CollegeHumor.com and across Fanta's social and digital channels, is comprised of dozens of Vine clips depicting gags and pratfalls from some of the platform's most popular personalities. There's no host of the show, just the brief video clips organized into vignettes around topics. In the first episode, Fanta doesn't actually appear in the Vine videos, though its branding is interspersed several times between segments. The series will run over the course of six weeks.

Brands are increasingly looking to platforms like Vine, a rising social media service owned by Twitter, to promote themselves and their products. On Vine, users post six-second clips, also called Vines. Despite -- or perhaps because of -- these time constraints, Vine has emerged as fertile ground for comedy, with hordes of young people posting humorous clips. Already, companies like General Mills, Ford and Virgin Mobile have tapped Vine stars for their campaigns....

Whenever a new platform launches these days, brands are instantly checking them out to see how they can “become a part of the conversation.” What that really means is how they can use a site like Twitter, or its new app Vine, to get your eyeballs, interact with you and, of course, sell you more stuff. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s commerce at its purest.

The story isn’t that brands try out new platforms. That’s boring. The interesting part is how they approach them and why. Now that consumers have the power to skip through commercials on programs that they record, creative advertisers have to start pushing the envelope on generating interesting and persuasive messages outside of the television set.

I spoke with VaynerMedia founder Gary Vaynerchuk, and his firm urges their clients to test new things out. When he says test it out, he means it:

"I tell our companies that there’s a 72 hour rule where you’re not even thinking about an ROI or how you can generate business. They should just try things out"....