Sure, we do the pre-theatre announcements, usually done in a funny way, (Rock of Ages says it “it makes you look like a douchebag.”) I’m just not convinced that the “Please take this moment to shut off your cell phones” is enough for audiences. We need to do more. Check cell phones in the lobby? Or get the community together for an ad campaign!

Buy some television commercials, Do a live social etiquette lesson on ustream.tv, create videos and throw them up on YouTube. We can get the Ad Council and the FCC in on this. We need a public message that is funny and will stick. (Sure, there are more important things like Teen Dating Violence Protection and quitting smoking, but cell phone abuse is out of control, right?)

I think it would be great if we did a video series of regular life incidents where the cell phone is involved and throw in one of our theatre celebrities.

Scene 1: A family is enjoying a lovely conversation over a beautiful dining room table. Amidst light-hearted chatter, a cell phone goes off. Everyone is looking at the eldest kid who answers it. Kid says “Oh hey Bra, yeah, no, it’s fine, I can chat.”  Mom looks at Dad, Sister looks at younger sister. Then they all turn to brother. They know what’s about to happen. BOOM! Patti Lupone BUSTS in. She screams, “Who do you think you are? This is a dinner table. Everyone at this table has respect except for YOU. Get ‘em out of here (then an usher comes in, all dressed up, escorts the douchey kid out of the house.) Then, Patti sings “Here she is boys! Tell the world! Heaaaaz Patti!” Cue ad message.

Scene 2: A crowded, quiet subway. Next stop, Broadway/Lafayette. A super cute girl walks on and gets a call. She gets service! She picks it up and snorts and laughs “Omygod, I know, O-M-G-W-T-F, I knah! Omygod, I hate her! I knah! I knah!” Everyone on the subway gets quiet…you hear a rattling of the car; There’s a roar coming, but, it’s not the train. From the sea of passengers barges through a very angry Hugh Jackman. He grabs the cell phone and crushes it with his hands. He gazes at the shell-shocked girl. All he says is “You’re annoying everyone on the train.” Then runs out, Wolverine style.

What do you think? Do you have any other suggestions of ad ideas for this theatre cell phone problem? Leave your ideas in the comment sections below.

“We are going to rewire the entire experience at Yahoo to make it social in every dimension,” said Ari Balogh, Yahoo’s chief technology officer. The open platform is a concept that already has been embraced by Google, Facebook and MySpace.

The new feature will give Yahoo’s roughly 500 million users greater flexibility to customize, including the ability to pick from a variety of widgets for placement just about anywhere on the site, including a personalized home page.

Will this be good for marketers and advertisers? We’ll see: I’ve gotten used to targeting ads based on interest and demographic, which works. For example, What if Betty White and Rue Mclanahan wrote a show about their relationship with Bea Arthur called Rue and Betty about Bea on Broadway.  (Hint, hint, ladies—and producers!) I want to target people with “Broadway,” “Off Broadway,” “The Golden Girls,” “Maude,” “Mary Tyler Moore,” “Bea Arthur,” etc. in their profiles and send them a hot message about the new hit show. On Facebook, I can now target users down to age and location. (Hello, 45 year old ladies in New York!) Yahoo is now making this possible, too.

We haven’t had much luck using search ads on Yahoo: I have tried it with a few shows, but I can’t match the high ROIs I get on Facebook and Google).

Will this makeover make Yahoo a more effective place to advertise? I hope so and I will certainly let you know. Yahoo’s search, chat, music and email are already great, and if this will help me reach the audiences I want, I’m all for it.  C’mon, Golden Girls fans, get your wallets out!

Another reason I’m reluctant to jump onto this particular band wagon is a sort of vestigial suspicion I have about people knowing too much about me and my business. It all just seems a little big-brothery to me. I think it’s the pseudo-privacy of the medium: You know you’re communicating with your Twitter followers, however many they may be, but the experience is still solitary, like whispering into a microphone that is broadcasting to the world. You don’t really know how many people are tuning in, and probably more importantly, who they are. Just skeeves me out a little.

BUT! I am fascinated by the fact that Twitter is changing how business is done. Check out this NY Times article about the ways that companies are “listening” to customers to not only learn about their preferences, but also to tap into the nuances of the marketplace.

I’m just more than a little ambivalent about Starbucks, Whole Foods and Amazon sniffing around my virtual self to find out how I take my coffee, buy my groceries and read my books.

It’s the only place where you can legally get free videos of your favorite episodes of SNL and Family Guy. Seriously, I’ve watched more Kristen Wiig videos on Hulu than I have seen Kittens Inspired by Kittens on YouTube.

Google recognizes the awesomeness of Hulu.com (much like Facebook recognizes the awesomeness of Twitter) and will do many of the same things that Hulu already does, like feature premium content, but most especially, will feature in-stream, interruptive ads. (Funny or Die already does this.)

I am not sure if they can target the videos, but, you bet your sweet charity that I will be getting the in-stream ads for Jennifer Holliday AND Jennifer Hudson’s And I Am Telling You video.

We’ll see this new launch April 16, the delay due to on-going negotiations with Disney.

The CEO's Guide to Jetting

Take a look at JetBlue’s new ad campaign putting a humorous twist on the shifting structure of corporate America. The campaign I think is pretty funny, but it is playing on an extremely topical/sensitive subject that has been in the news constantly.

The new campaign pokes fun at CEO’s who no longer have jobs/private jets and now have the think about flying commercially (think American Automaker CEO’s). The videos are a how-to-guide on how to go from flying in private jets to flying commercially (pointing out all of the great features of JetBlue airlines).

Check it out, what do you think? Funny? or too soon? http://www.welcomebigwigs.com/

Skittles made a widget at the corner of the site, and built the navigation around that. This menu-overlay box allows the user to interface with their already existing social networks, thus allowing for the candy brand to spread through the normal daily actions of the user. It’s working, I love skittles, and I totally made it a fan on my facebook.

Instead of photos, it directs to their Flickr page. They hooked ‘Chatter’ to Twitter. Instead of the normal everyday about page, they hooked it to Wikipedia. It’s a social networking rainbow!

There are still some quirks to this campaign. The menu overlay blocks a lot of the content on my smaller laptop screen. Also, originally they used the homepage as their twitter search, but everyone was using it as a way to knock the brand (haters) so they switched it to their Facebook fan page. This comes with the territory when you allow anonymous users to run the content of your website.

Overall, it’s a lesson in how important the big sites (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and Wikipedia) are to major brands and how they will continue to change the way we market.

The play received critical acclaim in its NYC premiere last year, many kudos going to Meital Dohan, who you might remember as a feisty—and ferociously sexy—rabbinical scholar on Showtime’s Weeds.  John Ventimiglia (Artie Bucco on The Sopranos) also stars.

Take a look at the graphic identity we created for the show. To my mind, it does just what good show art should do: captures the emotional essence of the piece in a visually arresting, yet enigmatic way.  The play is a tasty little chunk of psycho-love-drama, depicting two people who love each other in a brutally tender way, odd as that sounds. Their bond is painful to the touch; it hurts as much as it heals them.   And though the piece is sometimes painful to watch, it’s also an intimate look at a couple trying to love each other in the only way they know how.

Online, there’s nycgo.com, which uses Google Maps to help people to plan New York City vacations or staycations.

Offline, there’s the Official New York City Information Center at 810 Seventh Avenue, between 52nd and 53rd Streets.  But even “offline” is online: the Center features “interactive map tables” and a “gigantic video wall,” which both use Google technology.

Google and New York City: Perfect Together

Ready for your close up? The cast of ROCK OF AGES proved they were BORN ready when we asked them to create their own footage for the production’s exclusive video diary. They performed like true troupers, providing hundreds of handmade videos chronicling all kinds of backstage folderol and giving fans a peek into what it’s like to be in a hit show. They took their cameras on the town, too, filming in restaurants, at the closing party of HAIR in Central Park and Lauren Molina even took viewers on surfing safari to Far Rockaway beach. “I had a blast using the cameras,” says Molina. “It was fun and easy. Fans at the stage door told me how much they loved watching the videos, too. Certain women didn’t want footage taken in the dressing room, though, because people get naked in there!”

We gave the ROA-ers Flip cameras (www.theflip.com), which cost a little more than $100 apiece. They’re small, light and hold up to an hour of footage; plus they’re simple to use—just point and push record. We ended up posting about 40 videos, uploading them to Youtube and embedding them on the official site. At AMC, we’re starting to include Youtube videos on sites, rather than creating custom players: They’re cheaper, load more easily, are more reliable and have all those nifty “social” features like sharing, rating and auto-loading related videos built right in. It’s also a user interface that people already know how to use, which helps increase functionality—never a bad thing.

The fan response to videos from cast members Molina, Constantine Maroulis, Tad Wilson and Will Swenson was amazing. In fact, the Diary quickly became the most popular feature with users, garnering 35,620 views since the campaign launched last October.

Video Diaries are an easy, fun way to build brand loyalty for a show, to keep people on your site and generate viral attention for your production—and your cast. Best of all, they’re CHEAP! What’s not to love, right?