This information is 100% stolen from trendwatching.com

Here are some conversations that have been collected from twitter where big brands are monitoring the conversation and responding in real time to customer service issues.

Five years ago if your company had world class customer service that meant you had some good information on your website and customers could call your toll free number 24/7

Today? you can no longer afford to wait for customers to bring their complaints to you.  If you are waiting to solve problems you are losing customers. You must be proactive about listening to the conversations and responding in real time. Twitter is an amazing tool for this. Here are some awesome examples from big brands.

Let me just qualify that and say I am throwing in the big brands thing to show that this behavior is now mainstream not that you need a big budget.  We have clients doing this way better than the big boys with micro brands and micro budgets.  check out zarbees on twitter.

Chances are your company or cause is much smaller than these. Can you really afford not to be part of the conversation?

Gillette has been building buzz the last month with how-to online
videos. The videos show men how to shave everywhere except their face,
also known as “manscaping.”

There has been tons buzz around the videos. By last Friday, Gillette’s Youtube site had more than 300,000 views in about a month.

The videos are very clever and humorous, which is different from the
approach they usually take in their advertising and marketing. Each
light-hearted video shows a cartoon demonstrating how to manscape
different areas of the body.

Before the videos were posted, Gillette tested them on both men and
women with little negative feedback. Through their research, Gillette
also found that one-third of men shave hair from their body other than
their faces.

“Our goal was to engage guys in a dialogue on the whys and how-to’s, and to do it comfortably and reassure them in a funny and entertaining way,” said Tim Williams a Gillette marketing official.

I think Gillette did a really great job with these videos. Not only are
they funny and perfect to reach 20-something men, but there is actually
research to back their approach.

Although we can’t leave without saying that they are ripping off the Phillips Norelco Shave Everywhere site from a few years ago.

The real Slim Shady is back. We almost forgot all about Eminem and all his drama but now he’s releasing his first album in the last five years, “The Relapse.”

We all knew it would happen eventually but I wasn’t expecting Eminem to build buzz so well.  The marketing team at Aftermath/Interscope Records has created a cool campaign to reintroduce the hip-hop star. You can read about the full campaign here. It’s cool to see that Eminem is marketing his album the same way big studios market new movie releases.

So far, the campaign is working. Twitter has been their main online outlet so far and within the last couple days Tweeters have been going crazy for the new campaign. There has also been a major spike in Eminem Google searches, comparable to the Google inquiries for his 2004 album.

Here are the official stats so far:

“According to Compete, Eminem.com reached 113,868 unique visitors during April, while the most popular of his tweets — which linked to Therelapse.com on May 7 — reached at least 41,704 people within just one week, according to an analysis of data provided to Ad Age by Tweetreach.”

Not too shabby.

Going back to the Google trends, the spike at the very end of the graph is a result of the ticket giveaway for his Detroit show. So far, this has been the only giveaway in the campaign, which surprises me. That could be because I just read an article about how successful Radiohead’s name-your-own-price promotion was in 2007. Eminem’s market are those who are most likely to pirate music. The album has already been leaked online, so it would have made sense for Eminem to make his campaign cater to that audience. Considering the success of his past albums, doing something similar to Radiohead would have definitely been doable.

But you know what? I’m just glad Eminem is back and well, despite his stint with prescription drug abuse. And we’re glad to see him harnessing the power of social media.

It seems like we’ve been talking a lot about how car companies are promoting their new cars. It’s interesting to see how each company uniquely used social media in their ad campaigns.

Ford is doing their 6-month test-drive and asking their drivers to talk about their experiences on social networks. Honda created a blog for the new Insight in order to get consumer insights and share information. Now BMW has created a new integrated marketing campaign to promote the 2010 BMW Z4 Roadster that relies on both online and offline outlets.

The new ad campaign is called “Expression of Joy.” The campaign features a painting the size of 2 football fields created by artist Robin Rhode and filmmaker Jake Scott. The advertisements were filmed by Scott as Rhode drove two Z4s with paint jets mounted behind the wheels. Every angle and movement of the Z4 was captured by 45 cameras and used 160 liters of paint.

The 30-second spots from the footage captured by Scott can be seen on TV and online. There was a 30-minute doumentary about the creation of the ad was shown on Discovery HD Theater on May 10. BMW is the first to use MSN.com’s expandable video unit, which allows viewers to see the advertisements in full-screen mode. There will also be video banner ads on CNN, Yahoo, and other top websites. They’ve also made their own website for the new Z4 at  expressionofjoy.com.

“Expression of Joy” will also be seen in print, including an 8-page insert in Vanity Fair’s June issue, and outdoor advertisements.

“BMW Z4 – An Expression of Joy” is a game that has been developed for the iPhone and iPod Touch and has been available to download since May 10.

BMW has done a realy great job making not only making cool, chic advertisements – very BMW – but also developing a great integrated marketing campaign. I love that they made a game for the iPhone. It’s the perfect place to reach their market and there’s a good chance that everyone who downloads it will be totally addicted, like most other iPhone games.

While there are some great online aspects to the campaign, it would have been even better if they were utilizing social networks. It would have been so simple to integrate Twitter or Facebook into their campaign. This would have given them way more exposure. Maybe next time.

The numbers are in. We’ve followed all the buzz, read all the reviews and now the moment of truth.

The opening weekend numbers for X-Men Origins: Wolverine …. $87 million

The opening weekend numbers for Star Trek ….. $76 million

After hearing all the great reviews and positive buzz about Star Trek, it would make sense for it to make more money at the box office. Despite the claim that the movie wasn’t just for Trekkies, Star Trek still couldn’t overcome the stigma associated with their niche market.

Wolverine still didn’t reach the $100 million expectation opening weekend, but $87 million isn’t too shabby considering all the negative buzz and bad reviews.

Now it’s official; Mutants beat Trekkies.