If we’ve learned anything about viral advertising in 2011, it’s this — you can’t touch The Force. Also, people will always love crazy stunts and action-packed destruction — especially if there are Angry Birds thrown into the mix.

Pop culture references, especially when Internet-related, also seemed to do really well this year. From the Royal Wedding to LMFAO, using someone or something that has a strong following always helps in acheiving viral reach. And if that doesn’t work, consider a male stripper or a monkey with an AK-47.

We also learned that people like to be tricked. The more realistic your stunt is, the better. There are a couple videos that made the list this year that make you question whether the ad was staged or real, which always leads to sharing.

If nothing else, there are a few touching videos that will leave you affected. From cute children talking about their relationship to the more serious topic of cancer, this list just goes to show that emotive videos can still cut through all the noise on the web.

Special thanks to our friends at Unruly for compiling this list.

Note: The list below does not include music videos, user-generated content or movie trailers. Unruly’s Viral Video Chart tracks 18 million shares a day through third-party APIs.

1. "The Force: Volkswagen Commercial" (Volkswagen)

Shares: 4,713,179

This Super Bowl ad for the 2012 Passat features a "pint-sized Darth Vader" who discovers the Force in his driveway. It's incredibly cute and humorous, and was obviously well-executed because it holds the highest number of shares this year.

Click here to view this gallery.

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Twitter is dead. Long live, Twitter!

The Internet’s most popular microblogging service got a major upgrade today, rolling out a brand-new look and a bunch of new features. The update is the most comprehensive and wide-ranging change Twitter’s ever done, revamping its website, its apps for both iOS and Android, and even its recently acquired social-media integrator, TweetDeck. Here’s a closer look at what Twitter’s done and why.

What’s Different

When you visit the new Twitter, you can quickly see the site’s been reorganized in some key ways. Everything fits into one of four labels:

• Home: This is your old news feed, only better. Whereas before media in tweets like photos and videos was viewable on the side, now you can see them right in the tweet (you still need to click). You’ll also be able to see information about @replies and retweets for a particular tweet by selecting “Open,” a new option. Twitter says your feed will now appear “consistently” across platforms. which apparently was a problem before.
• Connect: This is where all your @replies and mentions will be. Not a lot new here, but Twitter says you can type in someone’s handle will let you learn more about the person and connect instantly.
• Discover: Twitter appears to have supercharged its search functions and put the results here. More than just a place to look for trending topics and hashtags, Discover will identify stories and trends based on your connections, location and language.
• Me: Here’s your Twitter profile, made bigger, neater and with more activity recorded. Your information now appears on the left instead of right.

• Twitter’s mobile apps have been given the same four-column treatment, with streamlined interfaces and a new design. In a subtle change, the old pen icon for drafting a new tweet has been replaced with a quill.

  On the back end, Twitter’s updated its API to allow embedded tweets (more on those in a bit) and some better interactions with various other apps and platforms, like WordPress (disclosure: WordPress is Mashable‘s content management system).

  ---

  Why Twitter’s Doing It

  ---

  Twitter says it wants to make its interface more inviting to new users, while giving existing users better functionality. But there’s no doubt that a large part of the change has to do with accommodating ways to drum up revenue. Twitter has recently been experimenting with ways to point users toward its advertising services, though it’s done so clumsily at times (case in point: the ill-fated “dickbar” on the iPhone, named after Twitter CEO Dick Costolo). The redesign brings with it opportunities to steer users toward sponsors, specifically through the new branded pages (see below).

  ---

  What’s Gone

  ---

  We’ll have more information on this after we’ve had a chance to give all the new Twitter apps and the site a thorough hands-on, but on iPhone it appears users can no longer copy and paste from a tweet. Users no longer can translate tweets in other languages. Options to mail, repost, or save links to Instapaper appear to have been removed. And the redesign makes it less convenient to switch accounts.

  An important difference on the Web interface: Profile names are now emphasized whereas the user’s “handle” was front and center before.

  (Thanks to Mashable readers for pointing out many of these changes.)

  ---

  Embedded Tweets

  ---

  If you have a website, you can now embed individual tweets on a page. It’s sort of like Storify, but just one tweet at a time. From the embed, you can retweet, reply or favorite the tweet, and you can follow the user as well — all without leaving the page. Links and other dynamic content remain active.

  You can see the option to embed a tweet on any tweet’s “permalink” page, accessible via the new Open button. Importantly, tweets that are on private accounts won’t give you the option. Twitter told Mashable. For more on embedded tweets, check out our hands on.

  Twitter also improved its buttons that appear on many websites. Now a Tweet button can include a specific hashtag or @mention, an easier way for sites to get their readers tweeting to specific people and about specific things.

  ---

  Brand Pages

  ---

  Just like Facebook and Google+, Twitter now has brand pages for companies. Although many, if not most, companies already had their own Twitter accounts, brand pages allow for more functionality and interactions with followers.

  A report in Advertising Age says brands will be able to customize the page with large logos and extended taglines. They’ll also be able to promote tweets in the timeline on their own pages, letting them highlight their best content. Brand pages don’t cost anything, and they’re available to companies large and small.

  ---

  User Reaction

  ---

  According to a poll of Mashable readers, many users (almost 41% of respondents) love the new changes, saying that the site is “easier to use,” “fantastic” and “pretty kewl.” Some have risen concerns about the features missing in iOS and the necessity of the change, however.

  On Twitter itself, the overall response appears to be positive, with many users reacting with enthusiasm. Most of the negative reactions have to do with mobile, with a few also complaining about the usefulness of “Discover.”

  ---

  In contrast to some of its earlier moves this year, Twitter appears to have handled its platform-wide revamp deftly, and the majority of is users are pleased. If it can work out some issues on the mobile side, it may have scored a home run. But the real question will be if the new Twitter can actually serve the company in the area that matters most to all companies: making money.

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For many digital marketers, the fall of 2011 might be remembered for bringing dynamic advertising to paid search. Google’s newest offering, said to flip “the search engine on its head,” does away with the traditional keyword advertising approach in lieu of matching landing pages with the right user search.

Dynamic Search Ads is just one of dozens of innovations Google has made to its AdWords product over the past few years. Google paid search has evolved to include everything from video to coupons and a call feature, all in the name of improving advertiser results. Not every Google product is a good fit for every advertiser – in fact, some of its offerings aren’t even available to the masses yet. But Google is nothing if not progressive, and for this reason many of them warrant a closer look.

1. Google Image Search. Instead of advertising exclusively on Google’s web results page, this product allows brands to place their listings next to Google Images. Typically, this approach is best suited to those who’ve noted a distinct benefit to presenting consumers with a product image up front. The campaign is set up through AdWords, except that instead of uploading ad copy alone, the advertiser also submits an image that will precede the organic image search results on the page.
2. Google Media Ads. Previously known as Google Video Plus Box, this program was initially tested in beta with advertisers ranging from automotive to CPG. A box beneath a standard search ad would display a web-only video such as an instructional product clip, and advertisers would pay the equivalent of their cost-per-click text ad bid when the video hit the 10-second mark. The unit has since morphed into Google Media Ads and is open only to the entertainment vertical (at least, so far).
3. Google Product Ads/Extensions. Similar to the video extension, this unit allows brands to include additional promotional material in their text ads. The ad pulls information from an advertiser’s existing Google Merchant Center account and can include anything from images to business center maps, product titles, detailed descriptions, and prices. Brands can promote their entire product inventory through paid search and, in theory, generate more qualified clicks because they’re providing the user with more product information up front.
4. Google Redemption Ads/Offer Extensions. Through this program, brands can deliver a coupon directly to search engine users from their paid search ads. Several user options exist, including having the coupon emailed to a desktop or texted to a mobile phone – they can even be saved to a user’s Google Wallet. Redemption options, too, are varied: depending on what the brand is looking for, consumers can redeem in store, online, or by mail.
5. Google Call Extensions/Metrics. When generating phone calls is a campaign priority, Google’s call feature can help. Advertisers include in their paid search ad a unique toll-free number provided by Google that links to the marketing client’s existing phone number. Advertisers can then track which AdWords campaigns their calls are coming from, along with the duration of the calls and the caller’s area code, through their existing Google account.
6. Google Sitelinks. One of the most useful of Google’s newer products, Sitelinks affords the ability to include up to six additional links in your AdWords text ad. This gives brands complete and immediate control over the pages, products, and messaging they wish to promote.

   Considering the length of time it can take for Google to re-index a site, and the urgency of updating ad copy and Sitelinks for such events as new product line launches, this can be a critical advantage. “You’re giving the user seven links to choose from and letting them select exactly where they want to go,” says Nathan Lewalski, one of Enlighten’s senior interactive media planners, “but you’re also gaining a competitive advantage by owning more real estate on the results page.” Click-through rates on these ads tend to be higher because users instantly know what to expect from a site. “Without paid search,” Nathan says, “it’s unlikely the user would see a brand’s newest messaging or get sent directly to new pages in time.”

Google is infamous for experimenting with its AdWords products (not to mention giving them countless different names). The advantage for advertisers is a glut of program options and a fresh take on how to supercharge those two little lines of text. Take some time to learn what’s new in Google Ad Innovations. The company’s next unit could be the one you’ve been waiting for.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, hillaryfox

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Facebook’s bold list of changes, announced Thursday, will put more pressure on advertisers to come up with compelling content and integrate themselves further into consumers’ lives. The big loser? The “Like,” which will have a smaller role in marketing, industry analysts say.

One big change is that Facebook has added a control in the top right of each story that users can check to unmark a top story. Facebook will use that information over time to automatically edit the feeds. Since users now have more control over their news feeds, brands with boring or irrelevant updates will have lower visibility. (They will still show up in the Ticker, however.)

Marketers, who have been told for years that they’re actually publishers now, will have to put that into practice, says Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, a digital marketing firm. “Facebook is a channel, albeit a collaborative one, that needs to be programmed,” says Schafer. “We need to get people to share and interact with more content.”

How to do that? David Berkowitz, senior director of emerging media and innovation for 360i, says Facebook will now be about branding actions. “Before on Facebook it was about getting people to ‘Like’ the brand,” he says. “Now, it’s about getting people to take social actions enabled by that brand.” For example, if a consumer posts an update about a run they just took, that’s a prime opportunity for Nike. “If your run is powered by Nike, you might still wear Adidas,” says Berkowitz, “but Adidas will have to find something else that’s social about its brand to become part of your story.”

Nir Refuah, vice president of McCann Digital in Israel, says that with Facebook’s redesign, consumers will be creating a “digital autobiography” in which brands will have to integrate themselves. “First Facebook became the digital ID of everyone, and now it will try to gather our whole life story,” says Refuah.

The emphasis on lifestreaming rather than merely using the platform to amplify a message means that apps will become more of a vehicle for branding. But, like the marketing messaging, Schafer says apps will also have to be genuinely interesting to consumers and their friends. “Apps with utility that allow you to consume more or participate more will be more important,” says Schafer.

Thinking of marketing as storytelling isn’t a new concept, but the redesign will extend the metaphor. Sponsored Stories, an ad unit Facebook introduced earlier this year, are a good example, Schafer says, of marketing messages that could be of interest to consumers and their friends. How? Instead of offering basic information, like “Jim checked in at Starbucks,” Schafer suggests that something more specific such as “Jim checked in at the Starbucks on 14th Street and ordered a cappuccino,” might be a relevant part of that consumer’s life that day and of interest to friends.

The change will require new thinking from marketers who had merely tried to accumulate as many fans and “Likes” as possible. Jenna Lebel,managing director of strategy at Likeable Media, says the “Like” is “a little less relevant now,” and that marketers will have to work harder to earn their place in news feeds. “Your content is going to need to be absolutely amazing,” she says.

Colin Murphy, social media director at Skinny, a digital ad agency, thinks overall, the changes are a challenge to marketers and agencies. “He really threw down the gauntlet today,” Murphy says of Mark Zuckerberg. “You actually have to deliver something of value to a customer rather than just being a person spamming.”

Here’s a look at the new Timeline, and you can view images from the event below.

Andy Samberg and Mark Zuckerberg

Beast's Facebook Page

Ben Parr and Jennifer Van Grove

F8 programing team

Zuck Dog

Beast

Before f8 Keynote

"I'm not really friends with these people"

Andy Samberg

Andy Samberg

Timeline Mobile

Mark's Timeline

Mark Zuckerberg

A View of Timeline from the Audience

Courtesy of Robyn Peterson

Mark with Timeline

Zuckerberg's Cover

Timeline

Timeline

Timeline

"Any Verb, Any Noun"

Reed Hastings

Reed Hastings

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek

Watch Netflix and Hulu from Facebook

Nike+

Mark Zuckerberg and Words With Friends

Washington Post Social Reader

Running and Eating

Brett Taylor

Brett Taylor

Chris Cox

Chris Cox

Facebook Memories

Mark Zuckerberg Closes F8

Mark Zuckerberg Closes F8

More F8 Coverage:

• Facebook Changes Again: Everything You Need To Know
• Prepare Yourselves: Facebook To Be Profoundly Changed
• Facebook Now Has 800 Million Users
• Facebook Timeline: Here’s What It Looks Like [VIDEO]
• Facebook Open Graph Seeks to Deliver Real-Time Serendipity
• Yahoo Hooks Up With Facebook for Socially Curated News
• Facebook Adds TV & Movies to the Stream
• What Do You Think of the Facebook Changes? [OPEN THREAD]
• Facebook Reveals Major Updates at F8 [LIVE BLOG]
• Facebook Timeline Redefines User Profiles
• Spotify Comes to Facebook [PICS]

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Jamie Beckland is a Digital and Social Media Strategist at Janrain where he helps Fortune 1000 companies integrate social media technologies into their websites to improve user acquisition and engagement. He has built online communities since 2004. He tweets as @Beckland.

Marketers have built a temple that needs to be torn down. Demographics have defined the target consumer for more than half a century — poorly. Now, with emerging interest graphs from social networks, behavioral data from search outlets and lifecycle forecasting, we have much better ways of targeting potential customers.

The rise of mass-produced consumer goods also brought the rise of mass-market advertising. In the 1950s and 1960s, the goal of television was to aggregate the most possible eyeballs for advertisers. In order to convince consumers that an advertising message was relevant to them, consumers had to buy the idea that they were just like everyone else.

Marketers created that buy-in by bucketing people into generations. When you lump 78 million people into one group called “Baby Boomers,” it’s much easier to sell them stuff, especially when consumers accepted their generational classification.

But now, that entire system has broken down. The year that someone was born will not tell you how likely he is to buy your product.

Fragmentation is now the norm because the pace of change is accelerating. Generations have been getting smaller because there are fewer unifying characteristics of young people today than ever before:

With the recent rise of the social web, people self-select into groups so small, so fragmented, and so temporal, that no overarching top-down approach could be successful at driving marketing performance.

Marketers have responded by adding more demographic information to the mix, but even that is a losing battle. I worked with one client who was introducing a technology product, and had identified a target market of “connected consumers.” Connected consumers were 34-55, had a household income over $120k, and read technology publications regularly. This target market represented 14 million consumers.

They were targeting 14 million consumers to sell 50,000 units — that means they were hoping for 3.5 sales for every 1,000 people with whom they connected through their marketing.

What if, instead, you could get 500 sales from every 1,000 people you marketed to?

It’s possible through psychographic profiling. Psychographics look at the mental model of the consumer in the context of a customer lifecycle. Amazon.com has long been a leader in this space, through innovations like “recommended products” and “users like me also bought.” Its algorithms have learned to predict its users, and what they are interested in. And now, there are a number of tools that any business can use to leverage psychographics.

Here’s how a psychographic profile might look different from a traditional marketing profile target for a childcare provider:

Psychographics provide much more useful information about users. There are multiple data sources making this possible today. Social profile data, behavioral data and customer lifecycle data can now finally be leveraged to contact people who are ready to buy.

Social Profile Data

Profile data from social networks consist of all the fields users grant permission for brands to use on their behalf. Most things that users track on social networks can be leveraged to create a closer relationship with a customer. Fields like relationship status, alma mater, interests and occupation can all be managed through social profile data management tools.

Social profile data is the critical cornerstone of psychographic insights. The level of nuance and insight provided by social data, when compared to standard demographics, is the difference between performing surgery with a scalpel or a butter knife. Previously unimaginable questions are now routine:

• Are customers who kayak more likely to buy water shoes than those who canoe?
• Who is more likely to spend over $100 on an order: Seattle Seahawks fans or Seattle Mariners fans?
• Are your customers more likely to purchase when they move across the state or across the country?

In addition, companies such as GraphEffect are measuring purchase intent by doing semantic analysis on Facebook status updates. This type of qualitative analysis can move users into specific marketing funnels from their very first online experience with your brand.

Behavioral Data

Retargeting advertising messages is gaining popularity among marketers, but its very success has jeopardized its effectiveness. Ads that follow users around the web have been implemented — usually poorly. Every ad network quickly incorporated the ability to place cookies in users’ browsers, and display specific ads to them any time they visit a site that’s part of their networks.

The next generation of ad targeting will focus more on telling the customer a story over time, based on specific behavior triggers. That means ad networks and clickstream data aggregators will work together to trigger when a customer moves forward in a mental model toward a purchase event.

Site content and product recommendations will also be informed by clickstream analysis. Companies such as RichRelevance, Certona, Baynote and Monetate all offer the ability to personalize information to specific visitors based on their behavior. Leveraging those alongside a payload of social profile data can turbocharge those services from the first moment a new user visits a site.

Customer Lifecycle Data

Social profile data can also be used to predict customer lifecycle. Imagine knowing not only if a customer has children, but the exact ages of those children. In addition, key indicator purchases, like buying diapers for the first time, indicate a customer entering a new lifecycle. Other key indicators, like shipping address changes, first purchases of furniture, or first purchases of substantially higher-value goods can all indicate the start of a new customer mentality and behavior pattern.

These patterns are predictable, so you know the future behavior of high school seniors by looking at the current behavior of college freshmen. By using demographics alone, all high school graduates would be marketed to identically. Using psychographics, we know who is likely to be interested in specific product or content recommendations at a specific time — such as when they actually start their first day of college.

This vision is starting to gain traction among serious marketers. At the 2009 Internet Strategy Forum, Xerox’s VP of Interactive Marketing, Duane Schulz, said that a 1% clickthrough rate was a huge failure — even though it is 10 times the industry average. In his mind, a successful campaign would never waste 99% of its impressions. Using psychographic data, you don’t have to waste any impressions.

We have seen a similar upheaval in marketing before. In the 1960s, marketers who embraced the power of television, broad-based insights into psychology and demographic data created world-class brands and billions of dollars in value. At that time, if you didn’t advertise on TV, you lost. Today’s new tools offer a similar choice: Build a deep understanding of your customer, or risk irrelevance.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, porcorex

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Last week, the world’s top brands and agencies descended on the Cannes Lions festival to discuss creativity in modern advertising and to anoint the campaigns that most effectively captured our imaginations. While the conference was renamed this year to the “International Festival of Creativity” (previously the “International Advertising Festival”), it featured an unprecedented amount of participation from blockbuster technology companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

Over the course of the week, the significant relationship between the powerful new forces in technology and the creative output from the advertising industry became quite clear. As the web increasingly empowers us to choose and share the media we care about, brands genuinely commit to creating content and experiences that thrive in our on-demand culture.

Here are five key themes from the conference that point to major changes in the world of advertising.

1. A New Wave of Experiential Marketing

In one of the opening sessions, brand futurist Martin Lindstrom noted,"It's more effective to feel the brand, not to see it." Experiential marketing was prominent at the conference. A number of brands discussed the ways we will use technologies, such as augmented reality apps and near-field communication (data exchanges with touch), to connect with consumers.

Few brands have committed to experiential marketing more than Nike, which has had a 55% drop in television advertising spending over the past 10 years. They filled the void by sponsoring over 200 club teams, offering revolutionary mobile technology for runners and creating over 10,000 pieces of original content.

2. Content, Not Ads

If this conference is any indication, we are about to see an absolute explosion of new types of content from brands. While this process has already begun (especially with online video), we may just be scratching the surface.

No session was more memorable than Coca Cola's, which delivered a compelling presentation on its "Liquid and Linked" content creation strategy. It emphasizes dynamic storytelling to establish multiple connections with people. Coke is vastly increasing its investment in many varieties of content production to help drive conversation and increase its popular culture relevance.

AOL president Tim Armstrong and Huffington Post founder Ariana Huffington also spoke at length about the vital importance of ad content. Former Googler Tim Armstrong addressed the advertiser audience: "Stop taking orders from Silicon Valley." He referenced the importance of creating unique content rather than simply optimizing traditional ads to perform better against technology algorithms. Throughout the conference, it was consistently noted that today's on-demand media consumption habits require brands to create content that people choose to watch (and share), rather than pushing unwanted commercials on its audience.

3. The Shift from Communities to "Collectives"

The "collective" has now begun to replace the "community.” The term refers to the new generation of passionate online groups initiated by brands. This year’s most buzzworthy collective was Sneakerpedia, a Wikipedia-style site powered by Foot Locker, intended to galvanize "sneakerheads" worldwide to document the history of sneakers. The site has built a ton of buzz, a great example of how a brand can create new collectives around topics people are truly passionate about. Additional collectives included Nokia Push Snowboarding and Lady Gaga's fan group "Little Monsters," created by Interscope Records.

4. The Rise of the "Creative Technologist"

Advertisers are ready to build. As advertising becomes increasingly digital, agencies are looking to bring in more developer talent to help them create new, original products. Jeff Benjamin, VP Interactive Creative Director at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, spoke about this transition, calling for "invention" in advertising and noting that "inventors are modern storytellers." The same day, Toronto holding company MDC Partners announced a new $1 million competition for investment in technology-driven projects. Mark Holden, Global Strategy and Planning Director of PHD, noted his future predictions for the advertising industry, that new product development will be essential for the survival of media agencies as media buying becomes increasingly commoditized.

The Domino’s Pizza Tracker, a Crispin website for Domino's, tracks the progress of a pizza delivery — from dough-rolling to delivery.

5. The Gaga Effect

The award for the most overall positive mentions goes to Lady Gaga. The Gaga brand has quickly taken hold globally thanks to the previously listed tactics.

Gaga brand-building tools include the creation of her own collective (dubbed "The Little Monsters,” her fans on Twitter number over 11 million), original content (Gagavision video series leading up to her new album release), gaming experiences (Gagaville allowed users to win song tracks by beating game levels) and product development (working with Polaroid on a new product line). In many ways, Gaga is the epitome of the modern brand, deftly leveraging digital tools to distribute her content and broaden her fan base… and other brands are taking note.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, alengo

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Kraft is launching an online talk show hosted by former Punky Brewster star Soleil Moon Frye, a prominent mommy blogger.

Thirteen Kraft brands, including Jell-O, Mac and Cheese and Chips Ahoy!, will be featured in the series, HerSay, which will tap content and themes discussed by mommy bloggers. Frye, whose blog can be found here, is part of the draw.

The series, which goes live on May 17, will run weekly. Episodes will range from two to four minutes in length. Forty of the 72 episodes will feature Kraft bands. Mark Stewart, vice president of global media services for Kraft, says the show will be promoted across MSN properties and via search ads. The idea was “to be a part of conversations” that moms are having.

Kraft has tried its hand at online talk shows, a format that has yet to catch on with the mainstream. A program called MindBodyBalance featured actress Faith Ford and promoted the company’s Philadelphia cream cheese brand. Another, called You Gotta LOL, which was presented as “a comedy series for and about women,” was sponsored by Miracle Whip.

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Targeting the victims of the next big hangover-inducing holiday, Pepto Bismol has introduced a YouTube app for Cinco de Mayo.

Visitors to Pepto Bismol’s YouTube channel can find a handful of options to make their own “Pinata Smash” video. There are four different pinatas to choose from, two snacks to fill them with and two “smashers.” When the video is completed, users can share it on Facebook or Twitter.

Kristen Stutz, assistant brand manager for Procter & Gamble, says that there will eventually be 15 to 20 iterations of the video. “The idea was not just to provide content, but be able to enage [consumers] with it,” she says.

The effort will be promoted with a YouTube takeover on May 1 and a “Pinata Smash” segment during the Jimmy Kimmel Live! On May 4, an online ad campaign and PR outreach featuring Busy Philipps of Cougar Town.

The program is part of the brand’s marketing overhaul that began last July with the sponsorship of the Nathan’s Famous July Fourth International Hot Dog Eating Contest. Since then, the brand has sought to align itself with other days on the calendar linked to overeating, like Thanksgiving and the Christmas holidays. Cinco de Mayo fits the bill, Stutz says.

Another facet of the plan is a complete reversal of Pepto’s ad spending breakdown. Previously, up to 90% of the brand’s ad budget went to traditional media like TV; now that figure is as low as 10%. Most of the rest goes toward digital media. The company claims that since the switchover, sales have improved.

The brand’s reliance on a YouTube app also illustrates an experimentation among marketers in social media outlets beyond Facebook and Twitter. While YouTube is usually seen as a launchpad for would-be viral videos, few have used it for branding widgets. Likewise, LinkedIn, which has been barely touched by most marketers, is beginning to see some new experimentation as well.

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Actor Danny McBride, in character as Kenny Powers from the HBO show Eastbound and Down, walks in to a boardroom continuing a conversation on his cell phone, “…I don’t expect to be standing in an [expletive] parking lot with my pants around my ankles with a tranny!”

For the next four minutes, McBride/Powers goes on to berate executives from K-Swiss and make a list of demands including a “big-ass trailer” stocked with porn, a tattoo “of a naked Russian chick on my arm.” Next, he floats some ideas for a K-Swiss commercial, including one scenario where he rips off a fighter’s head and dropkicks it out of the ring.

What is this? Is it advertising? A skit? Both? Actually, it’s a hybrid often filed under the broad category of “branded entertainment,” which has drawn top brands and A-list comedic talent together. In recent months, Ford, Denny’s and Juicy Fruit, among others, have tapped well-known comedians and writers to create campaigns that sport a level of wit that is more sophisticated than most mass-market advertising. And, in some cases, the campaigns appear to hitting goals set by the marketers — to create social media chatter and skew the brands younger.

A prime forum for this new type of advertising is Funny Or Die, the website founded by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. Chris Bruss, producer of branded entertainment for the site, says the site produces about 10 to 15 branded entertainment pieces per quarter. The model that the site is using — a sponsorship approach vs. straight-up advertising — is on the rise. According to Internet Advertising Bureau stats released last week, revenues for sponsorships grew 88% in 2010. “Obviously, everyone is gravitating towards doing things online and moving away from traditional media,” Bruss says. “Marketers aren’t just buying some ad units on the site, they’re partnering with us to create content.”

Not surprisingly, others are looking to get in on the action. Earlier this year, actors Jason Bateman and Will Arnett launched DumbDumb, a production company that creates branded entertainment. DumbDumb’s first such effort, Always Open for Denny’s, launched in early March. According to research from YouGov, the series, which features Dave Koechner, Sarah Silverman, Bateman and Arnett, among others, has raised the brand’s profile among 18-34 year-old consumers. YouGov based its findings on a daily online survey of 5,000 people. The scores average positive views of the brand (+100) with negative ones (-100).

Likewise, Ford’s online-only campaign around Doug, an orange puppet, may have contributed to skewing the brand younger, according to the chart below. But the effort, which features Paul Feig, a director for The Office and Freaks and Geeks, and The Simpsons writer Rob Cohen, among others, was primarily designed to get people talking in social media about Ford’s 2012 Focus. Jon Beebe, digital marketing manager for Ford, says the campaign has met that goal. So far, Doug has racked up more than 700,000 views on YouTube and has gotten 19,000 fans on Facebook. “We call him a provocateur,” Beebe says of Doug. “We wanted to get people talking about it and saying ‘Did you see this puppet thing?’”

In each instance, the branded entertainment campaigns are sharper than the TV campaigns you’re likely see from the advertisers. On the other hand, K-Swiss has been so enamored with the foul-mouthed Kenny Powers character that it has featured him in a cleaned-up TV ad. Glenn Cole, co-founder and creative director at 72andSunny, the ad agency behind that campaign, says the brand knows that the character is polarizing. “But to the consumers that matter, Kenny is kind of worshiped.” Thanks to the affiliation, the brand “is in the sports/cultural conversation for the first time since the ’80s,” Cole says.

As proof, K-Swiss vice president of marketing Chris Kyle points out that Footwear News recently listed K-Swiss as the brand with the biggest jump in buzz. “It’s led to a lot of reset thinking as to what K-Swiss is about,” Kyle says. “It gets them talking about a brand they thought they knew.” In this case, a tongue-lashing from the Powers character (given to actors standing in for K-Swiss execs) was a small price to pay.

For a look at some of the other funniest branded entertainment efforts of late, see the video gallery below. Please let us know in the comments if you think this is a smart strategy for these brands and which videos you thought were the funniest.

Note: Many of the videos use NSFW language.

K-Swiss Meeting with Kenny Powers

Danny McBride, in character as Kenny Powers of HBO's Eastbound and Down insults K-Swiss execs and demands porn for his trailer in a meeting hashing out his endorsement deal. This is possibly the most profanity-laden "commercial" ever.

Snoop Dogg vs LL Cool J: The Ultimate Halo Smackdown

The two rap legends go mano a mano in a game of Halo and, for some reason, the guy from Chuck is playing too. So is a Las Vegas legend who makes a cameo at the end.

Jeremy Piven for Hot Wheels

Jeremy Piven plays a nerdy guy who desperately wants to join the Hot Wheels team.

Always Open with David Koechner for Denny's

Dave Koechner and Jason Bateman discuss primal screams vs. sighs in a seemingly improvised dialog.

The Prom Date with Jason Bateman and Will Arnett for Orbit Gum

Orbit Gum has a magical, mystical power in this 5-minute skit featuring Jason Bateman as a dad whose daughter is about to go on a date with a sleazy Will Arnett.

Press Conference: Ford Taps Doug (the Orange Puppet) as 2012 Focus Spokesperson

Ford's new spokesman's affinity for the ladies is evident in this skit, which shows him being introduced in a disastrous press conference.

Serenading Unicorn Serenades Sarah Silverman for Juicy Fruit

Sarah Silverman's unicorn boyfriend seems to be two-timing her, but she doesn't care. Must be the animal magnetism.

Epic Nerf Battle: Life in the Trenches

Two dorks get caught up in a Nerf battle that has consumed all their energies for the last few days. Good thing there's plenty of pizza to go around.

Piranha 3D: For Your Consideration

Pirahna 3D never really had a shot at winning an Oscar, but members of the cast make a case anyway.

What Would Keith Stone Do? for Keystone

Keith Stone, spokesman for Keystone beer, has all the answers for a guy who's considering dumping his girlfriend via text.

Disclosure: Ford is a Mashable sponsor.

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For anyone who doesn’t recall those golden years, this gallery is a fascinating insight into the cellphone technology of yesteryear. Commercials are like windows onto a society’s cultural mores. Here you can catch a glimpse of what was aspirational at the time.

Prepare yourself for some seriously retro tech, some cheesy commercial toons and some just plain awful hair and click through the gallery. Let us know in the comments below which ads are your favorites.

1. Ericsson Commercial

Let's face it. The only reason that woman can hide her humongous phone is because her hair is so big.

2. BT Cellnet Commercial

Ex-Doctor Who Tom Baker sells out, sorry, advertises BT Cellnet phones by comparing them to a Roman amphitheater. We don't really get it either.

3. Radio Shack Commercial

This phone is only "transportable" in the very loosest sense of the word.

4. Nokia Advert

Here, Nokia takes an unusual approach by promoting the cell phone as a high-tech little black book for sleazy yuppies.

5. General Electric Cell Phone Commercial

If you ever wondered why General Electric never made it big in the cell phone market, this advert from 1989 should help shed some light.

6. Motorola Flip Phone Commercial

Motorola's approach to flogging early cell phones was to highlight every single scenario in which such a device might prove useful. We get it already!

7. BT Pagers Advert

This ad is so bad it's good.

8. Centel Commercial

Billed on YouTube as the first cell phone ad, this ghastly video is all aspirational lifestyle and good looking, healthy and affluent people. It apparently didn't do Centel much good in the long run.

9. Qualcomm Commercial

Now this is just plain scary.

10. Motorola DynaTAC Commercial

We leave you with our favorite video of the lot. This informative clip from Motorola brings the news that eventually, "seeing people using cellular phones may seem as commonplace as someone checking time on an electronic watch." Bring on the "cellular revolution!"

Interested in more Retro resources? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover information on your favorite Mashable topics.

More About: advertising, cell phones, gallery, List, Lists, Motorola, Nokia, retro, video, videos, vintage

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