Back in May we had the Bear Sterns bankruptcy sell-off to JP Morgan. This past week it broke that Lehman Brothers was filing for bankruptcy which caused a miserable few days for financial markets. In a move that many feel should have come sooner, the government stepped up and offered a bailout plan for Wall Street with the hefty figure of 700 billion. Yes, billion with a “b”.

In a tough economic time, dollars companies spend on advertising are sure to go down. Where, in times like this, where is it best to put ones money? In your website!

We’re in the midst of a Web 2.0 shift, one in which online communities and connections with users are being formed as opposed to old static sites and pushing content one-way onto the users. Social networks are growing and social media opportunities offer low-cost (and often free) ways to interact with your user-base. Companies now utilize fan pages on Facebook as well as creating Facebook Apps that can integrate into the site itself.

And let’s not forget the mobile web. With the Apple upgrading the iPhone’s data speeds to 3G and opening up the Apps store, there’s a been a flood of mobile web application development. Before the end of the year Google’s Android cellphone operating system will debut and there will be yet another major reason to focus energies on mobile-based websites.

So instead of shelling money out for advertising, focus on your site. Create rich content. Explore social media opportunities. Work on making a iPhone/mobile optimized version of your site. While the economy may be going through some rough times, web based business presence continues to grow and you can flourish if you focus on it.

If you haven’t seen Mad Men, I’d suggest watching it. It’s quite good:

Set in 1960s New York, the sexy, stylized and provocative AMC drama Mad Men follows the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue advertising, an ego-driven world where key players make an art of the sell. via

Clearly, in a show that deals with advertising, you’d expect they’d be creative in their marketing efforts. That’s what it seemed like when the show’s main character, Don Draper, showed up on Twitter posting updates as if he was a real person. Subsequently, other characters began popping up on the service. And then in a knee-jerk act of foolishness, AMC’s lawyers sent a DMCA takedown notice to Twitter and it appeared the jig was up.

Luckily, turns out AMC’s web marketing company, Deep Focus, talked some sense into their client and got them to realize that FREE PROMOTION is not actually a bad thing. Thankfully, their twitter accounts were restored and allowed to continue and fans interact with them daily.

So the moral of the story: instead of being afraid of social media, businesses should embrace it and work on creative ways of interacting with their customer base. Oh hey, did I mention Tridea is on Twitter?

While depositing a clients check over at Tridea’s bank of choice, TCF Bank, I noticed bottles of Ketchup on top of the dividers between teller stations. So I inquired, “Why are these bottles of ketchup here?”

Turns out, the tellers used that as a way to initiate a pitch on “Catching up on home improvements with an equity loan.” I thought it was a unique way to get that first dialogue and pique the customers interest. Just goes to show you, there’s creativity all around if you look for it!

The next resource is a slide show on social media and marketing, and is definitely worth going through for a few minutes:

| View | Upload your own

It really makes you think about how marketers will be successful on the web with its’ users getting smarter by the day.

Aside from being the biggest sporting event on television, the Super Bowl is the one day a year where big brands with very large marketing budgets have to pull out all stops to market themselves. With over 90 million viewers, and an average cost of $2.7 million for a 30 second commercial (in 2008), it is essential that brands get their message across in the most creative way. With so many people talking about their favorite commercials the next day, companies definitely want to be apart of the viewers’ conversation.

Super Bowls Ads is a cool site that archives some of the best Super Bowl commercials from the past few years. Off the top of my head, Bud Light typically has some of the best commercials, not only because they are humorous, because really get the message across of their beer being the best. So I look forward to seeing what they have to offer this year.

I will update this post with some of our favorite tv spots this year, so we look forward to see what others have liked as well. Feel free to link us to some of your favorites as well.

Update: So the Super Bowl has come and gone, and we saw some good commercials. Here were the top ones for me…

Bud Light (my favorite)

Audi R8

Diet Pepsi Max

FedEx