After taking a long, much needed break, I’m excited about starting the new year with new research opportunities. I’ve been collaborating with Yuping Liu, professor of marketing at Old Dominion University, on a research proposal exploring user-generated content (UGC). We’re curious, what makes some UGC more popular than others? We hope that by exploring this we can help organizations better predict market response to UGC. It’s coming together, and rather quickly as the deadline for our proposal is January 15!

In the meantime, I’ll share one video that seemed to get a lot of attention over the holiday season, just what the marketers at JC Penny were aiming for.  According to an article by Karl Greenberg in MediaPost, JC Penny hired Saatchi & Saatchi and digital agency Razorfish to create a viral online campaign promoting diamond jewelry to young consumers. This video definitely made its rounds in my e-mail inbox this holiday season. Though from my personal observation,  it seemed to be a much bigger hit with boomers.