The Cool Kids Sat in the Back

UEG's VP of Brand Strategy, Chris Ebbesen, attended Y Combinator's (YC) first ever Ad Innovation Conference in Mountain View, CA.

The conference promised to introduce the advertising and marketing community to 15 or so YC backed early stage companies that offer the promise of what is to come as advertising and technology become more and more entertwined.

Read more about the companies and what happened at the conference at iMediaConnection, where Chris has written about his experience.

Mean Stinks: Secret Deodorant Sees Engagement (and Sales) Rise

AdAge:

Racking up six- and seven-figure fan counts on Facebook is remarkably commonplace (with more than 100 brands now at a million or more fans and more than 500 with 100,000 so far). Getting fans to ever engage with a brand page again after falling in like with it is much less common.

But Procter & Gamble Co.'s Secret deodorant appears to be having unusual success generating engagement around a "Mean Stinks" program that combats bullying -- one that also appears to be helping brand sales.

Since launching the "Mean Stinks" program, which has also included a publicity tie-in with "Glee's" Amber Riley and an iAd campaign launched last month, Secret's already strong sales growth kicked up a notch. The brand had momentum anyway, with a current streak of 17 consecutive quarters of share growth, according to P&G. Sales are up 8% to around $250 million in channels tracked by SymphonyIRI for the 52 weeks ended July 10, but they're up an even faster 9% for the 26 weeks ended June 26, a period affected by the "Mean Stinks" campaign that launched in January on Facebook. Secret, already the leading U.S. deodorant, saw its share rise 0.6 points for the past 52 weeks and 0.7 points for the first half of 2011.

Agencies working on the campaign include Leo Burnett Co. for advertising, IMC2 for Digital, Marina Maher Communications for PR, UEG for entertainment and iProspect for search.

Read more at AdAge.com