Samsung and Swindon Town F.C. have teamed up to launch a campaign built for football star wannabes. The “Win a Pro Contract” contest scours grassroots communities to find one lucky/talented footballer for a grand prize of a 12-month contract with Swindon Town. Whether you’re top-game on the pitch won’t matter unless you make it on Facebook, because finding grassroots talent might work best with grassroots social networks.

Topshop, the trendy UK fashion retailer, launched an in-store promotion last week in the UK and Ireland (and this week in New York) backed by one of the hottest mobile apps out there: Instagram. Using the uber-cool Instagram photo-sharing app is not a first in the world of retail, but we have to wonder: after TopShop’s effort will it become the app of choice for social-savvy high street brands?

npower Football League launched the ‘Every Shirt Has A Story’ campaign earlier this month to get fans passionate online for a chance to win a range of league prizes just as the season draws to a close. Technically the campaign accomplished its goal, with a respectable number of fans participating in the contest. But in terms of social media engagement, if this campaign came down to a penalty kick, you could say, it was a sour miss. Here’s what went amiss.

PayPal UK launched an effort last week to boost its social media presence through a giveaway contest dangling free iPad 2′s. Its message: love us and we might award you with this must-have baby. Can boosting social followers through bribes be a genuine lure? More importantly, does it work?

Promoted tweets aren’t just for big brands anymore, it’s now becoming clear. StylePage.com, a month-old Silicon Valley based start-up for all things fashion, tapped Twitter to build some launch buzz and pad its community membership as it aims to take on the top names in online fashion. A big challenge for vertical social networks like Stylepage is building a critical mass of users at the outset. Could Twitter get it off the ground?

Millward Brown released its yearly BrandZ report today ranking the world’s most valued brands, down to the penny. While Millward Brown is the trusted source for overall brand valuation, one thing its don’t seem to take into account is a brand’s social valuation. So we did it for them. Yes, what follows is a rejigging of the league table.

Slim-Fast, of all brands, launched a promoted tweet campaign last week in time to capitalize on all the excitement surrounding the Royal Wedding. Its promoted tweet can hardly be called a precision-based advertising scheme; the tweet was directed at anyone interested in William and Kate, which, as we know from the TV networks, is anybody from urbane Brooklynites to Sydney royalists, plus a lot of people in a certain island in the North Atlantic. Did it work?

Volkswagen gave the driving public the first glimpse at the 2012 VW Beetle last week in a launch spearheaded through social media, most notably, through a prominently placed promoted tweet campaign. But despite the hype around the new design and the well-intended social strategy for the launch, the initial results have sputtered out of the gate.

No more standing in line for the bathroom at the annual sprawling music festival. Wrigley 5 Gum launched a Twitter promoted tweet this past weekend to direct fans to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival’s live broadcast on YouTube. The “ChoachellaLive” YouTube stream might be the most advanced integration of social media into live music and sponsorship to date.

President Barack Obama kicked off his 2012 re-election campaign last week on — where else? — Twitter and Facebook signifying the continued importance of social media in the U.S. presidential elections. Obama has plenty of Facebook and Twitter followers ready to back his campaign a second time around. But where the Obama Facebook account works as a source of inspiration for digitally minded politicians, the Obama campaign this time round falls well short of the rousing “Yes we can!” spirit we’ve seen from his camp in the past.