One year ago, we published the inaugural Social Media Sustainability Index, a trawl through 287 major companies in North America and Europe to identify who was using social media tools and thinking to communicate sustainability. At the time we found just 60 companies that were devoting any real time or dedicated resources to that mission.

Fast-forward to the end of 2011 and a new landscape of social media sustainability has emerged. In researching our new report, The SMI-Wizness Social Media Sustainability Index, we identified at least 250 major corporates that are engaged in some form of social media sustainability comms and more than 100 have a blog, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter channel dedicated to talking about sustainability.  Those dedicated 100 form the basis of our new Index.

Even as the volume of social media sustainability content has increased the standout leaders of our Index – GE, IBM, Ford, PepsiCo, BBVA and Allianz – are the same as last year. This we believe is a testament to good social media practice in that none of these leaders consider social media sustainability through the prism of a campaign mentality. Indeed the top companies in our Index all have built upon the editorial platforms and community engagement they had established in 2010.

It also shows demonstrates that companies who are committed to making their business more sustainable – be it through improved energy efficiency, lowering emissions, policing their supply chains, pioneering ethical sourcing and promoting equitable working environments – have a distinct advantage in social media communications. That’s because they have a good and believable story to tell and, good storytelling remains the most valuable currency in social media.

Here are some of the ways the smartest companies are using social media, not just to communicate their sustainability stance, but also to involve the public in building a better world:

• Homage to compelling reportage: Hiring experienced filmmakers, writers and reporters to tell a complicated story well like IBM and Allianz
• Crowdsourcing: Tapping the public for big innovative ideas like General Electric
• Crowdfunding: Enabling collaborative fundraising and donations like BBVA and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank
• Bold alliances: Teaming with established NGOs, charities and conserva- tion watchdogs to support common goals and raise awareness like Levi’s
• Leveraging community: Tasking your massive online following to build a better future through campaigns, contests like PepsiCo
• Platforms not campaigns: Building an ongoing social media sustain- ability communications vehicle like Danone
• Making technology accessible and digestible: Creating content that shows how sustainability technology and initiatives matter to the general public like Philips and Sony
• The wisdom of your crowd: Collaborating with fans to break taboos and challenge the status quo like Kimberly-Clark

These stand out leaders in this year’s Social Media Sustainability Index all have a few things in common. They fully embrace their newfound power to publish and provide useful, regular, transparent and creative content for their social media communities.

It just so happens that we think those qualities are exactly what companies need if they are to succeed in social media communications. And so they form the bedrock of how we have ranked and rated the 100 companies that make the Index.

You can download the entire Index at: http://socialmediainfluence.com/SMI-report/

Do you feel stressed, overworked, unable to manage your time and priorities amid a daily deluge of messages, tweets, updates and Inmails?

No, this isn’t some corny infomercial for a new gadget solution. Instead I’d argue it’s  just a pretty accurate guess of how nearly everyone feels about the social media information overload they battle on any given day.

“Social is running out of hours. Social is also running out of people,” is how Forrester Research CEO George Colony described things this week at LeWeb, and it’s this sense of social media saturation that could yet bring about a  shakeout in existing social networking services, as well as a new chapter of social media innovation to cut through the information chatter and clutter that we’ve all created over the last 10 years.

Cue Twitter’s new redesign, which adds a new level of relevance, navigation and usefulness to its steady stream of oh-so-addictive and oh-so-distracting tweets. Taking a bit from Facebook and a bit from Stumbleupon the new Twitter wants to curate the content clutter that it has helped create.

It’s exactly this goal of decluttering our social online lives that another fledgling social network, Unthink, is promising to achieve….if only it can first convince us to join yet another social network.

YouTube is six years old (you may have heard). Back in 2005 it may have appeared just a faddish destination for quirky, original and occasionally inspired user-generated content but, thanks to the meteoric rise in both its audience and the volume of content being uploaded, this video-sharing site (owned by Google since 2006) has established itself as one of the true mega-media brands.

Today YouTube boasts mindboggling stats: three billion views per day and 48 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. No wonder YouTube is reported to be looking to leverage that clout with a range of new original channels. And no wonder Facebook, AOL and every other online media business is doubling-down on social video.

Behind the raw data, YouTube’s growth has influenced a series of profound changes in the way business and brands communicate online. Here is our opinionated take on the 10 YouTube Videos that have telegraphed those changes. Let us know any major themes we missed (we know you will!)

1, The First You Tube Video – Me at the Zoo, Jawed Karim

The first video on YouTube was uploaded at 8:27PM on Saturday April 23rd, 2005 by one of the site’s co-founders. It’s only 19 seconds long and hardly portended the shoot-cut-and publish revolution it would inspire but today it is a piece of online history.

2, I Want My MT…YT  – Baby, Justin Bieber

It took the music industry a while to catch on to the power of YouTube (like that should surprise anyone). However by 2008, the labels were beginning to grasp that people like watching music videos online and Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend proved the point with 103 million page views. Today, music videos dominate YouTube’s most-watched lists with Eminem, Rhianna and, of course, Justin Bieber ruling the roost. The boy wonder’s Baby, now clocking over half a billion views, suggests there might yet be a sustainable business model for both the music industry and YouTube.

3, The longevity of content – Evolution of Dance

It’s often said that all content has a half-life on the Internet – it never disappears and, indeed, often can experience a rebirth of interest. If you’re a major brand with cringeworthy homemade content then that’s not a good thing. However, if you’re a smart academic and storyteller like Mike Wesch (Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us) or a performer/comedian with a funny routine like Judson Laipply, the incremental engagement YouTube offers can keep one smart piece of content in the public eye far longer than any major brand campaign.

4, A new platform for brand statements

Singing and dancing flash mobs, rollerblading babies, homepage takeovers, create your own video ad. There isn’t a creative agency trick in the book that hasn’t been employed by brands to grab and retain the attention of social media audiences. Indeed, YouTube is one of the few social media platforms where overt brand placement and advertising seems to have been embraced by the community rather than alienated it. So it’s a touch ironic then that one of YouTube’s first product placement videos was also one of the most subtle. Take a few minutes to revisit Where the Hell is Matt? and note the Stride Gum promo quietly added at the end.

5, The video game industry’s best friend?

Gamers have long enjoyed sharing their high scores and next level tips on blogs and message boards. YouTube provided the platform not just to tell but to show how good they were. Likewise video game makers seized the chance to promote their new releases on the platform via elaborate animated trailers as gaming achieved a cultural clout once reserved for the movie industry, as this 8 bit trip homage suggests. Perhaps its fitting then that the first 10 mini clips of Angry Birds, first a game and now a growing multi-media empire, have been viewed nearly 100 million times.

Have you registered for the Social Media Influence 2011 conference? There are just 20 places remaining.

6, The end and beginning of political campaigns as we know them

It’s part of political folklore that the success of the 2008 Obama presidential campaign was due to its social media community mobilization. In fact the Obama election social media case study has been used so many times by consultants and planners to justify more social media brand campaigns that it always makes you glad we’re entering a new campaigning cycle (almost). But amid the the glorification of the grassroots mobilization through Facebook, we shouldn’t forget the Obama Girl “Crush on Obama” YouTube video that jump-started huge social media interest in the candidate. Of course, after the countless copycat and reply videos Obama Girl spawned, we’re not in a rush to see this campaigning trend repeated.

7, The video that changed digital activism – Greenpeace (Dove) Onslaughter

It’s impossible to make the case that a single video, aired on YouTube, changed corporate culture at one of the world’s largest companies. After all, decision making and strategy within multinationals tends to be implemented at the pace of a turning supertanker whereas activist campaigns like to operate at the breakneck speed of the Zodiac outboard launches favoured by the likes of Greenpeace. But in creating the Dove Onslaughter video back in 2007, Greenpeace certainly gave a very strong nudge to Unilever that, as the world’s largest purchaser of palm oil, the company had a responsibility to ensure its supply chain was not destroying wildlife and forest habitat.

Fast forward four years and, not only did the Dove campaign provide Greenpeace with a social media playbook for increasingly high-profile campaigns against a host of multinationals, but Unilever has put in process a commitment to sustainability that could prove to be a blueprint for all other major corporations. If a You Tube video, now with nearly 1.5 million views, played a part in that transformation then that would be notable indeed.

8, When YouTube makes the penny drop for companies – Big Mac Rap

Over the past six years there have been myriad examples of brands that have been shocked and caught off-guard by guerrilla social media content. Yet for every social media disaster there also have been plenty of pointers to social media’s huge potential in harnessing brand loyalty. Nowadays most major brands are trying to cultivate community through their own content but it was accidental viral hits like the Big Mac Rap (released in 2006) that showed brands that losing control of the message wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

9, Thanks for the “meme”ories

Richard Dawkins may have coined the term “meme” back in 1976 and that Dancing Baby may have made it onto Ally McBeal but it took the social media revolution and the visualization of YouTube to give the cultural pass and replicate trend a real creative outlet. How else to explain thousands upon thousands of LOL cat videos, children doing the strangest things and Rick Rollin? We bet when “Charlie Bit My Finger” hit 300 million views most media pros didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

10, Stars of the other small screen

The short life of YouTube has produced a large number of homegrown and, in the case of agoraphobic pop singer Jemma Pixie Hixon, stay-at-home video stars. Today, 15 minutes of fame may only take a few minutes to upload, just as YouTube pundit, Phillip DeFranco, make up tipster Michelle Phan (68 million channel views), and, of course both derided and applauded pop wannabe Rebecca Black. Many big brands have capitalised on this virtual success (Phan is now a spokesperson for Lancome) but it’s the smaller brands who have seized the medium to tell their own stories that point to the true value of social media storytelling. Palladium Boots and Inspired Bicycles are two of our favourite new digital storytellers but for pure YouTube chutzpah in showing just what creating your own narrative can achieve, it’s difficult to beat Blendtec’s Will It Blend series.

We’ve added a presentation on Slideshare if you want to download and share.

Last year Ford put its Fiesta brand in the hands of America’s drivers to help tell the real story behind the car. This year the company has placed its social media faith in an orange sock puppet called Doug.

Doug isn’t your normal benign company spokesperson. He’s full of attitude and kinda funny, or kinda obnoxious depending on your point of view. In the official launch “episode” of what Ford hopes will become a must-watch-and-share set of video snacks, Doug was unveiled to the media and revealed himself to be a bit of a lady’s man – as he might put it – or just downright misogynistic as anxious Ford “execs” described his performance. Subsequent YouTube skits have shown Doug getting to grips with the features of the Focus while also trying to get to grips with the female Ford employee demonstrating them.

What’s going on here? Cynics might say that Ford has run out of crowd-sourced, tap-into-real-people social media ideas and so an irascible puppet is the next logical step away from those old-school sweeping Canyonlands “real American” TV adverts.

But in the annals of adland, Ford is following a well-rehearsed script of using sock puppet power to help add spice to a brand. Puppets, after all, allow brands to get away with stuff no actual human brand representative could try. Imagine a real actor trying to be as louche as Doug. It just wouldn’t work for a brand. Ford also understands that social media affords brands multiple opportunities for experimentation/edgy engagement with customers. Doug’s behavior could be alienating on TV but in the back-and-forth banter of social media conversation it is likely to be embraced and shared just as much as it is criticized or ignored.

So, can Doug achieve media greatness in the fickle world of social media marketing? Or will he end up on the scrap heap of failed puppet props? Here are 10 puppet brand ambassadors that could teach him a few tricks:

1, Wilkins Coffee pre-Muppet moment

Some say Jim Henson’s Wikins puppet character, created in 1958 to hawk an eponymous coffee brand, was the inspiration for Kermit. We think Doug might also be taking inspiration from this granddaddy or brand puppets.

2, Basil Brush’s Haze

A generation of Brit kids grew up watching Basil Brush, remembered for his rapid-fire patter (he could have been scripted by Aaron Sorkin) and his famous “Boom Boom” punchline. Appearing for a air freshener was not his finest moment.

3, Muppets snap a Polaroid

In the early 1980s the Muppets were at the height of their power, and Polaroid film too and instant cameras were still cutting-edge. A rare case where a puppet dynasty has outlasted the product it was promoting.

4, Flat Eric ‘s Levis fame

Flat Eric was adapted (or adopted) in 1999 from a French music video and refitted to help sell Levis’ Sta-Prest jeans. He became an instant cult classic and even starred in the UK version of The Office.

5, Pets.com get Superbowl ring

For one year, the Pets.com sock puppet shone more brightly than any branded puppet had shone before. The first puppet to have its own Super Bowl ad (complete with the instantly recognizable punchline, “Because Pets can’t Drive!), the puppet also scored interviews with Good Morning America and had its own Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Pets.com flamed out in the dot-com crash. But the sock puppet lived on as the brand advocate for auto loan firm Bar None.

6, Kermit makes a Ford Escape

The greenest of all muppets probably struck ad execs as a smart puppet choice to front this 2006 Ford Escape hybrid advert. Alas Kermit’s fronting for an SUV was dismissed as greenwashing. He was on safer ground with Jessica Simpson talking green pepper toppings for Pizza Hut.

7, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James Most Valuable Puppets for Nike

The puppet recreation of the Kobe/LeBron rivalry was an instant online and offline hit for Nike. It spawned a whole series of videos as well as a merchandise range.

8, Zappos makes puppets of its employees

Social media darling Zappos chose a novel approach for its first TV ad. It recreated its customer service employees as Avenue Q-style puppets, or zappets, as the brand called them. The scripts were actual customer service conversations to show how politely Zappos handles even the zaniest of requests.

9, Thunderbirds are “Go!” for SpecSavers

Those of us in our 40s normally reach a point when we need glasses, so what better way to appeal to this nostalgic demographic than through cult TV characters from our youth? Hence the return of Gerry Anderson creations, The Thunderbirds and Joe 90 in this British SpecSavers ad.

10, Eminem sucks a Lipton Brisk Ice-Tea

Another Super Bowl another puppet, but this time the Pets.com mantle is stolen by Eminem. The dog was funnier.

Content, you may have heard, is king again. And curated content at that. After half a decade’s dalliance with crowdsourcing, user-generated content and giving up “control” brands once more have realized they have a responsibility and a right to tell their own stories.

There’s just one problem. In those five or six years the rules of brand engagement changed and, for the most part, brand and PR managers along with the agencies they retain to help “tell their story” have little idea how to create editorial content in a social media culture that craves 24-7 information instead of the occasional disruption of an advertising or PR campaign.

Register now for our next Think Like an Editor workshop

At this very moment a legion of brand managers are scratching their collective heads wondering what they should be doing with their Facebook page and Twitter feed. The smart ones understand that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr et al are pure publishing platforms albeit with different levels of conversational feedback. And brands as diverse as Club Monaco, Nokia, Allstate and IBM have taken the plunge into producing “social media editorial” — regular content via an online magazine, blog network or even video documentary aimed at demonstrating to their customers that, yes, they really can be interesting, informative and useful.

But while social media editorial publishing is a smart strategy in a digital world where every company is a media company it also takes brand communications into somewhat murkier territory. This has became clear in our “Think Like an Editor” workshops where we try and instill some of the experience we’ve learned as journalists into this new vogue of corporate storytelling. Sure we can teach companies the basics of good storytelling but how, for example, can you as a brand convince your audience that you are being authentic, trustworthy and credible?

Good journalists strive to achieve that through understanding the rules of “fair use,” attribution and libel as well as checking their facts and properly sourcing their research. Most of the time they learn those skills the hard way — on deadline and being challenged by their peers. My own education came many years ago at the coal face of the Village Voice, where, as an editor, I would negotiate deadline detente between the paper’s reporters and its libel lawyers. It could be intimidating but it drilled into me the utmost respect for getting the story right.

OK, so most brands probably won’t be creating the same fact-checking headaches that the Village Voice managed every single week back in the early 1990s but then who would have imagined that a software company like McAfee would make a documentary about identity fraud?

The more brands become publishers, and the more they seek to have a dialogue and win the trust of the public through their content the more responsibility they will have to assume. Once that responsibility sat with custom publishers. But increasingly brands want to tell their own stories rather than outsource all editorial voice to an outside publisher or agency. The recent social media faux pas committed by Kenneth Cole and Nestle before it hint at just the sort of problems brands may face as they increase their role as publishers.

Learning to tell a good story takes time but at least it can be done through a process of creative experimentation. Developing an authentic voice, getting your facts right, and retaining the respect of your audience is a much longer learning curve.

The news that both Facebook and LinkedIn are preparing to take their shares public has created a froth of both investor and media excitement. Facebook’s projected $50 billion valuation would be more than Starbucks and Dell. Combined! And the head-scratching headlines don’t end there. Groupon easily raised $950 million earlier this week on the back of a business model – group-buying – that cost Paul Allen millions in the late ’90s. Remember Mercata, anyone?

With these billion-dollar-plus dot-com valuations once again the talk of the town it didn’t take long for our internal alarm bells to start ringing. So we decided to take a trip back through time to see if history can teach us anything about the current social media investment frenzy. What we found through the maturation of many social media technologies and sectors  was a four-part process. First step is the promise of first mover status. Next comes the media embrace of the rival – oftentimes, a bigger, better funded challenger – that can often feel like strangulation. Given enough time, what emerges is a true innovator that helps cement real market dominance and grows the sector. But, as with so many tech stories, there always is a future shock waiting just around the corner.

Blogger, LiveJournal, MySpace, Mercata, Picasa, Friendster and even Walmart are part of the historical narrative we ended up sketching.

You can see the whole story on the presentation.

Do The Green Thing founder Andy Hobsbawm stole the show at our recent SMI10 conference with a talk on creativity and its crucial role in building social media community and currency.

He framed his talk by drawing on the experiences of Do The Green Thing, a very smart (and very creative) sustainability movement co-founded by Andy.

Here is another look at Andy’s presentation. We’ll link to the video of his talk when we publish it on our site later this week.

The news earlier this week that Starbucks will start providing free WiFi in the majority of its U.S. stores has been portrayed by in some quarters as a competitive countermeasure to McDonald’s free WiFi initiative.

But another view of Starbucks’ new “bums on seats” ploy (alongside the launch of a new instore digital information network featuring content from iTunes, The New York Times and Zagat) is that the Seattle coffee company is taking a further step in listening to its customers and seeking to reconnect with them after a period in the early part of this decade when, by its own admission, it had begun to lose touch.

Ever since CEO Howard Schultz took back direct control of the company in 2008, Starbucks has demonstrated a sharp focus on social media initiatives that are recognised as best practice in the burgeoning social media sector. As Alexandra Wheeler, Digital Director for Starbucks explains, reconnecting with customers through social media became a priority at Starbucks. Embracing social media lets us “hear our customers in a way we hadn’t before. When you grow to the scale of our size hearing becomes more challenging,” she says.

Central to Starbucks dedication to customer engagement is MyStarbucksIdea. It launched a little over two years ago and embraced the principle that creating a special online network for Starbucks’ customers to share their likes and dislikes about the coffee chain would not only give customer service a barometer of online opinion but that the company could both learn and act on customer suggestions. The company established a rating system where customers would vote on what ideas they thought were really important and each month the top-rated ones were taken for consideration Starbucks executive team.

Though sometimes dismissed as a PR smokescreen in some parts of the media and social mediasphere, Wheeler insists that the success of MyStarbucksIdea speaks for itself. She notes that some 70 customer-generated ideas have now been embraced by the company even if some ideas take long to be acknowledged than other – free WiFi in stores has been one of the most requested initiatives by Starbucks customers.

A project as bold as MyStarbucksIdea only gets greenlighted if it has executive level buy-in. “It started at the top with Howard [Schultz] working with myself and Chris Bruzzo [VP of Marketing] to bring it to fruition.” But for Starbuck’s flagship social media experiment to have real value and not just be a PR stunt, the company had to involve all the relevant parts of the operation. That meant winning over the entire leadership team and impressing on them that by committing resources and people to MyStarbucksIdea – whether they were from customer service, marketing, R&D or even supply chain management – social media was going to make Starbucks stronger.

In short, if Starbucks announced it cared about customer ideas then it had to have the right people to respond to those ideas. “We had those in charge of espresso beverages listening to espresso ideas. Everyone had to be relevant engaging in the conversation,” says Wheeler.

It wasn’t an immediate lovefest. Some parts of the organisation took more convincing than others that customer insight offered a path to a better business. The leadership social media message took some “reinforcement” says Wheeler but slowly it permeated through Starbucks partners (as they call their employees). Today, Starbucks also has a highly active Twitter engagement programme and is at the forefront of geolocation social commerce, partnering with current media darling Foursquare. Two years on from the launch of MyStarbucksIdea, the company has six people in the U.S. involved full or part-time in community engagement and 50 people on a part-time basis working on MyStarbucksIdea.

For Wheeler it’s the combination of understanding that social is embedded in the roots of a coffee house experience married with the potential social tools bring for meaningful customer interaction that keeps her and company committed to social media. Most important though, she says, is understanding that social media allows the company to demonstrate its commitment to its community. “We have incredibly passionate customers who want to engage and this is precious. Our responsibility is to look after that relationship and honor it.”

Alexandra Wheeler, Digital Director of Starbucks will be speaking at Social Media Influence conference on June 22. There’s just a few tickets left so register today.

If there were ever any doubt that social media had come of age the upcoming World Cup in South Africa looks like banishing those doubts once and for all. All of the official World Cup sponsors (and a host of non-official ones as well) have been busy working on their killa apps and their connect-the-world viral capabilities while also looking to push the boundaries of Facebook’s design and functionality to connect with the global social media audience.

So how are they faring? In theory applying social media marketing to the World Cup should be like tapping in from five yards while the goalie has his shirt pulled over his head. After all we know that social media audiences crave both information and entertainment online. Yet social media is a fickle medium and there’s just as much chance that some of these massive campaigns will score an own goal.

Here then is the Social Media Influence guide to the World Cup official sponsors’ social media campaigns and how we think they might fare if there was a trophy for social media success.

McDonald’s

World Cup Pedigree – A relative late-comer to the beautiful game, McDonalds has been a sponsor ever since the 1994 tournament was hosted by the U.S.

How They’ll Play -  McD’s seem to be employing a social media catennaccio, keeping its creativity – in the form of an online fans fantasy tournament – locked behind the chained defense of FIFA’s own site.

Team Balance – They’ve packed the defensive but still huge holes appear. Fantasy football is about sharing and comparing but where’s the Facebook, MySpace or Twitter shareability?

Star Striker - Does Sepp Blatter count?

Social Media Success – Could be the New Zealand of South Africa 2010. Won’t make the knockout stages.

Powerade

World Cup Pedigree – First time appearance at the world’s biggest sporting event but can draw on managerial experience of parent company Coca-Cola. “Chosen by FIFA to hydrate 2010 World Cup players” goes the slogan.

How They’ll Play – Relying on science and tactics, Powerade has produced 16 mini videos within a greater YouTube video that illustrate, well, we’re not sure really but you can be sure some creative team is loving it.

Team Balance – Depending on the playmaking strengths of the YouTube channel with support from Facebook, viral videos and banners

Star Power – The creative director who got this commissioned.

Social Media Success – The Scotland of Social Media. Lacking big match temperament.

Visa – Go Fans

World Cup Pedigree – Visa have been there before but this is the first time they’ve unveiled a social media match planner. Luckily for them they’ve had some previous big event success at the Olympics (Go World) and have been trialing the Go Fans network in Latin America since 2009.

How They’ll Play – Look for a tightly controlled game plan executed through Facebook’s fan base. If Visa’s game planner – complete with ability to share with friends and leave match related comments – scores in terms of fun and functionality then following major team competitions may never be the same.

Team Balance – Go Fans will be supported by TV, print and out of home promotions but there’s no doubting Visa is banking on the lone Facebook “striker” to deliver.

Star Striker – You the fans

Social Media Success – Cool idea but will fans embrace it being packaged by Visa? Set for a shock second round departure.

Continental

World Cup Pedigree – This is the second trip to the finals for the German tyre maker.

How They’ll Play – Easy on the eye but perhaps lacking the squad depth of Adidas and Coca-Cola. Continental’s social media play is a creative and fun Facebook football kicking game called ContiTireKick that you can share with friends. Winners go to the World Cup Final.

Team Balance – Facebook-only campaigns are appealing for their prospective global reach but marketers should be careful about putting all their eggs in one social media basket. So far the ContiTireKick page has just 5,700 fans and there are some mutterings on the page that cheating is taking place.

Star Striker – Office workers with a lot of time on their hands. Hey, if Google Pacman can do it….

Social Media Success – England-like potential. A quarterfinal spot nothing more.

Adidas – Fast vs Fast

World Cup Pedigree – The Germany of sponsors (apart from being German of course), Adidas has been a dominating presence at World Cups since 1954.

How They’ll Play – A traditional, no nonsense tactical approach. Adidas is relying on a big budget TV ad  titled Fast vs Fast to sell the new F50 adizero boot and spark social media conversation.

Social Media Balance – The big TV play belies a conservative approach but Adidas also demonstrates some social media skill by launching the ad on Facebook and YouTube and adding a series of online only Q&As with the top players like Kaka and Michael Ballack.

Star Striker – Messi, Villa and Zidane make for a speedy and firepower-packed attack in this ad.

Social Media Success – Never write off the Germans! Surefire semifinalists.

Coca-Cola

World Cup Pedigree – A mainstay at El Mundial ever since 1974.

How They’ll Play – With expressive flair. Coca-Cola has taken inspiration from Roger Milla’s 1990 corner flag dance to exhort the world to upload their own unique celebrations on to YouTube. Part competition, part Funniest Home Movies, the winner of the Longest Celebration heads to the World Cup. Wonder if Robbie Fowler will be entering?

Team Balance - Boasting one of the most balanced social media starting lineups Coca-Cola can call on the support of a huge Facebook following (5.5 million) and a well-drilled Twitter feed.

Star Striker – Roger Milla of course.

Social Media Success – Who’d bet against a global competition where people upload silly videos of themselves celebrating.  Finalist.

Budweiser – The Bud House/Bud United

World Cup Pedigree – First sponsored at Mexico 1986.

How They’ll Play – Taking social media campaign creativity to a new level, Budweiser, as part of its Bud United movement, first held a global audition via YouTube to find 32 fans from respective World Cup countries who will live together in South Africa a la Real World for the duration of the tournament. Once the Cup kicks off Bud will create a YouTube reality show documenting the fans as they play out their rivalries en masse. As their team is eliminated so the house member will be kicked out. The two final fans will go to the World Cup final and the winner will present the Budweiser man of the match trophy to the best player.

Team Balance – All-out attack, Budweiser is looking to leverage the broadcast potential of YouTube in a way not seen before. Bud will be looking to Facebook to play a supporting role.

Star Striker – Just a hunch but in a Facebook/YouTube popularity contest Beate from Germany is going to do well.

Social Media Success – Could go all the way.

Editor’s Note: Want to learn more about social media best practice? Join our LinkedIn Group and enjoy a great discount on attending the Social Media Conference, June 22.

Amid the recent rash of Pampers diapers social media stories a new conversational project by rival brand Huggies has got somewhat lost in the mix. Which is a shame because while Pampers has demonstrated the need to listen and adapt to customer conversations in response to a crisis Huggies is embracing social media research, community building and collaboration in a manner that demonstrates social media’s positive potential rather than its liability.

Here’s what you may have missed: Huggies recently launched the MomInspired Grant Program that will fund entrepreneurial mothers across the U.S. to help get their child care business ideas off the ground. Kimberly Clark, Huggies parent company, is offering a total of $250,000 in grant money with up to $15,000 for each individual idea. In order to be considered for a grant, mothers must submit an application online by June 9, outlining “a unique baby or child care product idea that addresses an unmet parenting need,” according to the company’s press release. The program is explained through a dedicated microsite and community word is being spread through Facebook and Twitter.

Now, on first blush, this might seem a somewhat strange campaign for a diaper brand. After all, based on the traditional history of baby products marketing, you’d more likely expect Huggies to be running some sort of “send us your cutest baby photos” Facebook competition. What’s Huggies thinking by omitting cute babies and focusing on overworked, stressed out moms? Even Evian knows that babies sell product.

The answer says Steve Paljieg, senior director of growth and innovation at Kimberly Clark, is that Huggies has been doing a lot of listening to and talking with their target audience – the moms who buy their products. The particular reason? Kimberly Clark is on a mission to innovate its product line. “We do a five year business cycle and we’ve identified innovation that takes us beyond the core – diapers and wipes – into something new that defines us a baby care brand,” says Paljieg. Part of the research involved talking to online mommy influencers, one of who just happened to be Maria Bailey, a former Fortune 100 executive, founder of BlueSuitMom.com and a mother of four. “Maria is at the hub of a social media environment where moms are innovating with their own businesses,” says Paljieg. That insight, combined with an interest in the way the Silicon Valley venture capital market sourced innovation, convinced him that Huggies could both inspire its target market and foster its own innovation by working to enable entrepreneurial moms across the country.

The more research Paljieg and his team did the more they learned about the challenges that this small but influential sector of moms faced. He cites research conducted by Babson College showing that even though women in the United States are credited with starting businesses at nearly twice the rate of men, only about three percent of these female businesses get VC funding. Building on that research Huggies then commissioned its own study of moms and found that the toughest challenge faced by those who wanted to start their own business was access to capital and financial resources. These moms didn’t need VC-level funding. Most said what they really needed was small seed/start up money along with mentorship.

And so the MomInspired project was born. Moms can submit “innovative and viable business and product ideas for pre-natal care up to 6 years of age, designed to help make life easier for parents so they can better enjoy everyday moments with their little ones,” and Kimberly Clark will choose the ideas they think are most commercially viable the provide the seed money to get them going. This isn’t a one-off commitment insists Paljieg. “We want to form a relationship with these moms and watch their businesses grow. This is the VC model that we try and stay around as the ideas develop. We’re doing it to make their dreams come true but also to benefit.”

What the combined scientific and engineering brains in Kimberly Clark’s R&D division make of this customer open sourcing is anyone’s guess but Paljieg insists that a good idea won’t be looked down on where ever it comes from. He points out that the company’s chief marketing office Tony Palmer has responsibility over all the company’s innovation and so the silo mentality that often restricts social media insights to the marketing or PR team when they could have greater value within the whole company won’t damage the MomInspired project. He notes that there is an “incredible amount of openness in R&D and our innovation.”

Still, realistically, what is the chance that any of the ideas Kimberly Clark funds will succeed? Anyone involved in small business understands the risk of failure are high and the chances of successfully bringing a new product/invention to market notoriously slim – isn’t that why companies like Kimberly Clark spend millions upon millions on research and development?

Yet even if just a fraction of Huggies’ target community actually engage with this initiative, and even if the entrepreneurial chance of success seems improbable the project probably will be considered a success. That’s because (as its name suggests) this campaign has as much to do with demonstrating Huggies’ commitment to working moms as it does funding the next cool babycare product. “I hope [all the moms out there] experience the recognition that they themselves are inventive so that they think ‘maybe I can’t participate but isn’t this cool what Huggies is doing,” say Paljieg.

For Huggies, it seems, social media rather than necessity may prove be the mother of invention.