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Coca-Cola’s popular holiday mascots, the polar bears, will soon be selling soda to consumers around the world. For nearly a century, those big white salesbears have been charming us with six packs of celebration, and this year they’ve got a real treat for U.S. consumers. Wrapped up in a complex square of black-and-white code is a free iPad and trip for two to the Arctic. Oh, and a nice little donation to the World Wildlife Fund.

Incredibly, Coca-Cola is launching its first-ever QR code campaign this holiday season (and running through March 2012). Millions of coded cups, distributed by 7-Eleven exclusively, will enable users to download the iPhone and iPad app, Snowball Effect by Coca-Cola. This Facebook-connected game enables users to rack up points and win one of 80 iPads and the Arctic adventure. The app links users to Coca-Cola Arctic Home, a site that takes donations to WWF’s work in conserving the bears’ arctic habitat. The beverage behemoth has already donated $2 million and will match user donations up to $1 million.

Scanbuy, the producer of the code-enabled drinkware, ran a QR code program for Taco Bell in August 2011 — thought to be one of the first QR code campaigns in the fast food category. That particular program connected consumers to Taco Bell–sponsored MTV content. McDonald’s has also used QR codes in non-U.S. markets. Results of a comScore survey released this summer noted that 14 million people in the U.S. scanned QR codes in June alone. This could be great news for polar bears around the world.

We’ve been crowdsourcing everything from the clothes we wear to the logos sewn onto those clothes, so it’s about time we have the ability to put our salty snacks through the same rigorous process of popularity and pop-science. The fine folks making Terra Chips — at least the fine European folks — are doing just that.

Head over to Kreator and start putting together your “dream chip.” Ingredients, from soy sauce to smoke flavor, bananas to beer, appear on-screen in row upon row of images. Hover over your choice and the name quickly appears; click and you’re asked just how much you’d like to add (you choose from three different “amount” settings). Repeat this process to include up to five “flavors” and you’ve just created your own custom chip. But you’re not done yet.

After you hit the “create” button, you’re now on the serious side of the snack-crafting business. This is where they separate the weekend warriors from the chip masters. This is where you tap out your personal info, agree to the terms and conditions, and step into the ring. You’re chip crowdsourcing now as your creation heads into a gallery of contenders.

Of course, savvy snack-makers will also choose to share their new chip with Facebook friends, ensuring the votes they’ll need to move their flavor-packed snack to the top of the roster.

It’s still to be seen if the same can said of Terra Chips. Will this crowdsourcing-plus-social application get consumers excited about beet and carrot chips? Let the voting begin.

Bit.ly, the URL shortener service, recently surveyed links shared on social networks to determine the “life span” of links. As it turns out links shared on Twitter lasted only half as long as links shared on YouTube.

How did the researchers measure the longevity of (shortened) links? They looked at their half-lives — “the amount of time at which this link will receive half of the clicks it will ever receive after it’s reached its peak.” Auditing 1,000 popular bit.ly links, they found links posted on Twitter have the shortest half-life of any social network at 2.8 hours; Facebook links clock in at 3.2 hours and YouTube links sustain at 7.4 hours.

Hilary Mason, chief scientist at bit.ly, noted “Many links last a lot less than 2 hours; other more sticky links last longer than 11 hours over all the referrers. This leads us to believe that the lifespan of your link is connected more to what content it points to than on where you post it.”

While links might get a slight edge when posted on Facebook versus Twitter, it is the (perceived) quality of the content that has the greatest effect on how long it will stay in rotation. And if what you share is likely more important than where you share it how will that effect your next social media initiative and how best can you posit and place your links?

Here’s bit.ly’s Hilary Mason at Strata 2011, speaking on ” What Data Tells Us.”

You know something’s gone mainstream when USA Today runs a piece, and food trucks are no exception. Foodies have known this for a long time. You know something’s hot when there are apps on virtually every platform, and apps for locating food trucks are also no exception. Tech savvy foodies know this as well.

The most recent addition to the collection of food truck–locating apps was developed by The Barbarian Group for the Android OS. Gastrodamus, a free app for iPhone and Android, is also uniquely built to aggregate Twitter content. Unlike other apps that rely on self/consumer reporting or GPS, the digital agency’s creation lists trucks and locations based on Twitter mentions. No location, no listing.

Developed as a side-project-in-progress — and taking recommendations for more food trucks — there are some obvious hiccups. The “nearby” functionality is glitchy and some vendors don’t show up as expected. The fact that the app is tracking and collecting specific content may have something to contribute to the less-than-perfect user experience, but should this app’s popularity pick up we may see that vendors and fans alike optimize their tweets, ensuring inclusion in each day’s display of not-to-be-missed locales.

Here are some of the mobile apps built to connect the hungry with local food trucks. Take a look. Is your favorite on the short-list? Could your agency design and develop something better for you and your famished colleagues?

Food Truck Fiesta

Eat St.

Roaming Hunger

Road Stoves GPS

TruxMap Lite Food Truck Map

Rob Gatto, CEO of Pointroll (provider of digital marketing services for interactive advertising), recently posted an article on Ad Age’s Digital Next titled “It’s Not the Size, It’s How You Use It.” Provocative title? Yes, but perhaps not in the way that first comes to mind. If you’ve been tasked with creating effective online display ads you know that it’s not easy to break through the on-page chaos of content, advertising, lists of “relevant” links and enough visual noise to make even the most driven user to click off and away. How you use the space you’ve been “given” is the ultimate challenge.

Or is it?

Gatto goes on to support his title with this bold statement: “Putting the Creativity Back Into Online Display Advertising.” He asks us to consider that it’s not the size at all, but the stuff inside the IAB approved pixel width and height. Maybe you’ve been schooled to believe — and to create toward — the concept that online display and disruption don’t play well together. Studies have shown that synergy between on-page content and display ad content, and by that I’m referring to look-and-feel or “creative,” increases the click-through of these ads. So what are we to do when challenged with injecting our work with creativity? Well, the author’s got an answer for that too.

He suggests that new ad formats might be well and good in engaging users and improving the user experience but size is not the solution. He insists on “a resurgence of creative.” And in his insistence he indicates what that might look like, using four broad categories where creativity can, and must, have a place in redefining what is possible with online display advertising. See if you don’t agree.

Redefine Creative for Digital Advertising
As the digital landscape evolves from a small number of circumscribed touchpoints to a more fluid experience across devices, locations, and activities, campaigns must shift their focus from platforms and formats to people: finding the right audience wherever it may be, and delivering creative that audiences will respond to.

Engage Consumers with Dynamic, Interactive Creative
Invite consumers into an ongoing brand relationship that both fits their current context and experience, and actually adds value to one or both.

Measure, Optimize, Repeat
As campaigns span platforms, so must our approach to marrying creativity with analytics. Constant technological and creative innovation is key.

Make an Impression
With so many ways to understand and target audiences, so many ways to reach them, and so many ways to channel our creative energy from mobile and tablet to social to out-of-home, we have an unprecedented opportunity to put our creativity to use in service of the brands we represent.

Bizo, a business-to-business ad targeting platform, recently released data that highlights who in the business world is most inclined to take action when presented with an online ad. With access to third-party certified demographic data on more than 85 million business professionals online, Bizo found that those working in the Legal, Retail, and Software industries were most likely to do what an online ad asks them to do, while people working in Operations, Legal, or Sales roles lead the pack from a job function perspective.

Bizo gathers and organizes vast amounts of non-personally identifiable business demographic information (e.g., industry, job function, company size, seniority). The company tracks conversion objectives or “actions” (e.g., white paper downloads, free trial sign-ups, online purchases) across the hundreds of targeted display campaigns it supports so it is able to get a rich, aggregate view of the demographic profile of business professionals that are most inclined to take action against an ad.

Ready for Action: Top 10 Industries and Job Functions

Based on campaigns run over a 12-month period across the 85 million business professionals currently in the Bizo network, the data showed the business audiences most likely to take action against a display ad as well as their Action Rate Index (ARI) ranking.

Top 10 industry segments included:

1. Legal (ARI: 223 percent)
2. Retail (ARI: 192 percent)
3. Software (ARI: 185 percent)
4. Media Publishing(ARI: 184 percent)
5. Wholesalers(ARI: 157 percent)
6. Telecommunications (ARI: 121 percent)
7. Hospitality/Hotels (ARI: 116 percent)
8. Real Estate(ARI: 108 percent)
9. Business Services (ARI: 108 percent)
10. Consumer Services (ARI: 107 percent)

Top 10 job functions included:

1. Legal (ARI: 257 percent)
2. Operations (ARI: 218 percent)
3. Consultants (ARI: 157 percent)
4. Sales (ARI: 156 percent)
5. Marketing (ARI: 147 percent)
6. Finance (ARI: 146 percent)
7. Government (ARI: 102 percent)
8. Education (ARI: 102 percent)
9. Scientists (ARI: 100 percent)
10. Engineering/Technical (ARI: 97 percent)

The ARI is determined by the rate at which users performed a desired action after receiving a display ad impression. The percentage is calculated by comparing the number of online ads shown to a segment of business professionals to the number of times that same set of business professionals took an action against online ads. An index was then created, normalizing the data.

“The typical business sales process is long, complex, and involves multiple decision makers, requiring sellers to build trusting relationships with their buyers. This means companies that market to business professionals need to reach, educate and motivate the right audiences to close the sale,” said Chris Mann, director of product management of Bizo. “The data released today highlights the power of data-driven online advertising, giving marketers insight into who is taking action in response to an ad, and enabling them to precisely target decision makers with ads that will impact the purchasing decision.”

If you aren’t aware of the current infatuation with street art and graffiti, well, you have definitely got to get out more often. From Oscar-nominated “Exit Through The Gift Shop” to MOCA’s “Art In The Streets” in Los Angeles, graffiti has taken a prominent position (again) in pop culture. But now technology enables all of us (with an iPhone, at least) to bring out our inner street artist.

The San Francisco Arts Commission has tapped McCann SF to create a free iTunes app that lets graffiti artists tag their work using their iPhone. They can also share these techno-tags through email or social media share functions baked into the app. The Arts Commission hopes to support creativity while taking a chunk out of an annual graffiti clean-up cost of $22 million.

Using the iPhone’s accelerometer and augmented reality, GraffCity turns iPhones and iPod Touchs into virtual aerosol cans. Artists can “tag” any wall or surface, duplicating the experience of real-world tagging. And with two modes, different brush options and filters, plus an AR (augmented reality) view, street artists can make their mark without worrying about the mess and hassle.

The app will be incorporated into San Francisco’s StreetSmARTS and Where Art Lives programs, two initiatives that support the creativity of established and emerging urban artists. The question is: Who will really be “expressing their creativity” with this iPhone app — urban taggers who have decided to put down the can or hipsters who want to impress Facebook friends and co-workers?

Imagine you’re sitting around with a group of colleagues, taking a break and talking about what you’re working on, what you wish you were working on. The conversation is more freeform jam than academic discourse and one topic taps and turns into another. Your thoughts are going a mile a minute and there you are without something to jot down the gems that are whizzing by.

I recently found myself having a similar experience with a small, inexpensive paperback book entitled, Digital Advertising: Past, Present, and Future. The collection of essays charts the past and predicts the future of “what we used to call the advertising industry.” Asking and answering questions like “What did we learn from the 12KB banner?” and “What does the agency of the future look like?” the contributors offer insights and ideas on what we’ve built and what we might be in the process of creating — if we’re creating at all.

More a survey and overview than in-depth and technical piece, this book reminds those of us in the industry just how far we’ve come in the last couple of decades. If you were there building ads in the beginning, you’ll appreciate Matt Powell’s “When the 12 KB GIF Banner Was King.” Patrick Gardner’s “When Sweden Rules the World” lays out the seven values that make that country’s digital advertising (and quality of life in general) successful, enviable in most cases. And wrapping up the collection is Daniele Fiandaca’s “Agency of the Future” which details the ten characteristics common to all successful agencies in the decade to come.

Creative Social is a collective founded by Fiandaca and Mark Chalmers and dedicated to inspiring the industry, promoting the industry, educating the industry, and having fun doing while doing so. With twice yearly meetings at different worldwide locales, a small group of pioneers in creative and business collaborate and catalyze movement and change. With the publication of Digital Advertising: Past, Present, and Future—with related blogs and social media events—we all have the opportunity to sit down and listen to these thinkers and makers. We can begin to think about things anew and, quite possibly, take those thoughts into our lunch rooms, lounges, studios, and offices and spark up more conversation. Pick up a great read and start creating your agency of the future now.

Creative Social San Francisco from Daniele Fiandaca on Vimeo.