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We here at Brandsplat are not just experts in ghostwriting and savvy blog creation — we also dabble in all things online marketing. And we know better than anybody how important it is to keep bloggers happy. Bloggers are this generation’s version of on-the-scene reporters, and influential bloggers can truly make or break a company. So it isn’t surprising that many companies bend over backwards to make sure bloggers are “loving it.”

McDonald’s has a turbulent history with digital engagement. The fast food giant is often pegged as the planet’s foremost purveyor of heart disease and diabetes; online critics aren’t shy at all about stretching Ronald and Co. over the rack. The brand battles huge image issues on nearly every digital platform. 2012 has already seen the #McFail disaster, wherein a Twitter hashtag campaign backfired on the company. So when it comes to the super-costly and mega-high-stakes marketing of its partnership with the Olympics, McDonald’s is doing whatever it can to keep bloggers fat and happy, so to speak.

The Huffington Post reported last week that McDonald’s has assembled some 400 bloggers. This blogging army, according to HuffPo, has been plied with all-expense-paid vacations and lavish gifts. And all McDonald’s wants in return is a slew of positive posts about its brand and products. The high-cost, high-profile blogging campaign will be rolled out over the next few months in the UK, just in time for the Summer Games. Organizers are hoping to show bloggers how easy it is to use Facebook and Twitter to promote their glowing McBlogs. Shifty? Unethical? Sleazy? Perhaps for regular journalists — but this is blogging, so all bets are off! McDonald’s has a long history of trying to buy off bloggers — most recently with a mommy blogger experiment that backfired in 2011.

Mickey D’s isn’t the only company who tries to sway bloggers. Marie Callendar’s, Levis and nearly every cosmetic company under the sun (just to name a few) have all openly appealed to bloggers in hopes of a few kind (and influential) words. So, readers, we ask you: Does this practice make good digital marketing sense or does it make you want to take a shower? Let us have it in the comments section below!

In a week filled with political bombshells, high-profile deaths (RIP Maurice Sendak and Vidal Sassoon) and Mother’s Day marketing mania, you might have forgotten to get caught up on the latest digital engagement and online marketing news. But we’ve got you covered with a little list we call our Five Things You Might Have Missed.

1.) Long-lasting Banner Flavor Goodness: While Stride gum may not have the catchy jingle that Big Red had back in the day, the chewing gum has made quite a name for itself for being a long-lasting confection. And its latest ploy for chewing gum domination comes in the form of the world’s longest banner ad. Digital Buzz Blog turned us on to the ad that challenged eager clickers to click and hold the targeted area for as long as they could. The winner clocked in at 46 minutes and 27 seconds and walked away with $500 bucks, while Stride might just have created a new banner ad-gaming sub-genre.

2.) Spammer Convention: Our friends in Sweden have come up with a nifty way to thwart spamming — throw a spammer summit! Microsoft and Hotmail Sweden are the forces behind Spammers Aid, a new campaign set on educating spam marketers on new and innovative techniques in online marketing that don’t involve blowing up innocent folks’ inboxes. Spammers will attend a seminar in Stockholm this summer, and we think it’s a swell idea.

3.) Prison Cuisine: Over in Spain, marketers for the J.J. Abrams’ drama Alcatraz delivered a little bit of the famous prison to some adventurous eaters. “Lucky” Spanish diners got to eat like the incarcerated when they ordered their meals online, receiving prison food packaged on metal trays and stuffed in boxed (filled with Alcatraz swag like magnets, of course). The limited time promo brilliantly pushed the show’s premise and TV fans got a whole new version of the TV dinner.

4.) Apps and Likes: Mobile marketing, social media marketing and app development all converged in a marketing supernova this week when Facebook announced it will be opening its own app store! Now all of those Facebook apps that you see your friends feverishly downloading will be in one place. More of a hub and less of a traditional store, we’re anxious to see if this will amp up Facebook app development — especially those from big brands.

5.) When Mama Tweeted Obama: Lastly, it seems, like everybody else, we can’t stop talking about the President of the United States this week. On Mother’s Day, one lucky mom will have the chance to actually tweet with the Commander in Chief. The grassroots Twitter marketing fundraising effort hopes that a personalized tweet from Barack Obama on Mother’s Day is incentive for one lucky winner to bring in at least five other donations.

Holidays are usually a time when the web is abuzz with the latest seasonal viral video hits designed to bring in big dollars while capitalizing on the festive spirit of the moment. Marketers, especially near Mother’s Day, pour their creative hearts and souls into online video creation. But this year, the star-studded viral video everybody is talking about is for a campaign that urges people around the globe not to celebrate Mother’s Day.

Every Mother Counts is the non-profit organization founded by former supermodel Christy Turlington Burns to raise awareness about the health complications that women around the globe face when they are expecting and giving birth. Nearly 358,000, according to Every Mother Counts, die each year due to complications in pregnancy and childbirth. For each woman who dies every year during childbirth, at least 20 to 30 additional mothers suffer from lifelong debilitating disabilities. Turlington Burns is using Mother’s Day as a platform to draw national attention to these shocking statistics and, like any good online marketer, she’s got a video to help get her message across. While not yet KONY-esque in views, Every Mother Counts has been grabbing headlines and racking up views (around 52,000 as this blog was written) mainly due to the serious star power in the video. Debra Messing, Jennifer Connelly, Kelly Rutherford, Blythe Danner and Ann Curry are just a few of the famous faces in the spot. Yet the campaign is also gaining notoriety for its call to action. Turlington Burns and her famous friends want moms around the country to stay silent on Mother’s Day. No phone calls. No status updates. No brunch with the kiddies. All in what the ad calls “an act of solidarity for at-risk mothers around the world.” Facebook is promoting the day of silence, too, with information on the campaign and donation gift ideas to take the place of traditional flowers and chocolates.

Naturally, many traditional types think Turlington Burns is off her rocker. Some blogs have even painted her as an extremist trying to ruin a great holiday. We suspect these are people from Hallmark. But how do you feel? Can a video that calls for silence on Mother’s Day really make a difference? And as a viral content campaign, does No Mother’s Day hit or miss its mark? Sound off below!

Good blog creation can rope in a ton of readers and help establish a brand. Great blog creation can literally create a brand itself and put a whole new identity on the map. Think we’re exaggerating? Then please explain to us how a series of drawings posted on a blog wound up becoming the fashion world’s hottest new magazine.

In spring of 2010, a little BlogSpot blog entitled Lula: The Subject I Know Best debuted with little initial fanfare. The blog had a mysterious mix of fashion photos and some incredible illustrations by the Lula, the faceless blogger behind the operation. Within a year, the blog was the talk of the fashion industry. The site was now almost entirely made up of Lula’s drawings and she developed an enthusiastic fan base. In fall 2011, Lula’s artistic blog empire was taken to whole new heights when she released Herself. With no models, no celebrity interviews and no highly-paid photographers, Herself made headlines and sold out at newsstands. The secret? It is the world’s first entirely illustrated fashion magazine. In an interview with the Daily Beast, Lulu said, “It’s about creating a point of view of fashion that celebrates the beauty and the excitement of it. We don’t need to choose wearable pieces, and we don’t need to celebrate the commercial value. We have the luxury of celebrating the creativity of fashion.”

Released on April 2nd, the second issued of Herself has gathered a firestorm of publicity for its creative fashion layout featuring drawings of famous actresses and the characters they’ve played — Kristen Stewart and Snow White, Madonna and Eva Peron and Meryl Streep and Margaret Thatcher — all “shot” wearing the latest couture and with one another. The issue is already tough to get your hands on and readers are clamoring for the next edition.

Herself is the kind of blog-branding success story we love simply because it capitalizes on being different by mixing old with new media, art with commerce and innovation with plucky spirit. The media picked up and ran with this story for that very reason. So let Herself be the battle cry of inspiration that helps our blogging for business become a truly memorable work of art.

Honesty in Facebook marketing?! Kitties attacking all kinds of webpages?! Freaky job postings?! What the heck is going on? Fear not. We sort it all out just for you in our weekly list of Five Things You Might Have Missed.

1.) The Sarah Phillips Warning: This week, Sarah Phillips made headlines for getting fired from ESPN after a Deadspin article painted the columnist as a con artist with several identities who help spearhead some big-time Internet scams. The scandal reminds us that if you’re hiding something, bloggers will always find it — and no brand is above being occasionally duped.

2.) Kitty Cat Attack! As YouTube has proven time and time again, everything is better with cats. So cat treat maker Temptations is letting Facebook fans put cats everywhere they go online. The Kitty Hijack app available on Temptations Canada’s Facebook page gets dragged into your bookmark bar and then the feline fun is unleashed as kittens crawl all over any site you visit. The funny, frenetic frenzy is Facebook and online marketing purrfection.

3.) Help Wanted: Here’s a jaw-dropping print campaign from the UK for the non-profit Freedom from Torture. Made to look like a job posting, these ads boldly seek to fill the positions of “Torturer,” “Abuser” and “Kidnapper.” Bent on making a point and standing out in an employment-starved climate, Freedom from Torture turns a simple classified ad into something unforgettable.

4.) Rocking Crowdsourcing: We love to see a spunky individual who can turn themselves into a brand by using online and social media marketing, and nobody better personifies these attributes than musician Amanda Palmer. David Meerman Scott profiles Palmer’s ingenious way of using Kickstarter to fund her new album on WebInkNow and we think it’s worth the read. Palmer has raised more than $350,000 and the total goes up nearly every minute, thanks in large part to her huge social media following.

5.) Coming Clean with Social Media Flubs: Common Sense Media’s goal is to help parents control their children’s use of Facebook and mobile phones. To get the message out, the group has released a series of funny TV ads. In the spots, parents admit to their social media flubs and misconceptions. Tech- and Facebook-addicted kids are a very real, very “now” issue and Common Sense attacks it with humor and heart.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a good, old-fashioned soda smack-down contest between Coke and Pepsi. But as the summer months approach, both beverage giants are getting ready to release some seriously competitive social media marketing maneuvers and we the next generation of the cola wars brewing.

Yesterday, Pepsi unveiled its latest marketing weapon: Pepsi Pulse. Pepsi Pulse is an interactive social media dashboard that covers all things pop culture happening right now. The enticing, headline-driven dashboard is right on trend for Pepsi’s “Live for Now” campaign, which launches on May 7. Pepsi Pulse hopes to cash in on our thirst for the latest pop culture headlines by using Twitter hashtags like #LiveforNow and #Now on tweets about celebrities, movies, music and television.

“Pepsi Pulse is a cheat sheet for pop culture,” Shiv Singh, global head of digital for PepsiCo Beverages, told Mashable. “It’s not enough anymore to have phenomenal TV ads — brands have to do more.”

Pepsi Pulse is hoping to evoke memories of its past memorable ads featuring pop culture icons like Britney Spears, Michael Jackson and Madonna.

Speaking of music, Coca-Cola is going all in on a partnership with Spotify to push its Coca-Cola Music campaign this summer.

“We want to… have a sustained conversation around music with our consumers because it is an everyday passion point for them. This is just the next chapter in that evolution where you take the product and the services and social ability of Spotify and bring it into the Coca-Cola brand experience,” says Joe Belliotti, director of global entertainment marketing for Coca-Cola, in an interview with indystar.com.

Coke and Spotify will be rolling their global music domination campaign this summer during the Olympic games. Expect Coke’s Facebook page to serve as the hub for the partnership.

Which “sodie pop” is gonna wind up on top after all the Facebook and Twitter marketing moves are said and done? Stay tuned. In a summer filled with big sporting events and major marketing opportunities, the battle is just heating up.

All natural cereal brand Kashi tells us in its commercials that the company comprises “seven whole grains on a mission.” Recently, the mission in question looks like one to save the company’s face through strategic social media marketing.

The best defense is a good offense, and this is doubly true in the world of online marketing. When consumers start bombing a brand’s social media pages with complaints, smart brands use those same pages to combat the negative messages. And Kashi is currently working overtime on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to do just that. The issues for the hippie-dippy cereal started late last year when a watchdog group uncovered GMOs in Kashi’s list of ingredients. GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, are the last thing a shopper would expect to find in an “all natural cereal.”

The story picked up heat this month as Green Grocer, a healthy grocery store chain, dumped Kashi from its shelves. The following sign appeared on Green Grocer’s shelves: “You might be wondering where your favorite Kashi cereals have gone. It has recently come to our attention that 100 percent of the soy used in Kashi products is genetically modified, and that when the USDA tested the grains used there were found to be pesticides that are known carcinogens and hormone disruptors.”

Soon social media outlets were abuzz with Kashi criticism. The brand’s Facebook page was plundered with posts from angry consumers who felt like they’d been duped by the company. Kashi, which is owned by cereal magnet Kellogg’s, hustled to convince consumers that everything was okay and that GMOs aren’t harmful, even if they aren’t natural. The company released a video late last week on YouTube featuring a Kashi nutritionist and team member named Keegan who reads from a script about the “inaccurate information being circulated online about Kashi ingredients.” The brand has taken to Twitter and Facebook to post the video and to address any product concerns.

Has Kashi’s offense worked? It might be too early to tell, but once a brand has betrayed its image, it is extremely hard to win consumers back. Especially on social media. The Facebook shopper and Twitter critic aren’t easily swayed by corporate moves and they are in no hurry to help a brand restore its name. Also, we live in an era where consumers love to roast a hypocrite and Kashi, with its all natural claims, looks like just that to the average shopper. The big unfortunate fact for Kashi is that in the instant information age, you can’t get away with hiding things from the public. One way or another, it’s going to get out — and when it does, you better be ready to embark on a mission to save your image.

Wanna know how Twitter is helping some nuns or where to play the biggest game of pinball in the world? Then read on, dear friends, because this edition of our Five Things You Might Have Missed list has juicy online marketing and social media news for everybody!

1.) Rollerskating — Better than Crack: Hey, if you found a better local commercial for a roller rink that’s about to go viral, then by all means, post the darn thing! If not, please enjoy the so-hilariously-bad-it’s-brilliant ad for Roller Kingdom in Reno, Nevada.

2.) Help a Sister Out: Nuns on Twitter? Sure! Reverend James Martin is hoping his hashtag #WhatSistersMeantoMe will help raise awareness for work of modern nuns around the world. The Vatican, which has gone Twitter-crazy in the last six months, has embraced the campaign, and now Twitter is filled with nun tales, proving every cause can benefit from a good Twitter campaign.

3.) Le Pinball Wizard: Ford Paris had a little fun with those tres serious French drivers with a one-of-a-kind digital installation which turned parking on a busy Parisian street into a game of pinball. As the drivers banged back and forth between two cars, pinball game noises sounded from a display above. It’s outdoor advertising turned into a game, and all we can say is, “J’adore!”

4.) Gadget-free Getaway: Last week we yammered about turning off our tech and this week we find several articles about how the travel industry is marketing gadget-free vacations. Coincidence? Nah. Gadget-free is the latest trend in getting consumers to spend time (and money) on things like travel where they can interact with one another. Like in person. Call it “anti-tech chic.” We think it’s here to stay.

5.) And Speaking of Phones: Rounding out the quintet this week is a new mobile marketing campaign from Greenpeace. Greenpeace Mode puts your phone to work for good when it’s on silent. The ingenious setting sends out messages about Greenpeace’s latest efforts and causes while you’re busy at work and school. Talk about gadget-free work!

From billboards and television commercials to viral spots and online marketing, he’s everywhere. Lately he’s been seen touting a diaper bag, but he’s also found hanging out with his bros shooting the breeze about parenting stuff. He is the modern dad and marketers, it seems, just can’t get enough of the guy.

Some call it a re-verb of the crap economy; others call it a balance of power. But whatever you call it, the Mr. Mom phenomenon is a very real one to advertisers. The modern dude-dad is funnier, more subversive and just the kind of man marketers hope we can relate to. Huggies is leading the way in the dad marketing revolution. Dads are front and center in a series of commercials which put real life papas and Huggies products like wipes and diapers to the test. Huggies and the dads are put through ringer in a series of challenges like eating spaghetti and speed changes. The funny reality TV-like spots are right in tune with the trend of featuring dad as this beleaguered, flawed superhero.

And what’s funnier than one Mr. Mom? A group of supper daddies, naturally. So appealing is the trend of the Dad-Dude Pack that What to Expect When You’re Expecting, a movie based on the famous pregnancy book, has tailored its trailers to feature funny dads. Never mind that the source material is about women’s bodies during pregnancy. Lionsgate Films is hoping to reel in guys with wacky shots of funnymen like Chris Rock and his fellow father friends carrying babies around Central Park.

And as much as we love this modern man who isn’t afraid of some diapers, we still love the stereotype of the dumb dad, too. This Verizon spot, which features some clueless dads with some really bad ideas, is an online hit even if it doesn’t celebrate dad as Superman.

But let’s ask you: Is this Mr. Mom marketing trend about to burn out or have we only seen the beginning of Dadtastic campaigns? Tell us in the comments section below!