"Kmart's "Jingle Bells" ad has become the most viral of the early holiday season and is already among the biggest hits of 2013. So what's a rival retailer to do? For JC Penney, a lighthearted exchange on Twitter over the mildly risqué ad seems to have done the trick. The brand trolled Twitter on Nov. 16, and a humorous exchange ensued:"

" Last year's list had seven spots that earned 1.2 million shares or more. This year's list has 14 such spots. But the top ad here earned 4.24 millions shares across Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere, versus more than 10 million shares for last year's chart-topping Kony video."

"This latest Advertising Age Research Report, Social Media Advertising, looks at what's worked and what hasn't when it comes to paid social-media advertising, and what marketers should be trying as they experiment on emerging platforms like Instagram and Pinterest."

"A collection of talks, lessons and other digital resources for 21st century learners."

"This is a stupendously awesome commercial from a toy company called GoldieBlox, which has developed a set of interactive books and games to "disrupt the pink aisle and inspire the future generation of female engineers." The CEO, Debbie Sterling, studied engineering at Stanford, where she was dismayed by the lack of women in her program"

"Chipotle's latest ad campaign, a rich, animated short film coupled with an online video game, rails against industrial farming and 'Big Food.' The new Chipotle campaign takes a page directly from the 'marketing to Millennials' handbook. "

"ABOUT halfway through Dave Eggers's bestselling dystopian satire on Silicon Valley, "The Circle", the reader meets Stewart, a bald, silent, stooped 60-year-old who has "been filming, recording, every moment of his life now for five years". Stewart is the first of the novel's characters to make all his actions visible to anyone with a computer who cares to look-the first "transparent man". Cathal Gurrin, a computer scientist at Dublin City University, is not quite that transparent. But to those with access to his archive he is pretty see-through. Mr Gurrin is a "life logger", someone who thinks that if, as Socrates claimed, the unexamined life is not worth living, the life which is digitally recorded with an eye to potentially endless re-examination will have much to recommend it. Patterns in their data, they hope, will reveal opportunities to be healthier, happier and more effective. To this end Mr Gurrin wears a wide-angle camera around his neck which snaps several pictures of his field of view every minute, recording its location and orientation each time it does so. He has been using such devices for more than seven years. "

"The existence of female competition may seem obvious to anyone who has been in a high-school cafeteria or a singles bar, but analyzing it has been difficult because it tends be more subtle and indirect (and a lot less violent) than the male variety. Now that researchers have been looking more closely, they say that this "intrasexual competition" is the most important factor explaining the pressures that young women feel to meet standards of sexual conduct and physical appearance."

"Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives today expressed in consumptive terms. The greater the pressures upon the individual to conform to safe and accepted social standards, the more does he tend to express his aspirations and his individuality in terms of what he wears, drives, eats- his home, his car, his pattern of food serving, his hobbies. These commodities and services must be offered to the consumer with a special urgency. We require not only "forced draft" consumption, but "expensive" consumption as well. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption. The home power tools and the whole "do-it-yourself" movement are excellent examples of "expensive" consumption."

"You know the phrase, "When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping"? There just may be some wisdom in that. A survey conducted by TNS Global on behalf of Ebates.com found that more than half of Americans (52%, including 64% of women and 40% of men) admit to engaging in "retail therapy"-the act of shopping and spending to improve one's mood. This echoes a previous study, published in the Journal of Psychology and Marketing, that revealed 62% of shoppers had purchased something to cheer themselves up, and another 28% had purchased as a form of celebration."

"In honour of the week's theme - marketing, consumerism and youth - MediaSmarts has launched the following resources:"

"The Associated Press is planning to introduce sponsored articles into the stream of news stories on its mobile apps and hosted websites. The rollout is expected in early 2014, with potential sponsorship deals centered around major events the AP is planning to cover, such as the Super Bowl, the Winter Olympics and the Academy Awards. Several potential advertisers have been in talks with the AP, according to Jim Kennedy, senior VP-digital strategy and products at the AP, who declined to identify them. The move to sponsored content is part of a broader effort to open a new line of revenue at the AP, where just 2% of total revenue comes from advertising,

"A magazine with no Photoshop whatsoever? Yes, it finally exists. Changing the magazine game is clearly an uphill battle, but Verily, a fashion and lifestyle magazine aimed at women 18-35, is making its best case. The idea for the publication began to hatch back in 2011 with the premise that most mainstream magazines for women deliver narrow and often negative messages, ones that make women feel bad about themselves rather than good and "fail to reflect our lives or our philosophies as women." They also fail to reflect what we actually look like. Thus Verily's mandate: "Whereas other magazines artificially alter images in Photoshop to achieve the so-called ideal body type or leave a maximum of three wrinkles, Verily never alters the body or face structure of the Verily models.""

"The Center for Media & Social Impact is an innovation lab and research center that studies, designs and showcases media for social impact."

"The latest teenage girl obsession: having ultra-skinny thighs, so much so that one can see a space in between them when feet are touching (hence, the gap) is a trait many teenagers now covet. Of course, for many, this idealized gap is physically impossible to attain.

"LESSON PLAN: UNDERSTANDING NEWS LITERACY July 24, 2013 To seek truth and report it lies at the heart of any journalist's mission. But what is "truth?" And will we know it when we see it?  Deciphering credible, accurate information from an abundance of perspectives is harder today than ever before. These lesson plans, developed by Megan Fromm and made possible through a grant from the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, will help you discover how teaching news literacy in your program develops critical minds, encourages active citizenship, meets Common Core state standards, and strengthens your publications' public reputation and perception."

" a new "study" from marketing firm PHD recommends a strategy that crosses the line from merely targeted to outright predatory, explicitly advising brands to seize on the times of the day and week when women feel the most insecure about their bodies and overall appearance in order to sell beauty products and other goods."