It would seem there is a prevailing mindset that it is mostly emos that wear skinny jeans, and as such the article of clothing itself is classified as emo. Well, like many other articles of clothing, it doesn’t really matter much if you’re emo or not; it’s what you wear together with the piece of clothing that will make up your emo fashion.

Did you know that the skinny jean traces its origin way back to the 1950s? Elvis himself wore something called drainpipe jeans, a close cousin of the skinny jean. Other stars and TV personalities such as Marilyn Monroe and the Lone Ranger wore some variety of tight-fitting pants.

The glam rock scene of the 1970s saw the revival of drainpipe jeans to counter the hippies’ flares. Red drainpipes, for example, were exceedingly popular especially in the punk scene. Famous bands that sported such pants include the Ramones and the Sex Pistols. Tight-fitting acid-washed jeans were also a trend in the heavy metal-dominated parts of the 1980s.

When you think about it, the skinny jeans of our current times offer more styles and have been adapted for modern tastes. When Kate Moss was pictured wearing one, it set off a cascade that made skinny jeans popular once again. Now, skinny jeans are commonly associated with fashionistas, indie bands, and—you guessed it—the emo subculture.

How do emos wear skinny jeans? It won’t be emo if you wear skinny jeans with that new cute pastel-colored top you found at the mall.

The right way is the common emo way: lots of black. Wear a black top with your skinny jeans (which are also preferably black, and maybe sometimes crimson or some of those bright-colored variants). In terms of footwear, skinny jeans go really well with those Chuck Taylor high-tops or those black Vans sneakers.

Of course, it’s all up to you to mix and match. Just make sure you don’t lose the essence of the emo subculture when you zip up those skinny jeans.

In essence, it uses electronic mail, otherwise known as e-mail, as the focal point and primary tool for marketing campaigns directed towards customers. Of course, e-mail marketing isn’t always just for commercial applications. Even fund raising messages relayed through a designed can be considered e-mail marketing.

Generally, e-mail marketing refers to many different situations and purposes. E-mail marketing is also useful in order to enhance a company’s relationship with its customers. They can keep track of customers and encourage brand loyalty because of the one-on-one nature of e-mail marketing.

This way, companies can go direct to existing clients and give them prime offers that will allow the company to have return customers.

This type of marketing can also be utilized for the purpose of acquiring new customers by sending out e-mails to prospective clients. These e-mails are sort of like feelers that provide new customers with an idea of what products or services your company can offer them, and what privileges or discounts they get from your e-mail marketing campaign.

Companies with e-mail marketing campaigns can also tap other companies by allowing them to advertise on the e-mails they send out.

E-mail marketing has numerous advantages. One of the foremost benefits is high revenue for the company. Marketing through e-mail correspondence has proven to be very effective. According to some sources, this type of marketing trails only one other online marketing method in terms of effectiveness (that method is search marketing). E-mail marketers can also keep track of their revenue as well as their returns on investment because there are many tools available.

When you think about it, E-mail marketing is really very viable because so many people check their e-mail accounts everyday—and we’re not even talking about people with multiple e-mail accounts here. Statistics peg that more than half of the people who use the Internet check their e-mails or send e-mails at least once per day.

Another advantage is that e-mail marketing allows a more personalized way of dealing with customers, as e-mail marketers can tailor-fit campaigns and e-mail messages to suit a particular subgroup of their clientele. This makes marketing more dynamic and less automated.

Of course, e-mail marketing is not yet an exact science. There are still many variables to deal with, such as delivery rate and e-mail regulations, particularly those relating to what is considered as spam mail. Still, e-mail marketing is on the rise, and it has proven its worth in the world of online marketing and e-commerce.

Nowadays, you can achieve fame by having the right resources. With good use of a personal computer and your internet connection, you can now be popular. Nearly every bit of information placed in the internet spreads virally, even videos. Upload a really interesting video of yourself doing some crazy stunt, and in a few days, the rest of the world is watching you. Congratulations, you are now the star of a viral video.

A viral video is a video that you can find online that’s either funny or annoying, and will get you asking your friends to watch it. In turn, that friend will ask his friend to watch, and his friend to another, thus spreading like a virus, until it eventually becomes a craze.

Enter Gary Brolsma aka the Numa Numa Guy: he achieved instant fame by uploading the Numa Numa Dance, a video of him lip-syncing and dancing in newgrounds.com. It got over 13 million views two years after it was put there. The video also put him in newspaper stories and guest appearances in radio and TV shows. To date, he has been viewed by 700 million people.

Youtube.com is what you may call a nest of viral videos. You can find a lot of interesting clips there: dancing robots with the use of stop motion, documentaries about the emo culture, practical jokes, guitar solos and covers in front of a webcam, and even live clips of certain performances by anonymous people. Young international artists like Charice Pempengco and Justine Bieber got their share of fame in Youtube.

Rick Astley also had a share of rekindled fame with the video of his single “Never gonna give you up,” which was a hit back in the late 80’s. People use his video as a practical joke: a guy gives the victim a link and claims that it’s relevant to what they’re currently talking about. To the victim’s surprise, he’s already redirected to the video. Astley himself also enjoys and acknowledges this prank.

The internet is a source of limitless possibilities. With the right resources, you can be famous in a snap of a finger. Who knows? The next time you video yourself tripping down a staircase may be the next biggest internet thing.

I’ve seen many of my friends post the video on FaceBook, genuinely creeped out at the scene where the girl was run over by the car. To be fair, the video looks quite believable when you first watch it or when you don’t watch it too closely. There have already been many discussions about the video on blogs and message boards, and there have been YouTube response videos discussing and debunking the video.

Most of them offered the same verdict: FAKE.

Clearly, when you watch the video and analyze the post-accident scene, the body of the girl was lying in a position inconsistent with the direction of impact. Hey, that sounded a bit like a piece of CSI dialogue. Also, why would anyone put up a video that can incriminate them in the death of a friend? Besides, YouTube should have removed the video right away if it were real. Lastly, there have been links posted of the allegedly dead girl’s FaceBook—which shows she is alive and well, and there are even different versions of the video posted on her FaceBook wall.

Yep, not only was the video fake, but it was also some sort of marketing ploy. What’s up? For one, I don’t see how anybody can benefit from a marketing standpoint by making a video like this. Maybe I’d understand it more if it was relating to a movie or a TV show, but this isn’t like how it was with the viral videos for the movie The Blair Witch Project. This went beyond what viral marketing is about, with many people finding that the video bordered on tasteless and offensive.

Okay, so the actress (Cindy Vela) has garnered a ton of publicity for her role in the video (the girl who “dies”). I guess that’s something. And it’s probably the end result they aimed for. Now, Cindy is a bit of a high-profile internet celebrity, posting on FaceBook (through admins) and Twitter (maybe through admins as well).

While technically the viral video broke no rules and it did accomplish its promotional goal, I believe there should be standards when working with viral marketing. You don’t really want to disturb or play with millions of people’s psyches like that. Hopefully, marketing firms and individuals will look for better alternatives in the future—alternatives that don’t show someone ending up dead.

Still, the video was fun in a creepy way, and it’s a relief knowing that nobody actually died.

Marketers, however, want to achieve an ad that works the same way as a virus: one that spreads like an epidemic in no time. Although no, they don’t want to make a vast population feel sick (although sometimes they do just that,) as salesmen, they want their products to be well-known by this mob. Cue in something funny, amusing, annoying or anything that you’ll remember every time you dare close your eyes. And it’s (supposed to) have something to do with a product.

Simply put, viral marketing is any strategy that encourages your viewers to pass the marketing message on. A guy will start talking to his friends about the ad he just saw, then his friends will do the same to their other friends, and so on. It is pretty much how your common cold works. This is also referred to as the “word-of-mouth” marketing (which is how some folklores and mythical stories are passed down and preserved). Now that internet and search engines came into the playing fields, it’s much easier to ‘spread the word’ because people, familiar to you or not, are all over the internet, and all it takes is an e-mail to their addresses and the word is finally released. Mission accomplished.

Hotmail.com, one of the first email services for free, served out a classic example of a viral marketing strategy, one that is fairly easy to understand:

1. Give away free email addresses and some other services,
2. On every free message sent out, put a tagline that  says, “get your free private email at http://www.hotmail.com,”
3. Wait for the people who sends messages unintentionally advertise Hotmail to their friends and co-workers,
4. And to others who can see the email,
5. Let them sign up for their own free email accounts
6. Repeating step 3, sending more mails to more people.

Basically, the strategy worked wonders, at least at that time. Who knew that by tagging a plug in emails can disseminate information quickly? Apparently, Hotmail did.

Nowadays, viral marketing strategies include videos, those that tried to become the next Rick Roll or Numa Numa dance. As far as cyber-marketing goes, it is now the war of the memes. (an aspect of pop culture that’s mostly parodied, and made into a joke, mostly present in the internet)

It’s amazing how the internet revolutionized marketing. Feel free to confess that even you also caught an advertisement over the internet. And ended up buying.

What is a Meme? The term ‘internet meme’ derives its origin from memes, which are collections of ideas and cultural phenomena spread through written, oral or other forms of media. Internet memes, in essence, follows the original concept. However, the ones on the Internet are more like trends and fads and nothing quite so permanent as a culture or an idea.

Still, Internet marketers see Internet memes as useful marketing tools. Take a couple of films, for example, that rode on huge online viral marketing campaigns that involved memes and viral marketing to assure box office success. The Blair Witch Project, a 1999 horror film, and Snakes on a Plane, a 2006 horror feature film, both relied extensively on viral video and word of mouth marketing.

As a testament to the incredible buzz generated on the Web, one reviewer from the UK even called Snakes on a Plane “perhaps the most internet-hyped film of all time.” Snakes even had a lot of memes associated with it prior (and even after) its eventual theatrical release.

Of course, there are many memes that apparently seem to be borne out of people having too much free time. You’ve got your 4chan memes as prime examples of this. Still, that’s not to say that they don’t have exploitability in terms of marketing purposes.

Creating and capitalizing on memes depend heavily on a thorough knowledge of crowd psychology and awareness of the netizen group dynamic. Memes allow extremely fast proliferation of content, especially if you can drive it enough to become a hot trend.

The Internet is really the prime prospect for many marketers because of its immense potential to generate publicity. The only problem is that there are so many avenues, so many things that internet users do and see in on the web, that it seems so hard to pinpoint which one would be the most effective to focus on.

When it comes to rapidly spreading the news about a product, memes are the way to go. It will be a difficult task and requires a lot of hard work, research, and perseverance. But if you get it right, surely the buzz will be enough to guarantee a big payoff. This is why companies will continue to make campaigns that are aimed toward capitalizing on memes and viral marketing.

By now, it is obvious we regard many artists as class acts, even though they were of a different generation. We upload the hits of the Beatles and the Police into our IPods. Michael Jackson was remembered in a moving tribute that is sold as a CD or on DVD. Real or pirated, the great musical talents from our parent’s generation are available on any street corner bazaar or even a CD bar. But as we are the most well-connected generation, we have an extra advantage. What are they? Youtube, Newgrounds, MegaVideo and Veoh; sites where anyone with a digital camera and access to the internet can upload music or videos to share with the whole world. The general aim; to strut their stuff and let the world know it!

We are a generation connected by the world-wide web. And as people of many ages and nationalities are wont to do, we like to show off to our friends, families, even complete strangers. The recent boom of talent show on TV like American Idol and America’s Got Talent are evidence of that. But because of the heavy completion and strict judging processes, not everyone can get their shot at the limelight (or the multimillion music contract and makeovers from well-paid make-up artists and dressers and trainers to keep bodies nicely toned and fit).

People are also persistent, time and time again that has been proven. With the same drive that shot Neil Armstrong to the moon and split the atom, people take their video cameras and do just about anything to get attention. There are comedians, amateur documentary crews, film makers and, surprise surprise, musicians. Justin Beiber stands out as an example for the moment, whether he is talented or a flash in the pan debated very furiously (but not rationally, given the internet’s gift of anonymity has given some people unwarranted arrogance and aggression) in forums and chat rooms. Even the established stars acknowledge the power of the internet with a resurgent Neil Patrick Harris in a starring role in Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.

Then, there are the less-savory characters with internet access. Amateur pornography is very much available for viewing. It stands to reason that the participants are aware that they’re taping themselves or have no idea that the video meant for private viewing has been uploaded onto any number of video-viewing sites. There are those that have vicious and hateful rants of any topic under the sun that are there just for the sake of being there. There are those that record themselves engaging g any manner of stupid activities, like immature pranks that could seriously hurt the participants. There are even those who post videos or blogs just to let the world know that they exist and, by reason of apparent talent and wit, must be worshipped and paid attention to. And those are only the penguins at the tip of the iceberg.

The road to stardom has come a long way from agents waiting in the wings of talent shows and gigs. With the resource pool of the almost the whole world at their disposal, agents need not do much than log into Youtube and stumble upon the next big thing in music or skateboarding. But the question to ask is; how long will those stars shine?

The first question is why join the bandwagon? Because it’s still a fairly new market. As we all know, it is the pioneers that more often than not strikes it big. If you look at the success of Iphone and Google phone in mobile applications, you know that there’s a large market out there. And when you consider the advances in technology, it is not far off when every mobile phone user would use their phones to access the internet in a regular basis.

But back at present. There are several successful campaigns that show the rewards to be reaped in doing mobile internet marketing. For example, Subway’s campaign in giving out coupons via messages to mobile phone showed a good conversion. Another case is in Japan, where about 25% of mobile owners make their purchase decisions from ads and messages sent through their mobile internet connection. These cases make it worthwhile to look at the mobile market and develop a strategy that market these users.

The trend is certainly catching up. Now you can see mobile apps for your favorite social media like Facebook or Multiply. Though the trend may be more prevalent with social media sites, this is still a good venue for you to launch your social media marketing. Even if you don’t get conversions outright, you can still benefit by building familiarity with your site and your reach in mobile internet.

How do you start? You can look at your existing data from your analytics tool. You can look through the data to check how many users are visiting your site via mobile browsers. If you have a considerable amount of visitors, you can start e-mailing or sending out coupons to these potential customers and see their reaction. Another thing that you can explore is creating a mobile site of your own so that people would have easier access your products. It would all begin from there.

Of course, one can still be skeptical about trends since some of them come and go. But in the case of mobile internet, it’s like the internet all over again. With the advances in mobile technology and how companies are developing this new media as an alternative to the personal computer, it’s not far-fetched to imagine that internet access would be standard with all mobile phones. That day is approaching soon. As such, it would be smart to invest on mobile internet marketing and find ways to reach that market for your product or business. Though there may be risks involved, the rewards to be gained outweigh those risks in terms being among the early prospectors in the area.

In essence, word of mouth is accomplished by creating content or making a product that is worthy of positive praise and that users or viewers will be more than happy to pass on to their friends and peers. Of course, with internet marketing, there is less “mouth” used. Instead, word of mouth materializes through social media status messages, blog posts, reviews, and other forms of widely accessible user-generated content.

One big part of word of mouth marketing is social media. With the popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, many businesses have utilized them to boost their marketing efforts. Social media also provides companies and organizations with an excellent (not to mention low-cost) opportunity to interact directly with their clients.

Viral marketing in general works on this principle, as does buzz marketing. The latter aims to directly infuse interactions with the buzz that will help drive a product’s sales. The aim of buzz marketing, after all, is to avoid the usually automated or scripted marketing pitches and inject more creativity and uniqueness (not to mention spontaneity) into the experience of each unique user or customer.

When you think about it, doing marketing by way of word of mouth isn’t even all that difficult. As long as one has an excellent product or really interesting content, then the spreading of the news will take care of itself. This is why positioning and proper identification of the target audience is important, to ensure the success of the internet marketing campaign.

In a way, one can say that word of mouth is easy because it practically takes care of the marketing. There would be no need to spin the product or market the service after the initial effort, as people will be doing the spinning for you. Then again, this puts much more pressure to make sure that the product or service really will elicit positive or favorable reactions.

Internet marketing is a burgeoning industry, tapping the practically limitless potential of the World Wide Web to market products and services straight to the screens of consumers. In this effort, word of mouth indeed plays a big role—albeit one that transcends its traditional definition. This is where people really play the biggest part of marketing, and that is also the main reason why it is so effective.