Social media have overtaken porn as the No. 1 “activity” on the Web, the video says. Facebook has higher weekly traffic than Google. “Social media isn’t a fad,” it concludes, “it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.”

Among the points made that pertain to advertising and traditional media, none of which are attributed in the video:

- 25 percent of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content. 34 percent of bloggers post opinions about products and brands.

- 78 percent of consumers trust peer recommendations. Only 14 percent trust advertisements.

- Only 18 percent of traditional TV campaigns generate positive ROI. 90 percent of people skip ads via TiVo or DVRs (this was disputed just this week).

- 60 million Facebook updates are made daily. “We no longer search for the news, the news finds us. We will no longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media.”

Scouts are hitting the Internet, using Facebook, e-mail and texting in addition to staging rallies and setting up phone banks to run their cookie sales “as a serious business.” The Girl Scouts of Northern California has eight pre-written text messages that Scouts are encouraged to send to drum up sales of Somoas, Thin Mints, Tagalongs and five other cookie varieties.

There are also business card templates, door hangers, marketing plans and e-mail invites that girls can download through their council’s Web site.

“While the girls are not allowed to sell cookies via e-mail or over the Internet, they are allowed to use the Internet to tell people they are selling — a tough distinction for the younger girls to grasp … ,” the newspaper says.

The Girl Scouts of Northern California council encompasses the Bay Area and coastal counties up to the Oregon border. It has 50,000 scouts, 30,680 of whom sold cookies in 2009.

“It’s like a shame campaign,” Andy Dunn, the firm’s co-founder and chief executive, told the newspaper. Bonobos “pants’ distinguishing feature is that they eliminate the sagging bottom of ill-fitting trousers.”

The company will advertise on Web sites for women, including Refinery29.com and Jezebel.com, and in magazines like OK! “‘Let your man wear the pants this holiday,’ proclaims the ad copy in the internally produced campaign.”  An agency-produced ad in Men’s Journal shows a man in Bonobos pants from the waist down under the headline, “Here’s your chance to tell women, ‘Hey, my eyes are up here.’ ”

Bonobos also makes shirts, and is working on a dress shirt that does not bunch at the waist. The firm is “’crowdsourcing’ the design of the dress shirts using TweetSwell, a program for conducting surveys on Twitter, to figure out what people want.”

Bonobos, which had $1.6 million in revenue last year, only advertised on Facebook in 2007, its first year, The Times says. “Eventually, shoppers on the Bonobos Web site will have a personalized home page based on what they like and their size and body type. Bonobos is also planning marketing campaigns that will include surprising pants customers with a free dress shirt.”

Bonobos offers free shipping both ways and lifetime returns, and encourages people to buy and return several pairs of pants to find the right fit. Consultants are available by phone, e-mail and, soon, video chat to assess fit and give style advice, The Times says.

“Only about 10 percent of men can be classified as fashionistas, said Marshal Cohen, the chief industry analyst at NPD Group, though that is up from 3 percent two decades ago. ‘I can’t tell you how many times I stop a guy in a store and say something doesn’t fit right, and he says, “I don’t care,”‘ Cohen said. ‘So he’s got a big hill to climb.’”

And, for those folks in publishers’ advertising departments who think positive coverage will generate ad sales, “If the P.R. team for [Disney's] ABC unit can land an article about ‘Dancing With the Stars’ on the cover of TV Guide, for instance, the network will make certain not to also buy advertising space in that issue to push the show,” The Times report says.

“Engaging with both the broken dreams and the intact ones through high-profile ad buys that garnered plenty of positive press was in sharp contrast to the tail-between-the-legs mode of Hyundai’s rivals, many of whom had slashed budgets and retreated into retail-focused advertising,” AdAge says.

The resuts? “Hyundai’s market share jumped to 4.3 percent in the first 10 months of 2009 from 3.1 percent in the same year-ago period. In September, while the industry overall suffered a 22 percent sales drop in a post-Cash for Clunkers hangover, Hyundai managed to increase its new-vehicle tally by 27 percent to 31,511 units.”

About Walmart, the magazine says, “the retailer has gotten smarter about its marketing. Those cheesy smiley-face ads are a thing of the distant past, as are those ham-handed upmarket moves of the middle part of this decade. Now Walmart is cranking hard on its value proposition …”

At the Golden Arches, marketing focused on the core product. “[C]onsider that one of the newest menu items is an Angus burger tipping the scale at one third of a pound and a $4 price tag. It’s its first burger launch in eight years and, though the timing isn’t great, early indications were that the sandwich is catching on — a timely reminder that what McDonald’s knows is beef.”

Lego gained by listening — tapping into who its customers are and what they want, particularly through social media. “For example, part of its decision to engage adult fans came from monitoring their blogs. More broadly, Lego has gotten adept at sampling culture, understanding the desires of both its existing and potential consumers and adjusting accordingly.” The toymaker has also profited by not outsourcing its manufacturing and thereby not being hurt in the lead-paint scare from Chinese toys.

Amazon has also succeeded by focusing on customers. “When’s the last time you saw an Amazon ad? Exactly. Despite its universal awareness among consumers, Amazon has a minuscule ad budget. Rather than try to buy love, it earns through the aforementioned customer-centric approach and the word-of-mouth it engenders.”