Friday is here again, and so is our weekly post on the news and happenings in the world of online marketing.  It was a long and productive week (we added two new sites to the stables) and the weekend will bring some nice and earned … time of less work  Well, it’s the joy of owning your own business.

Verizon has launched a new commercial announcing the availability of the new iPhone4.  The largest cell phone service now offers the phone, and with mobile networking and surfing becoming even more present, it signals your business really needs to start addressing this aspect of marketing.

BMW is getting ready to release a line of electric cars, and they have made the bold step of not doing ANY promotion through television advertising to announce the launch.  Instead, BMW put together four documentaries ranging from 4-10 minutes talking about the future of mobility.  You can see the trailer here.  The project head said that the intent was to reach the influence makers directly, and start an earnest dialogue about the product and the car.  BMW is the same company that produced mini movies back in 2001 to help promote their new line of cars by bringing in notable movie directors to film “commercials” that made not overt sales pitch.  I like this idea because it helps get branding out of this “We can communicate effectively in 30 seconds” idea out of the mainstream thinking.

And lastly, since my sincere aim is to not only be a web designer, but as also an informational outlet for small business owners who want to handle their marketing by themselves, I wanted to pass along  a great post about the steps you should take to getting the most of a crowd-sourced design project.  You can read it here.  Crowd sourcing is a great way to get a new look design much faster than individually contacting businesses and submitting proposals.  Plus, its also a lot easier for small businesses to help each other out as many of these designers are independent.

Thats all for now.  Hope you all have a great weekend!