The ad depicts the cheeky bingo mascot, the glamorous bingo ball animation also known as Cheeky, recruiting new players with her trademark purple smile. Cheeky bounces past the residents of Britain’s streets turning frowns into smiles and organising a street party reminiscent of those recently thrown in celebration of the royal wedding.

The motto of the ad is ““something rather cheeky is going on”, but the focus of it is to spread the word about the new cheeky bingo promotion – the Friday £5,000 Free For All.

Cheeky bingo was one of the first online bingo brands to offer free bingo to players 24 hours a day, rather than in limited sessions. Now that practically all of the other bingo websites are offering the same, however, this latest ad suggests that cheeky is upping the ante with free bingo and a cash prize incentive on a key weekend night.

You can find out more about cheeky bingo on the very helpful ohmybingo.com site, as well as finding out info about a number of other prominent online bingo websites.

The great thing about vending machines is that they are standalone and so frequently find their way into places where people most need your product. This might include gyms, waiting areas, schools and all sorts of other public areas.

Another particularly good thing about some vending machines is that your product can find advertising space on the unit itself. If your brand provides the visual graphic for the machine to reinforce its inclusion in what the machine has to offer then you stand a greater chance of garnering a little more customer recognition.

It isn’t just refreshing cold vending machines that enjoy widespread popularity. Hot vending machines are also really common in educational institutions, offices, libraries and even in cafes. Some of these enjoy an excellent reputation among customers, with established brands like Flavia Vending Machines providing the hardware to deliver your products in the best way possible.

This whole campaign is being run using social media using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo and their own site. Their Facebook group alone has got nearly 60,000 fans and not surprisingly. They are really engaging with their customers by offering weekly prizes and giving industry tips and advice. You can also watch the previous winners advert which I must say is really good!

I’m not talking about tacky corporate gifts like pens, key chains and coasters, they will always be used as bag fillers at exhibitions and desk decoration for employees. I’m talking about really personal Corporate Gifts that allow you to express your gratitude to a client. There are companies out there who will assemble bespoke hampers full of foods and wines that can really be appreciated.

Put yourself in your client’s shoes, would you prefer an e-card and a generic corporate gift or would you be pleasantly surprised that your supplier had remembered that you’re a red wine lover or a chocaholic? The answer is obvious I know which is why I don’t understand why more people don’t do it. If you don’t already do so, I would consider sending personal corporate gifts because they’ll sit in stark contrast to the masses of digital communications that are common place in the day and age.

The success of their social media strategy can be put down to the way they have engaged their fans and used their comments and suggestions to influence the club’s wider marketing strategy. Before www.mcfc.co.uk went live last summer the club used social media to find out what fans really wanted from a website and since the site went live they have devised new marketing campaigns based upon trending topics on Twitter.

In a reciprocal manner they also keep fans updated on their publicity stunts, such as the huge “Welcome to Manchester” poster which was placed on a prominent building in Manchester when Carlos Tevez joined from local rivals Manchester United. For a club which had struggled in recent years to sell out their new ground on match days I think they are definitely going about gaining support in an innovative and refreshing way.

In the same way as in the Apple advert, an anonymous pair of hands turn the pages of the publication and highlight certain areas using the same gestures that are used to demonstrate the touchscreen capabilities of their phone. The video is very clever and will definitely fuel the print vs digital debate which is currently raging.

Lucy Barrett writing for the guardian quite rightly asked if it matters that consumer feedback helped develop a product, don’t consumers expect this of huge companies like Microsoft and Apple anyway without having to be told about it? Surely it’s more important to find out how any changes can actually benefit you as a consumer.

In the current recession consumer trust in large corporations is at a low and these brands are quite rightly trying to win us round, but all they’re really succeeding in doing is making us indifferent to their campaigns. The best analogy for this is that of a couple that never fight or argue and ultimately don’t live happily ever after, because in a relationship one or both participants need to challenged. Consumers want food for thought not a slap on the back, so lay off the you-centric marketing!

This advertising push comes hot on the heels of YouTube announcing it’s deal with Channel 4 last month, which allowed them to include the 4oD content in their TV show offering. The majority of shows available are without advertising but are mainly used to promote flagship shows like X-Factor and Eastenders.

The founders are not entirely sure how they are going to make money out of the venture but as with the likes of Twitter and even Google, quite often the best ideas always find ways of becoming profitable once the product/service is right. The obvious revenue stream would be to charge shop owners to use the site but the founders are also considering an AdWords style model whereby contextual advertising would appear along with the search results. In a world where local shop owners are becoming few and far between, Milo.com could be their saviour!