Tasty 100% Blue Agave Tequila? Check.

Taco truck fitted with a bumpin’ sound system? Check.

Tequila infused menu created by a world-class chef? Check.

Delicious free Mexican food all summer long? Check and check.

Wait, wait…what???

We hope you didn’t miss it. Yesterday was the last day of a summer-long promotion featuring free food courtesy of Famila Camarena Tequila. But we don’t want the free food to distract you from what’s really important… the tequila baby! Prominent Los Angeles food blogger Street Gourmet LA says “Its the best tequila at its price point!” and Rebel is delivering the samples.

Familia Camarena and Rebel enlisted chef to the stars and owner of Recess in Glendale, Chef Sevan Azarian to create an original tequila-infused menu that was served from the truck. Asada, carnitas, and pollo, all marinated in Camarena Tequila. What ever you want, we got it (well almost). Even a veggie option!

The truck was sent rolling around greater Los Angeles from June through August hitting shopping areas, nightclubs, and lifestyle events like: DTLA Art Walk, World Cup screenings at Nike Montalban Theatre, the LA Street Food Fest, and was even featured in Static Revenger’s new video for Vega$. We also did a private house party with a performance by Bruno Mars.

Check out more pictures here: Camarena Taco Truckin’

As you might have guessed, the truck was extremely well received. I mean c’mon, who doesn’t want free tacos? The free food is definitely an attraction in itself, but again we’re here for the tequila. Just ask Elvis, he’s down with Camarena.

The story doesn’t stop here. The GPS on the truck let Angelenos find us anytime, anywhere. And we also broadcast our whereabouts on Twitter.com/CamarenaTequila & Facebook.com/TequilaCamarena

The truck is going on hiatus for fall, but something tells me you’ll see it again somewhere.

Special thanks to Orion Car Audio for the crazy sound hookup.

Cheers!

Twitter helps you get it right

As Mashable explains in “How Twitter’s New Media Blog Aims To Teach By Example,” Twitter is taking a pro-active role in teaching users how to make the most out of their service.

For all the folks out there — haters and otherwise — who continue to question the validity of Twitter as a communication medium, y’all need to pay attention.

media.twitter.com isn’t just a blog. It’s an important step forward in the evolution of technology-based communication.

MySpace started us off on the wrong foot by building a massive audience and not knowing quite what to do with it themselves. Let’s assume they did their best to learn on the fly how to turn their website into a marketing platform, and as it goes with trial and error, success was very hit or miss (with lots of emphasis on “miss”). Most importantly, in typical old-media fashion, the assistance they provided was for serious advertisers only and it involved swarms of sales support teams and conference calls to help you figure out what to do to reach their crowd.

Then Facebook came along, with its brashness and anti-corporate attitude. Kind of like, “we don’t care, you figure it out.” It’s taken years for them to come around, and even now most of their assistance is human-based. And it’s mostly around advertising programs, rather than community building.

So now here’s Twitter, putting it all out there on a blog for anyone to see. Their open style is the way of the future. They’re giving us tips and case studies. It’s almost like they want us to be successful using their service. What a crazy concept!

I’m not arrogant enough to predict where social media is heading, and I’m not here to say it’s going to be all about Twitter. But I am certain that as things continue to get more complicated, the companies who take an active role in creating win-win relationships between marketers and their audiences will have a huge advantage.

This TED Talk is from Eric Giler, CEO of a company called WiTricity, which has developed a technology that will power and charge our electronic devices, wirelessly. This is a company that could change the world.

Think about it. Our phones, computers, gadgets, and cars are increasingly complex and powerful. The one thing that holds them back is power. iPhone’s battery life is terrible. So is MacBook’s. Electric cars may be the future, but they have to be plugged in, which sucks. This limits our mobility, our productivity, and possibly the resulting happiness that comes from things like mobility and productivity.

Where am I going with this?

Imagine if Coke had bought Twitter a couple years back. Its >70 million users would be exposed to Coke branding that many more times than they already are. Think that would be significant for Coke’s business? Damn straight. Now think about Facebook, Foursquare, Google, and the other companies that are changing lives and societies on a daily basis. What if instead of spending billions of dollars to advertise on these networks, major consumer brands spent just a fraction of that amount in early-stage investment capital to fund these companies? Guess what:

1. They’d have a better understanding of consumer behavior
2. They’d make money, possibly lots and lots of money
3. They’d earn the goodwill of being positioned as forward-thinking and innovative
4. They’d have countless opportunities for integration and cross-promotion

Back when I started the Rebel Organization, the premise was that major corporate money should go to investing in culture. The vision was that brands could fund records, create works of art, invest in movies. Instead of waiting for an act to become huge and then spend for a tour sponsorship that nobody cares about, put the money in early to support artist development and have a fan for life in the artist, and that artist will tell all of his fans.

We were somewhat successful in that endeavor, but we’ve never brought it to the scale it deserves.

Russell Simmons recently called social media “the New Hip Hop.” I agree completely, and that idea is reshaping my vision for a future where in addition to (or instead of) investing in culture, brands should also be investing in social technologies.

Heed my word: smart marketers will gain tremendous advantage over their slower competitors. Which one are you?

We’re at dinner last night and Jihaad noticed Herbie Hancock sitting at the table next to us. If you don’t know who that is, please stop reading now.

For the rest of us, or at least for me, Herbie is a living legend. We talked about buying his dinner, but he was at a big table, so we sent over a couple desserts as an expression our respect.

Meanwhile, I opened TweetDeck and posted “Sitting next to herbie hancock at dinner” to both Twitter and Facebook.

A while later, I looked down at my phone and a friend had responded “Wish him happy birthday” (thanks Nicole for the tip). As I’m reading that to the table, Mr. Hancock got up to thank us for the desserts. We all replied “Happy Birthday!” and had a brief chat with him. It was a social media moment.

Why am I telling you this?

Because this kind of serendipity is only possible when you live your brand. I’m active in social media because I’ve always been socially active. It’s an accurate reflection of how I live and how I do business. And it has always benefitted me.

What’s the benefit, you might ask?

Well, in this case, I’m not tracking metrics. Time spent on Twitter vs. # of childhood heroes I’ve gotten to meet. It’s just part of my process.

How do you make living your brand part of your process? Leave a comment or post Herbie a birthday wish.

You may have seen this New York Times article making the controversial statement that the DVR may be helping, rather than hurting TV ratings. They say this as a great revelation, as if to say that of course we all know that the DVR is in fact killing TV, which makes the proclamation breaking news.

The article asserts that many people record the shows and actually sit through the commercials. In a single paragraph, the venerable Times has solved the advertising industry’s woes.

If only life were that simple.

Let’s forget about the fact that a growing number of us are letting the commercials play because we’re checking email, Twitter, Facebook, AIM, text messages, or any number of other activities on our phones and computers.

The harsher truth is that for an increasingly savvy audience, it doesn’t matter whether we see the commercials or not. We’re not going to be swayed by silly jingles or celebrity shills. We could skip through the shows and watch only the commercials, we still wouldn’t buy your products that have no soul, that are the same as everything else on the shelf next to you. We’re simply smarter than that.

Successful marketers need to think beyond “cutting through the clutter,” and “disruption.” Assume for a minute that you do have our attention. Now what are you going to say?

Social networks are not brands…

A recent TechCrunch article quotes MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta as saying “Our users don’t know if we’re a social portal, a music site, or an entertainment hub.” True indeed, but a bit like Phil Jackson having a revelation that Laker fans don’t like it when they lose. No shit, sherlock.

The rest of the article contains a memo outlining a series of personnel changes, with no real allusion to an actual plan. Worse, Van Natta seems to only half understand the problem. He correctly identifies a lack of focus as part of the issue, but that’s part of a bigger issue is that MySpace has no brand, at least not one that anyone really cares about.

MySpace is not alone in this. In general, the social networks have become centers for connecting with people you know, and people you don’t know. As such, they don’t really stand for anything. They’re so all-inclusive that as consumers we don’t really care about them. That’s why it was so easy for MySpace to pick up most of Friendster’s users, and then for those users to migrate to Facebook. FB is sure to suffer the same fate if it doesn’t get some fundamental brand issues right.

Frankly, I don’t think either site was ever really a brand, but many companies that start out well enough lose focus along the way as they scale. The thinking usually goes that we can only grow by attracting more people, which generally means watering down what we stand for in order to appeal more broadly. This is exactly the wrong choice.

Both MySpace and Facebook should follow our simple plan, and so should you:

- Determine who you are best suited for. Picture the one person on this planet for whom your brand is a perfect fit. You need to know absolutely everything about this person — what he likes and dislikes, his values, how he makes decisions, who influences him and whom does he influence, plus all the regular demographic stuff.

-What can you do to make this person love you? Notice I didn’t say make him buy your product. That’s only the beginning. Your core target customer has to believe that your brand was made for him, that you get him. Sure, you want him to buy your product, but you want so much more than that. He’s going to talk about you so much that his friends make fun of him, he’s got your logo tattooed on his body. He steals your promotional materials from stores to put them up in his house. He starts his own blog about your brand (do not sue him for this). What’s are you going to do to make him do all that?

- Then you need to focus all of your company’s efforts against making this happen, day after day. It’s not just about your marketing slogan, your focus on the customer has to be woven into everything you do.

- Three small notes about this process:

1. The answer to the questions above not only impacts what products you make, but also what kind of company you are.
2. Part of defining who you are for is also defining who you are not for. There are plenty of things and people your core customer does not like. He needs to feel you standing with him. If your definition of a core customer is “anyone who will give me money,” you’re way off track.
3. If you’re thinking this means you’re only going to appeal to one person in the world, or one type of person, that’s not true. Brands that have meaning create a resonance that radiates out from the core to people who want to be like your guy, or who see a little piece of your guy inside themselves. When it’s done right, the radiation is powerful and can be far reaching. Think about how many people all over the world saw a little bit of Nike in themselves because they wanted to “be like Mike,” even though they never touched a basketball.

This is simple, but not easy. It involves some tough decisions that run counter to the popular idea that all money is good money. But the best and most successful companies in the world — Coke, Nike, Scion, Red Bull, Zappos, Apple, to name a few — are the ones who do this as part of their DNA.

Hey Owen, Mark, Evan, why don’t you let us help you with this before it’s too late.

Wow, Facebook is a force. I was on it pretty early for an old guy (we didn’t even have .edu, or .anything, when I was in school) because I knew a guy who worked there who got me one of the first corporate invitations. Since then, I’ve watched entire companies come on, and the age go up and early-adopter-ness go down. Last summer, most of the people I knew from high school joined over about a month. This month it’s my middle school class. People who haven’t communicated in close to three decades are reminiscing, and scheming about reunions (you know who you are).

That’s not interesting. You already know that. You’ve either seen it happen, or perhaps you’re one of the latecomers making it happen.

What may be interesting is that this is at least the third go-round for social networking. After Friendster and the MySpace came and went, I learned something: we don’t know what the next hot thing will be, but we know it won’t be the same as the current hot thing. It seems online socializing is a migratory behavior. So I say with confidence that Facebook’s reign will fade, only to be replaced by some other shiny new object, which will in turn be pushed aside. You get it.

But Facebook is a little different than those that came before. First, it’s a bit more utilitarian, which seems to be a key to longevity (LinkedIn, AIM). More importantly, the fact that the late adopters are joining en masse suggests that there’s an opportunity to keep people around. These guys just got here, and by definition they’re not as interested in the next new thing. A lot of these people never joined MySpace at all.

To that end, here’s my free advice for Facebook. I’m not here to solve the fact that you may not have a sustainable or even profitable business model. But I do have two suggestions that will keep you alive and relevant for longer.

- Launch Facebook Business. Take LinkedIn out at the ankles. People like Facebook because it’s easy and fun. I get ahold of people all the time that I never seem to catch via email; my guess is because it doesn’t feel like work. So apply that same user experience to the kinds of “work” people do on LinkedIn. My guess is a ton of people are carrying dual accounts. It won’t be tough to get them to forget about the other guys is you start offering similar features, and probably create a wall between business and personal.

- Continue to up the utility. A big frustration is that I now have at least half a dozen contact databases. Mobile Me, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, AIM, Skype, SMS. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few. Sometimes I have to look in multiple places to find someone I want to contact. What we need is a central place from which I can contact anyone within my reach. Why do I have to do the searching and decide how I’m going to communicate? It’s like Grand Central for data. Facebook can offer this functionality and really make people beholden to it.

Facebook needs to think, and act, on this now, while it’s on top. Don’t be like the others and wait until it’s too late. Keep growing your user base, and I’m sure you’ll figure out a way to make money eventually.

From Josh: Dennis White is one of the most creative people I know. When he’s not inventing new names to call himself (Static Revenger, D-Dub, Charm Farm, and probably some others I don’t know about), he’s making dancefloor-packing and chart-topping remixes and original productions, innovative videos or acting as a creative director for Rebel. Plus, he mixes a mean margarita.

We’ve hung out together on more than one continent, and had each other’s backs against barracuda. In other words, we’ve been in the shit. Dennis and I both suffer from a chronic condition: lack of tolerance for stupidity. We experience this affliction in different ways: You might say it makes his skin itch, while it makes my head hurt.

Read his piece here about one of the many things wrong with the world and how to fix it. Then check his music and video skills at www.staticrevenger.com and ddub.com and travelriot.com.

The Internet is Bad by Dennis White

So, here’s my blog post. I hate blogs. Sounds like blob. And I’m not sure that I like blobs.

Mr. Levine has encouraged me to participate in the ‘discussion’ on Rebel Industries and I’m enough of a fan of his to want to follow his lead. I warned him that I don’t like the internet, marketing, social networking, blogging, flogging, computer chatting, texting, tweeting, twitting, tight fitting jeans. I might NOT be the ideal contributor.

Problem is, I’m just old enough to have tried every new internet thing since 1993, the first time that it came out, when it sucked in obscurity. AOL Chat rooms? Freaks. Email? Bullshit. Online porn? Too slow. Social networking? Hows about you and I be friends, and cut out the middleman… I’m WAY behind on everything because I was way ahead on it.

I don’t like any of this social networking nonsense. It is enslaving and alienating, and we’re too caught up in bullshit updates, and friend requests from hot chicks, to know any better or care. I resent that our friendships are being exploited and re-purposed into bland entertainment to the benefit of companies using us as stooges to get their advertising space sold. And LOOK at the photos on most of those social networking sites… LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!!! I have muscles! I know hot chicks! I have big tits! I look good in a bikini! I’ve gone some place interesting! (click HERE to buy cheap insurance)… oh F**K OFF!

My engineer is trying to save me from my impending irrelevance, and signed me up on twitter. It’s the thing this week. Maybe last week. Twitter. Really? I thought he was kidding. DORKster was taken? JERKster is owned by a Russian domain name sales site? Sigh. Fine. If you don’t know about this twitter thing, then let me just take this opportunity to tell you that I love you. Really. The chances that you and I can be friends is far likelier than the chances of me befriending any of the thousands of friends that I paid some assistant to acquire for me on Myspace.

Twitter is bullet point blogging, more or less. You can write only a few sentences per ‘update’. And people can subscribe to your updates, or you can deliver them online in various ways. Drew, my engineer, assures me that it’s awesome, because (I stop listening about here)… so fine, I shall commence twitting. Is it called tweeting? Knowing this stuff is today’s equivalent of knowing how to pronounce INXS in 1982. So, great – I have, like 4 people following me on twitter, so I figure, I better make it sound interesting…. HEY! I’m in Key Largo fishing and diving…HEY! I’m in northern Michigan snowmobiling….HEY! I heard me on the radio…LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! ….D’OH!

I am, however, under the brief impression that there are 2 things that I like about this – 1. it only allows me 2 sentences or so, so it doesn’t take that much time to ‘update’ (no gigs, photos, subscriptions, etc.) and 2. there doesn’t seem to be an advertising annoyance, except I’ve been getting some random twitter usernames following me in suspiciously relevant ways. For example, I updated that I was in Naples, Florida and 20 minutes later, I received an email telling me that I was being followed by my long lost friends at ‘naplesscubagear’ Wow. Clever. Now I really feel like a twit.

I don’t like this form of communication because 1. it fills our head with even more useless nonsense (I caught a fish!) and 2. it robs us of the ability to introduce people individually to our experiences. I want to tell a friend where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing, with out it already being a re-run. ‘DUDE! I caught a nurse shark with my bare hands!’ ‘Yeah- I know.’ Sigh.

How about instead of advertising the highlights of your life to a bunch of people that wouldn’t even CONSIDER driving you to the airport, take the time you spend fucking about on facebook to write a considered, and thoughtful letter to an actual friend. If you are uncomfortable communicating without an option for advertising, include one of those Bed Bath and Beyond coupons that we all have piling up in a drawer, but never seem to have on hand when we actually end up there.

I know that I ain’t nothing but my grandpa complaining about Elvis right now, but dagnabit, I will NOT going quietly into polite societies good night- SOME one has to say it – we’re being used, and enslaved by this nonsense, and society individually and collectively suffers for it.

See, I told you, Josh, I’m not the ideal blog contributer. Now leave me alone. I have iPhone apps to buy, and a wooden duck to carve.

Now playing: Beach Boys, ‘I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times.’

I’ve been wondering how long it would take to see various iterations of Twitter’s micro-blogging revolution, other than on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, who have basically just added the same functionality to their own. For example, Musebin describes itself as “1-line music reviews.” The site — currently in semi-private beta — has been called Twitter x Reddit, but specific to music.

What do you think? Is the abbreviated-interaction format appealing? Do you expect to see other variations on the micro-blog theme? Or will people’s desire to run their mouths win out?