There’s a digital twist to the automobile test drive: Strut your stuff on social media and drive a new Chevrolet for three days.

For the second time this year, General Motors‘ volume division has contracted with Klout, the service that rates and ranks a person’s “social influence,” then runs a kind of sampling program for the Web 2.0 era, putting products into the hands of the digital influential. The samples, called “perks,” might include software, deodorant, coffee or, in this case, a car.

Chevrolet is paying Klout an undisclosed sum to arrange three-day loans of its new American-made subcompact, the 2012 Sonic, to people with a “Klout score” of at least 35. The program, which began this month and runs through Dec. 14, follows a collaboration earlier this year promoting the Volt, Chevy’s $40,000 plug-in electric hybrid. Twenty Klout participants drove the Volt, and all but one posted blogs complimentary to the car, said Cristi Vazquez, a Chevrolet spokesperson in Detroit. The participants also generated about 2,000 tweets, she said.

Ms. Vasquez said that 139 drives would be offered before mid-December in Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Dallas and San Francisco. GM is supplying four or five Sonics in each of the five cities. “It’s effective for getting out the message,” said Ms. Vasquez. “One of the things we’ve found is that the best way to get people to change their perception about our company is to get them behind the wheel.”

Klout scores range from zero to 100 (though they’re hardly scientific) and are intended to measure a person’s social influence. Those participating in Chevy’s latest program must also have a valid driver’s license but are not required to post good things about the products that they test. They can say negative things, or they can say nothing at all.

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When the four co-founders of Warby Parker were readying the launch two years ago of their internet-based eyewear venture, they channeled a who’s who list of marketing role models: Apple as a master of design and function; Zappos for customer experience; Nike for building an enduring brand; and Method and Patagonia as trailblazers with clear “do good” missions.

The high aspirations appear to be working. The young company hit its first-year sales target in three weeks, sold out of its top 15 styles and had a wait list of 20,000 customers after a month in business.

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Sumner Redstone must be wondering what he’s hearing. At one of his media companies, Viacom, executives are openly fretting about “scatter,” the ad time sold closer to air date that typically serves as a barometer for marketers’ TV demand. And at the other, CBS Corp., CEO Les Moonves recently told investors that “scatter” demand is just fine.

So are advertisers facing a softening ad market or do they still have to grapple with the tough premiums they’ve been paying for the last few years?

Concern is palpable. With the U.S. still mired in a sluggish economy, advertisers’ willingness to spend may well hinge on consumers’ ability to buy the goods they hawk. “U.S. advertising trends have been decelerating over 2011 and came in below forecast for the second quarter in a row,” Nomura Securities analyst Michael Nathanson said in a research note Monday. “We are worried that national scatter trends, a major source of upside, have cooled and will become even more challenging in the first quarter,” he said.

While CBS said it believes its recent prime-time performance will help it snare the lion’s share of scatter spending, other media outlets have not been as ebullient. Sister corporation Viacom suggested the market for “scatter” was softening compared to past quarters. AMC Networks last week reinforced that view, noting that sponsors were waiting longer than they had in the past to put down money on scatter advertising. Walt Disney also suggested that scatter demand has “slowed.”

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The first generation of landing pages was basic, almost cliché. They consisted of a headline, a few bullet points, a “hero shot” image, and a form. They captured leads with the promise of a whitepaper, webinar, or demo—or simply contact from a salesperson.

Those first landing pages weren’t great. But they were the first incarnation of context-specific, post-click marketing, and they were effective enough to justify their implementation. And they hinted at more potential.

In 2008, with the publication of books such as Tim Ash’s Landing Page Optimization and Bryan Eisenberg’s Always Be Testing, the second generation of landing pages was born.

The two foundations of that era were…

1. Widespread adoption of A/B and multivariate testing
2. Portfolios of scores or hundreds of landing pages, each focused on tight “message match” with the ads or emails driving clicks to them

Best-practices began to solidify around form length, calls-to-action, and social proof. Software products appeared to help marketers manage their growing conversion-optimization programs. Eventually, almost every digital marketer acquired some experience with landing pages of that kind.

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Get ready for more ads that sound almost, but not exactly, like your favorite pop songs.

The music-licensing arm of photo service Getty Images (called, naturally, Getty Images Music) has announced that it’s partnering with Indaba Music, an online service that connects musicians with collaborators and moneymaking opportunities. The goal, the companies say, is to allow the musicians on Indaba to create new songs catering to the needs of the advertisers and other content creators using Getty.

That should fix one of the big problems Indaba CEO J.J. Rosen saw at his last job as an executive vice president at Sony Music. “You’d get a lot of inbound [licensing] requests . . . and then the majority of deals would not materialize,” he said.

There were a number of reasons why these deals fall through, he says. A big one was the fact that brands often can’t get clearance for the specific song they want. Going forward, if a client can’t afford to license a Top 40 hit, or if it’s just not available, the Getty-Indaba partnership should lead to the creation of songs that have the sound they’re looking for.

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Just as a banner season for political advertising is starting, the Obama administration has thrown broadcasters a curveball — and broadcasters are hustling to figure out what it might mean in terms of costs and implications.

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed requiring television stations to post online information about their political advertisers.

That information, currently kept in paper files at the stations, includes the names of candidates or groups requesting to run an ad, the reason for broadcasting the ad, the time and placement of the ad and its cost.

Moving that information online to a website that would be run by the FCC has provoked concern from the National Association of Broadcasters.

“The political file must be very frequently updated, particularly during the periods close to local, state and federal elections,” said a recent letter by a NAB attorney to the FCC. “Developing a system of uploading, organizing, and ensuring timely online access to the political file presents a significant challenge.”

The move was approved by FCC commissioners last week and the new proposal is expected to be printed in the Federal Register soon, perhaps as early as this week, at which time there will be 30 days for public comment aimed at influencing the final regulations.

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Everything old is new again.

And that’s great for Haggar, the 85-year-old men’s clothing manufacturer best known for popularizing the term “slacks.” Haggar is plotting a return to the conversation with an ad campaign slated to roll out over the next several months pushing the brand, as well as a new product, an eco-friendly line of pants dubbed “Life Khaki,” that it hopes will give it cachet with a younger consumer.

Made of recycled material (it claims to take three plastic bottles out of the environment for each pair) the pants are the center of a new ad blitz slated to roll out over the next several months. The push will sprawl across a range of media channels including outdoor, sports radio, print-to-display ads, email and Facebook. Haggar is also hitting the PR circuit hard, courting men’s fashion writers and teaming up with retail partners — including JCPenney, Kohl’s and Sears — to revamp in-store displays.

After working with a range of shops over the years, including Crispin Porter & Bogusky, Haggar has turned to Austin-based indie agency McGarrah-Jessee to help with the Life Khaki launch and brand advertising to launch in early 2012.

Haggar’s already touched a nerve: The brand said the average age of its core customer has fallen from between 40 and 50 years old a decade ago to somewhere between 25 and 35 years old today.

“Heritage will only take you so far,” said Jon Ragsdale, VP-marketing and merchandising for Haggar. “Brands like us that have longevity have to continue to reconnect.”

The good news for heritage brands is that nostalgic fans usually welcome them back with open arms.

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Sears is getting in on the local deals craze, albeit a bit late. The retail giant has launched a pair of new sites that highlight deals and discounts on merchandise at an Internet user’s nearest Sears or Kmart outlet.

The digital ads featured on searslocalad.com and kmartlocalad.com provide product descriptions and pricing, and allow users to check whether items are currently in stock. Customers can also browse the ads by category and create and share shopping lists by email. Plus, they can print or send them to their mobile phone for in-store shopping.

Members of Sears’ “Shop Your Way” rewards program will be able to preview upcoming sale items on the sites and will eventually be able to collect rewards points by using the digital ads. In addition to product descriptions, Sears plans to add ratings and reviews to sale items on the sites.

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For its second year of offering its boneless pork barbecue sandwich as a national limited-time offer, McDonald’s is touting the product with a new Facebook game, “The Quest for the Golden McRib.”

The McRib sandwich has returned nationwide to participating McDonald’s restaurants through Nov. 14. Through the game, people can challenge their wits, smarts and love of the McRib sandwich through the company’s Facebook page.

The game uses integration with Google Maps to allow customers to “hunt” for one of 10 virtual golden McRibs hidden at McDonald’s restaurants around the world (meeting quirky characters along the way such as barbecue-loving unicorns, emo pilgrims and Viking accountants). People are encouraged to use the social component to share their discoveries and scores with friends and earn virtual badges for their profile pages, explains Rick Wion, McDonald’s director of social media.

“McDonald’s has used gaming as part of campaigns for a few years now and we always see lots of positive feedback and strong engagement from our customers,” Wion tells Marketing Daily in response to emailed questions. “Developing a game around a product that already instills a lot of passion seemed a natural step for us.”

The McRib has amassed an enthusiastic following as a product with a limited-time availability (like the company’s Shamrock Shake). Last year, the McRib was added to the company’s national menu for the first time since 1994, spurring a 4.8% sales increase for the month of November.

“We know that McRib fans are very passionate about their favorite sandwich and part of our strategy for developing the game was to provide them an experience that extends that love and provides more ways to share,” Wion says.

In addition to the game, McDonald’s will promote the limited-time availability of the McRib with a number of other traditional advertising, social marketing and public relations, though the company is also counting on its fans’ passions to help spread the word. “We know that fan’s love of the sandwich will also leads to lots of online conversations and our social media team will be on the spot to celebrate the love with our fans,” Wion says.

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