Sooner or later we all make the mistake of using “they” to refer to a company, school, government office or some other organization, even though we know each of those entities is an it, not a they. Here are some tips to help you search for a grammatical solution that won’t make you look dumb.

Problem sentence 1: You name the organization and then refer to it, but you use a plural form, they.

• Google used to be a harmless Internet company with an amusing name, but now they are one of the biggest corporations on the planet.

Fix 1: Change they to it and change the verb form accordingly:

• Google used to sound silly, but now it scares me silly.

Problem sentence 2: You name the organization in possessive form and then refer to it with a plural possessive pronoun, their.

• In 2011 Google’s advertising revenue was more than $36 billion, compared with less than $21 billion by their rivals in the newspaper industry as a whole.

Fix 2: Change their to the possessive form of an appositive – a noun or phrase that means the same thing as the original word (“our first President” is an appositive for “George Washington”):

• Google’s ad revenues are so ginormous that not even the entire newspaper industry can be considered the Internet search giant’s rival anymore.

Problem sentence 3: You name the organization, mentioning some of its activities, and then refer to it in plural form, they.

• Despite Google’s ubiquity, disdain for privacy concerns and corporate heart of stone, I still believe they care about my personal well-being.

Fix 3: Reword to focus on the individuals who make up the organization, and then it’s grammatically correct to use the plural form they:

• Google has a lot of evil geniuses, but I hope they are too busy to bother with little old me.

>> Bing has updated its search engine with some pretty slick social integration. I wouldn’t anticipate Bing seriously challenging Google anytime soon, but it definitely has taken a step in the right direction.

>> Google is still relentlessly trying to make Google+ relevant. The newest attempt to shove it down your throat is Gmail integration, which lets you comment or post to without leaving your inbox. Oh, the Google+ iPhone app just got updated, too. My favorite headline about it: New Google+ iPhone App Looks So Good, You’ll Wish You Actually Used Google+.

>> NBC is dumping, basically, its entire Thursday night comedy lineup with the announcement that 30 Rock, Community AND Parks and Recreation will each have a 13 episode final season this fall. While I understand the ratings may not be as high as NBC would like (and let’s be honest, a show about people in community college really only had a shelf life of 2-3 years, right?) I can only imagine how awful the replacements will be.

>> FOX announced renewals, cancellations and new shows for the fall, too.

>> There’s reportedly a prototype of the Apple TV out there, but don’t expect anything until at least 2014. Also, Samsung now has a 55-inch Super OLED TV. It’s $9,000.

>> C’mon. You never really thought you were going to get free TV on the Internet forever, right?

>> Facebook’s ad revenue fell. What’s to blame? Mobile.

>> Curious about the best times to post on social media? For Twitter it’s Monday between noon and 2 p.m. CST. Facebook, it’s Wednesday at 2 p.m.

>> In theory, this Subway (Puerto Rico) concept is pretty cool. The execution, though, is absurd.

>> Your favorite memes as art.

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In theory, memes have been around forever. Giving your friend bunny ears when you take a picture together — that’s a form of a meme. They have been a staple in pop-culture throughout the years and can be spread through texts, pictures, videos, whatever. And with the rise of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr and other social media platforms (and the fact that everyone who owns a cell phone can be a filmmaker or photographer) memes have exploded in recent years. An episode of South Park this past March even focused on some of the trends and how ridiculous they are, showing just how far memes have come.

While some of the most popular mainstream memes of the past few months include photo fads like Planking, Tebowing and Draping (which AMC used to help promote the season five premiere of Mad Men), the most creative and hilarious (in my opinion, anyway) focus on adding clever, witty text (bold, white, all caps Impact font with a black border) to pictures. Some popular ones: Annoying Facebook Girl, Falling Bear, College Freshman and Scumbag Steve.

What does it mean for marketers, though? To put it simply, memes are a great example of viral or guerrilla marketing at its finest. They are built to be social and shared with friends. They even offer a simple way for consumers to create their own and share.

Athletic companies like Finish Line, Easton and ESPN have all experimented with memes in recent weeks with different strategies and different successes. Check it out:

Finish Line uses existing popular memes like Condescending Wonka and shares ones that are relevant to their fans — sneakerheads. The content typically gets thousands of Likes and always generates some interesting discussions in the comments.

Easton has been creating its own custom memes on its sport specific Facebook pages for hockey and baseball. The Easton memes are all original and manage to be witty and fun while not being over the top and are a perfect fit with its branding.

ESPN’s use of memes is a bit of a head-scratcher. While it’s totally understandable to play it safe and try not offend anyone, what ESPN does share is usually confusing and sometimes doesn’t even make sense at all. Take this one for instance. Nothing about Jeff Van Gundy (the guy in the photo) or anything in the image represents a triple-header in any way.

Be careful when using memes for marketing purposes. Typically, many memes can come across as snarky and sometimes even offensive to a certain audience. It’s important to find humor in and laugh at yourself, but you don’t want to set yourself up for embarrassment or widespread ridicule. Keep the typical rules of social media in mind. Do your research. Don’t be pushy. Don’t be salesy. Don’t be fake. Don’t make it all about you and your product. Share quality content. Encourage others to do the same. Acknowledge it.

ARCTIC, ANTARCTIC

My mistake: Artic and Anartic.

My excuse: The “c” is barely pronounced, and as I sound out the word, I leave the letter out. On “Antarctic” I also leave the first “t” out for the same reason.

My pledge: Try harder to remember the “c” and “t.”

FLUORESCENT

My mistake: floresent, fluorescent.

My excuse: I don’t expect “uo” or “sc” to be paired letters.

My pledge: Look it up. The word is more common now with the advent of energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs.

SILHOUETTE

My mistake: silluette, silluotte, sillouhette, who knows? It’s a crapshoot.

My excuse: It’s too French, too hard to remember.

My pledge: Look it up.

VENGEANCE

My mistake: vengence.

My excuse: I don’t expect the “a” to be there.

My pledge: Try harder to remember the “a” is there.

>> More new iPhone rumors are leaking. From what I can see: bigger screen, longer but slimmer (yeah, yeah, that’s what she said) and a new charging dock. Which means all my iPod dock speaker systems will go the way of the Walkman sooner than I expected.

>> Facebook added an “Organ Donor” option for Timeline. Which I think is kind of weird, but I suppose it’s for a good cause. Indicating you are an organ donor on Facebook means nothing legally, though. You still need to register when getting your drivers license or sign up through an online registry to make it official.

>> While we’re on the Facebook subject (again), more than 13 million users don’t use any privacy settings. None. Nada. ZERO. That’s irresponsibly insane. Oh, and they set their IPO at $28 to $35 per share.

>> CNN is losing viewers. So is Nickelodeon.

>> Michael Jackson may be gone but he’s still pitching Pepsi.

>> Delicious, chocolatey hazelnut spread Nutella claims their Facebook ads outperformed TV ads in Germany. Personally, I suspect we may be hearing this more and more in the near future.

>> I wrote about changes to Foursquare awhile back. Since then, I admittedly have hardly used the platform at all to check in. But I have used it find places to chow down. Looks like I’m not alone.

>> This is supposedly the sequel to Apple’s infamous “1984” ad. I’m not even going to attempt to explain what is going on here.

>> I love Dumb and Dumber so I was ecstatic last month when they announced a real sequel is in the works. Anyway, here is a better-than-the-original movie poster for it along with 17 others.

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This isn’t a new topic. Heck, you probably become nauseated just hearing the term social media at this point. Even I’ll admit it feels like Facebook this, Twitter that has been shoved down our throats ad nauseam the last few years.

Over the last few weeks, though, I’ve had the opportunity to interview a handful of college students for our social media internship here at SKAR. I ask ‘em all the same question: How would you define social media? Their answers always vary to an extent. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think that’s actually very representative of social media in a way. It’s different for everyone. The way I use it may be different than how you use it. The way Coca-Cola uses it may be different than how the Nebraska Lottery uses it. So there’s not necessarily a right or wrong answer to my question. (Although, there are definitely some misguided interpretations and responses.) But this is how I would sum it up:

Social media in the most general of terms is content sharing. Sharing is social. Content is media. Whether it’s pictures, videos, news links, information, where you’re at, what you’re listening to, what you’re eating, whatever, when that information is shared for a group of people to see, it can be considered social media. And by sharing that information, you are communicating with others and inviting them to share as well. That’s how conversations start. That’s how relationships are built. That’s how I define social media. It’s not complicated. It’s communicating back and forth. It’s relationship building. It’s the sharing of content.

So, how do you define social media?

“Descriptive grammar” authorities (who describe the rules of language as it’s actually used) tell us it’s OK to use different from or different than or even different to in sentences like this: Everybody knows girls are different from boys.

Descriptive grammarians can back up their opinions with quotations from fine authors:

• “… not being afraid to be different from the rest of them” – Flannery O’Connor, letter, 1959.

• “Life in cadet school for Major Major was no different than life had been for him all along” – Joseph Heller, Catch-22, 1961.

• “Perhaps gentlemen are different to what they were when I was young …” – E.M. Forster, Room with a View, 1908.

“Prescriptive grammar” authorities (who prescribe the rules of language as it should be used) tell us that only different from is correct, that different than is a confusion with “other than,” and that different to is a British usage rarely written or spoken in the U.S.

Prescriptive grammarians also point out that it’s logical to say Girls differ from boys, but no one would use differ than in that sentence. They say “than” should be reserved for comparisons: Girls are often prettier than boys and sometimes smarter than boys.

My advice is to play it safe. When you go to a job interview and have the opportunity to use one of these phrases, avoid looking inappropriate or dumb. Use the one approved by both descriptive and prescriptive authorities: Gee, this office is different from the last place I worked – no bars on the windows.

Author citations come from Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, Merriam-Webster, 1989.

We had a fantastic showing at the 2012 Omaha AMA Pinnacle awards bringing home Best of Show for our longtime client Sue Bee Honey and their “Trust the Taste” campaign. We also received Pinnacle Awards for:

• The Nebraska Lottery’s $20 Scratch Game “Limited”
• SKAR’s Green Lantern Movie Invitation to the Nebraska Lottery
• The promotional materials for the 2011 Ted E. Bear Hollow Comfort Food Classic

What’s unique about the AMA Pinnacle awards as compared to a lot of other industry award shows is that the winners are based on measurable results. It’s not just about clever punchlines and jaw-dropping websites. It’s showing that the ideas and strategies you created were met with true success. All in all, it was a great night for SKAR. We’re proud of the work we did to help our clients and look forward to creating even more success stories for them.

>> The NFL Draft began last night and while no official national numbers have been released yet (at least that I can find) the first round of the event seems to have been competitive with some big-name shows on some big-name networks. Considering the amount of exposure these young athletes are getting these days (thanks to social media), it shouldn’t be surprising. While we’re on the subject of sports, take a look at this infographic about the influence social media has had on the industry.

>> Are the logos for this summer’s Olympic games in London the worst in the games history? At first glance, I thought, “Wow. That’s awful.” Then I looked through the gallery of other logos and mascots and thought, “Yep. This actually might be the worst of all time.” To me, this logo does not represent current design trends or anything Olympic related. It simply looks like a lazy interpretation of the opening credits from Saved By The Bell.

>> A new study shows that there is a correlation between an individual’s personality traits and how he or she interacts on social media sites. WHO WOULDA THOUGHT?!

>> Budweiser may be the King of Beers but Miller Lite is definitely the King of Finding Stupid Ways to Market Awful-Tasting Beer. The company that brought us the Vortex bottle has its newest innovation: the punch top can. Shotgunning frat guys everywhere must be stoked, bro.

>> Pizza Hut has been in the news for creating pizza crusts stuffed with hot dogs and topped with mini cheeseburgers and chicken nuggets for some of its overseas markets. That shouldn’t be shocking considering some of the weird foods you can find abroad.

>> Facebook makes about $4.84 off each user per year. That’s less than a Whopper Extra Value Meal at Burger King. Based on Facebook’s upcoming IPO, though, each user is worth approximately $100 to the social networking juaggernaut. Why the discrepancy? Here’s some insight.

>> A good read that highlights five of the best ad campaigns that helped change the face of digital marketing.

>> For those sick of Klout there is now Klouchebag. I got a 55, making me a “bit of a douchebag.” Sounds about right.

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Bright colors and pretty pictures are typically what get people’s attention. But the heart of any advertisement lies within the copy. And I’m not just saying that to make myself feel important. The information conveyed — from the headline to the final period — provides readers with the background and specifics they need to make an informed decision, so don’t half ass it. Here are a couple simple tips to follow:

Start with your headline. Along with the visuals, the headline sets the tone for the entire piece. It establishes the voice, attitude and what you are trying to communicate in one fell swoop. Plus, if consumers are only going to read one thing, chances are it’s going to be the headline. I usually try to write dozens of possible headlines, take a break, then write more before determining which direction I want to take my writing.

Create subheads for structure. A lot of times we use headlines that are quirky or thought-provoking with the goal of tickling readers’ curiosity and compelling them to read further. Subheads can help put things in perspective and break up different sections.

Draw readers in. The first sentence (and paragraph, really) should get to the point but not in a boring, salesy kind of way. Be charming and witty and grab attention. Make sure the sentences flow naturally and keep the reader interested.

Bullet points are your friends. Believe it or not, most people don’t read every single word on the paper or screen. Shocking, right? Breaking thoughts down with bullets points helps emphasize the main points you are trying to get across.

End it strong. If the reader has made it that far, you’ve done well. Make sure your closing line is full of energy and inspires the reader to take action.

That’s how I attack writing projects and it hasn’t failed me yet. It’s also important to take your time and read what you write aloud to make sure it sounds right. And don’t be afraid to step away for awhile if the dreaded writer’s block starts to set in.

Oh, and one last thing: For God’s sake, have someone proof your writing. A misspelled word or even just a comma in the wrong place can kill your credibility.