This past weekend, the staff of Mekanism flew out to Palm Springs together for a family vacation…

The first annual Mekanism Storytelling Summit.

There was laughing. There was crying (mostly from laughing, or at least that’s what people are saying). There was…you know, storytelling.

We were lucky enough to hear some pretty rad insights from Tim Ferriss (author of The 4-Hour Body) and Jonathan Harris. But most importantly?

We lit crap on fire in the middle of the desert and had a (very safe, we promise) kickass time bonding while doing it.

Without trust falls.

We’ll have more pictures up soon for all of those involved.

Is this post a bit self serving? Sure. But we had a great time and wanted to tell ourselves and the internet about it.

Thanks to everyone we’ve had the pleasure of doing business with. From all of us here at Mekanism, here’s to a great new year.

If it’s anything like our summit. we’re pretty stoked.

Sorry for the title. It was there. Had to take it.

We worked with our friends at PepsiCo to promote Brisk iced tea with a little help from the Star Wars guys (who just so happen to be all 3-D in the re-release of Lucasfilm’s “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace 3D”).

You’ll see what we mean in a new spot starring Mr. Maul and Yoda real soon.

Oh. An addicting mobile app, Brisksaber, will accompany the whole initiative as well.

You can hear all about it in the New York Times. It’s a newspaper we enjoy.

To make that guessing game a little bit easier, below are the 2,087 pictures our amazing photographer Stian Rasmussen took of the event.

Thanks to everyone who came and drank our beer. Or whiskey. Or lit a sparkler. Or danced. Or flipped off the camera.

(We’re lookin’ at you, Camilla.)

Honestly, though. The party was amazing and we’re so glad so many of you could come.

Happy Holidays, Internet. We hope you have a lovely one with your family and friends.

No, you know what? F*%k this. I’m not writing this.

Must be nice.

(can I go next time?)

(congrats, Michael..this is effing incredible.)

1) We made ANYTHING with apes in it. Just in general.

2) When we DID make anything with apes in it, we made a really succesful viral campaign that we’re proud of.

3) Someone called our company a band.

4) Someone very important said we were the Small Agency of the Year.

And we talk all about it below. Just click the photo with the outrageously angry ape on it.

Thanks, internet.

We’re proud of all the work Malcolm has done, just as a vague “in general.” And we’re proud that he’s graduated to the stage in a director’s career where he takes pictures like this that make you jealous of his life.

Must be nice, buddy. Must be nice.

(This was after the AICP’s, but does it even matter?)

And then: boom. A friggin’ GOLDMINE poured into my inbox from the social media team today.

Good to be back. There is not one thing in here that isn’t hilarious. Enjoy.

This is what’s trending at Mekanism this week.

Chin Lu (@chinhualu): Love At First Sight

If you were ever concerned that you’d made an ass of yourself, someone else just won. Outrageously.

Brendan Gahan (@BrendanGahan): Foursquare for Sex

Maybe you’ve got to be high levels of nerdy to respect and understand this one. But it’s so good that’s it’s painful. They get every detail right. Everything.

Elijah Bilotta (@frodoBKK): Serenading Unicorn Serenades Sarah Silverman

This is the best anything I’ve seen in a long time. Crying laughing. So well done. The rest of their content is worth a look. Great job on the branded content.

Daisy Cheng (@daise): Thump.

I know, I know, cat video. BUT LOOK AT WHEN HIS HEAD FALLS I MEAN THAT’S FUNNY.

Evan Romano (@romskiii): Fight For Your Right Revisited

Honestly: The Beastie Boys are still relevant and it’s been like 25 years. This is unreal. They’re unstoppable.

Ryan Lee (@owlsquid): Most Obnoxious Kid Of All Time

Everyone will hate you for the rest of your life, kid. Everyone.

See you next Friday.

The panel, with the filmmaker noted above, Danny Trejo, Mek’s Ian Kovalik and PepsiCo Brand manager Jamal Henderson went swimmingly. Thanks so much to all who attended, we really appreciated it. Below are some great shots from the event.

“#sxsw is amazing.”

“soooo bummed I’m not at #sxsw”

“#sxsw just found out about an app that’s a ‘game changer’ that will be obsolete in 17 days!”

And then, in an ironic twist of fate: all of the nerds will get run out of town when the cool kids come to play music.

High School never ended after all, eh?

We kid. We kid. Sort of. Have a great time if you’re gonna be out there. And go see our panel here.

This is what’s trending at Mekanism this week.

Chin Lu (@chinhualu): Channing Tatum / Charlene Yi Cinemash Dirty Dancing

Charlene Yi is so awkward. The Michael Cera of…up and coming awkward Asian talents.

Daisy Cheng (@daise): Baby Trashes Bar in Las Palmas

The person who thought of this is a genius. I would love to be this baby so I could watch myself getting trashed at a puppet bar and breaking sh*t when I grew up.

Christine Ngo (@ChristineNgo): Real Corn Nuts Ad

I’m sure most of you have heard this in the past. But…yeah. This really happened. And whoever was the CD on this one either lost his job or got arrested or went into porn.

Ryan Lee/Andre Ricciardi (@owlsquid/@0andre0): Mike Tyson Loves Bieber

Ryan and Andre are also the creative team who brought you “Hot Chicks Picking Up Dog Sh*t” and other hit websites.

Evan Romano (@romskiii): First Surfing Kickflip Ever Documented

And this is just kind of amazing.

See you next Friday.

If you work in social media and/or advertising (seems like the two are mutually exclusive these days, whether you like it or not), there’s a good chance you’re on Twitter. And there’s a good chance you are following @mktgdouchebag.

The anonymous twitter account is run by someone in the industry who laughs at his own profession, really. His dry wit and blunt, humorous commentaries on the industry’s oftentimes ridiculous behavior and overly indulgent self-appreciation is a welcome change of pace.

Being a gigantic fanboy of his, I was honored to have been able to interview him (albeit through email…the guy has to remain anonymous, right?). I obviously work in social media and advertising, so it’s pretty easy to get caught up in they hype of it all. He reminds me to stay humble. And maybe make fun of this industry every now and again in the process.

Without further ado: My (@brendangahan) interview with @mktgdouchebag.

And yeah, I just shamelessly found a way to put my twitter handle in this post to gain followers. I’m a marketing douchebag. It’s what we do.

—–

Q: What incident made you start the @mktgdouchebag persona? Did something/someone push you over the edge?

There are many reasons why I started the @mktgdouchebag persona, though I’m not sure which are true. Here are a few that sound good to me.

First, I was conflicted, plain and simple. Most of my free time is spent with people who actually make stuff: food people and musicians and clothing designers and furniture makers and software developers and other artists who don’t want to read me whining online about marketing.

Yet, I felt compelled to share my stupid opinions gleaned from failing at social media marketing since the late 1990s, when the greater marketing industry thought what we were doing was heresy and a waste of time.

Therefore, I felt a good option was a pseudonym with which I could talk about marketing but in a fun way. Not the “Be All You Can Be!” motivational-coach way.

What started as a place to blow off some steam, though, has taught me more than any other social media project I’ve ever worked on. It’s quite the sociological experiment. How will people interact with an anonymous person who could be, in reality, an intern? Will anyone agree with my weird thoughts? And will they turn on me as familiarity breeds contempt? Will I use the opportunity to try to gain some friends only to monetize their asses when I come out with my book?

The greatest thing about Twitter? It helps improve your writing by constraining you and offering you a means to receive immediate feedback.

Q: Are you going to RT the blog post to this interview? That seems like something mktgdouchebag would do.

Hell yeah. Not only am I going to RT the blog post, but I’m going to clandestinely contact some “influencers” whom I’ve “cultivated” and ask them to retweet it too. Soon, you’ll see this ”groundswell” of word-of-mouth action that’ll hit the world like the swine flu. It’ll be akin to the last political movement you forgot you “Liked” 20,000 hangovers ago.

Q: Who in the social media space do you admire?

My mom. She has a way of posting embarrassing pics of me on Facebook that really crystallizes my personal brand. I admire her and dead people whose works have stood the test of time without their having to suck up to anybody, which you can’t do really well when you’re dead.

I don’t know. I guess I admire the regular people who use social media in tasteful ways because it’s fun. Anybody who thinks they’re a big deal because they’re known around the world as a social media marketer is about as good for human progress as AIDS. Cool people understate their accomplishments.

Q: Who’s the douchiest in the space?

I’m clearly the douchiest in the space. Fully admit. Although, I tend to chuckle at the people who are basically frat boys dressed like they’re from the movie Wall Street, but pretending to be anthropology professors or whatever. Dude, you’re a publicist, not Claude Levi-Strauss. These are the self-styled pundits who are one chromosome away from writing catchy religious sayings on those billboards outside churches.

I also laugh at Social Media Gluesniffers who disagreed with my friends two years ago but, now that it’s fashionable to question everything, have changed their tune. The front lines get the arrows, I guess. The followers pick the arrows out of their backs and sell them.

Everything I say is in good fun; I don’t hate anybody. Perhaps if I weren’t making my clients cash doing social media my way I would.

Q: What’s the most douchiest marketing campaign that you’ve seen in recent memory?

The entire emergence of Facebook has been pretty textbook.

Step 1: Gain grassroots support by pretending to be humanitarian through championing the Ministries of Authenticity and Transparency (two ministries Orwell forgot).

Step 2: Once you have a groundswell of people using the service, exploit it to get investment and advertising.

Step 3, to come: Get acquired or go public, and then suck.

I prefer how Twitter markets itself. Tastefully. You can tell which company is staffed with people who actually have real friends.

All social networks are like trendy bars. Once the jocks from high school (or your grandpa, as of late) show up and start hitting on your girlfriend and yelling loud stuff, your friends will leave. Anybody who buys a social network with the tall dollars obviously doesn’t go to enough parties to know better.

Do the people you work with know about your mktgdouchebag account?

Not that I know of. Though people that I work with unwittingly follow and interact with me. I work with pretty funny people who probably wouldn’t care, though.

What’s funny is that some people who aren’t warm with me in real life interact fondly with @mktgdouchebag. Sort of hurts my feeling. Or half of it.

Q: Does anyone know your true identity?

A handful of people: My best friends and all of my past and current ladyfriends. I’d tell people but I really don’t think it’d be as fun for them or me. People enjoy things they can’t fully know.

Q: Have we ever met?

In your nightmares, maybe. Like, remember when you were falling from the sky after visiting your kindergarten class in your underwear during that show-and-tell with your Lady Jaye action figure with the swivel-arm battlegrip and that guy with the Bluetooth acted like he was going to catch you from hitting the ground? Yeah. You’ve probably gnawed your teeth on me in the middle of the night.

Q: Where does @mktgdouchebag hang out on the weekend?

Restaurants, run by former vegans, that now serve a bunch of questionable meat options like gourmet pig ears and ant tongue. Also: my bed because I like to sleep in late and wake up crying.

Art openings for people with no formal training, house shows where some sweaty cacophonous band is playing, a taqueria where we drink 10,000 margaritas and say really sociopathic stuff, parties at 3:30 a.m. in the morning where I receive the text from home asking, “Where are you? You said you’d be home.”

I also like to make videos and write stuff and play instruments with friends much more talented than I.

Q: Fill in the blank. I hate it when clowns _______ me.

I hate it when clowns don’t pick me to play that game on the Bozo show in which you throw the ping-pong ball into the buckets to win prizes like a BMX bike. I’m still bitter about that. Pretty much all of this stuff is a manifestation of that let-down.

Q: Douchebag marketing word of 2010? 2011? 3011?

2010: Game changer: Half the people who’ve said this have never won a game in their life.

2011: Pivot: The recessionary equivalent of “ratchet up.”

3011: Satan: Because hell will hath frozen over by then

Q: How/why did you pick your twitter icon?

I Google image searched “Bluetooth.” Pretty lame, huh? In real life, I’m all shaggy-haired and dressed like a 1980′s dad playing tennis, which doesn’t engender much trust.

This isn’t an answer to a question but I just want to close with one bit. To paraphrase Zadie Smith, there are no rules. There’s only pulling it off. If you want to survive in marketing, talk to your customers and find out where they hang out. Interact with them there. Ask them whom they trust. Talk to those people. Then, measure what you did to see if it achieved some goal. That’s pretty much it. Anybody that’s a zealot about any new-fangled marketing tool or practice is either an idiot or a salesman.

Thanks, Mekanism. I think you kids are swell and do neat work.

- Marketing Douchebag

Charlie Sheen.

#Winning.

#Tigerblood.

#ChooseYourVice.

Charlie Sheen.

I just figure if you use the internet, or have spoken to anyone on the planet (which, to be fair, some internet people don’t do)…I’d imagine you didn’t get to do anything this week without talking about Charlie Sheen. So we’ll only include one Sheen video this week.

By the time you read this, Charlie Sheen has probably won again. Or died. That’s just a guesstimate.

This is what’s trending at Mekanism this week.

Chin Lu (@chinhualu): Baby Worship

This is either funny or horrifying. Or both.

Drew Hoolhorst (@drewber): Winning by Charlie Sheen

There are so many Charlie Sheen things one could post this week. But then Jimmy Fallon made the decision easier. That’s a disturbingly good impression. The hand gestures. THE HAND gestures!

Christine Ngo (@ChristineNgo): Britney Spears: Funky, Cool Emailer

Remember when Britney Spears was innocent and didn’t shave her head? And remember when…wait, she honestly had a song called “email my heart”? Why wasn’t this made fun of earlier?

Ryan Lee (@owlsquid): Crazy Samurai S*%t

At first, it seems really nerdy. Then it IS really nerdy. Then it’s ridiculously amazing to watch.

Monica Fineis (@MonFineis): Harvard Sailing Team – Boys Will Be Girls

I don’t need to add anything to this. Perfection.

See you next Friday.