A Frenchman may now be the fastest man in Europe over 100m but it seems French winemakers are slower off the blocks when it comes to social media.

Reuter’s Leslie Gervitz created a bit of a storm this week suggesting that French winemakers were a bit antisocial when it comes to social media, compared to their New World counterparts. ‘When it comes to social media, most [French] winemakers prefer to drink alone’ she wrote.

The comment was based on research by My Social Winery who discovered that although 95% of French wineries export their wine, 91% have no Twitter account, 87% no blog, 85% no LinkedIn account and 57% no Facebook page.

Furthermore, only 37% offer an English translation of their website. Respondents said they are both too busy and know not enough about social networks to be on them, though only 15% dispute their value.

For this reason perhaps, 44% of the 500 wineries surveyed said they were considering integrating social media into their overall marketing activity. It seems, like good wine, social media will take time to mature in this most traditional of industries.

Facebook had a ‘do’ on the roof of their Palo Alto offices last week, specifically for PR people, imparting useful  information such as how to “like” any article online, use a Firefox plug-in and tips on live-streaming.

They’ve set up a PR page too (of course) which now has 3000+ fans and perhaps have started to take PRs seriously as future partners. There’s no doubt the interest is reciprocated, though most big brands are proceeding with caution.

Ford has just made a bold move however in eschewing the traditional auto show and advertising biltz, to launch their new Explorer model on Facebook.

They’ve used it a a kind of hyprid press room/consumer information hub, containing several video interviews, pre and post ‘reveal’ photos, a competition to win a new Explorer and a schedule of live city events.

Instead of the major auto show ‘reveal’ and $50 million to $100 million TV spend Ford released photos to traditional media just after midnight on Monday – July 23rd and followed up with a series of timed video releases under a ‘reveal’ tab on Facebook during the day.

Jim Farley, Ford’s group vice president of marketing, reported in The Detroit Free Press said Ford’s success with the social media-driven campaign for the Fiesta earlier this year, gave Ford the confidence to reveal the Explorer without relying on a major show.

So far so good. If you’re being picky, there’s no dates or exact locations for the city roadshows and you wonder if they could have come up with a viral video, as Toyota has done with the Sienna – maybe that’s to  come. You also can’t watch their videos in a Chrome browser – you have to be in Explorer – but maybe that’s the point!

And while it looks experimental now, in two years time this type of Facebook launch may have become the norm. PRs take note.

The latest survey of lead generation channels by CSO Insights, via eMarketer shows design & content to be the place most marketer’s will be increasing their investment in contrast to Direct Mail which will see further decline.

Email marketing runs a close second, with 54%, followed by New Media (blogs, podcasts, mobile marketing). It’s not clear whether social media is included within content or New Media however but we’re assuming the former.

The number one aim of this realignment in spend was new customer acquisition, with 91% of companies seeing this as the priority, up from second in 2007 when the survey was last taken.

Based on the quantity and quality of leads generated, companies said email was their best lead generation program, followed by live events, website registrations and webinars.

Fascinating interview via SMI with Alexandra Wheeler – Starbucks’ Digital Director of Strategy on how the company has executed its market leading social media strategy. Ideas are surfaced internally, buy in is from top to bottom and the result looks more like core brand philosophy than mere marketing tactics.

Toyota has hit viral gold in the US with ‘Swagger Wagon’  its latest video in a comedy series for the Sienna Minivan. A top five shared video in the US charts for over a month, it’s closing in on 5 million views – for a minivan!

Shoppers prefer to receive promotional offers by email, ahead of other marketing channels, a survey across retailers in four US states has established, in a report by eMarketer.com.

37% prefered email followed by the well established direct mail (23%). The third most popular was perhaps surprisingly text (18%), then in-store promotions (11%) with social media languishing last at 9%.

The results suggest that while social media is massively influential for brand building online, consumers do not see it as a push marketing medium, at least not yet.

Mattel are doing a social media treasure hunt in four US cities starting today. Clues will be posted on Twitter & Foursquare and if you can find Barbie’s ’street team’ in their secret location, and show them a Foursquare login for their current location or ’something pink’ you win a Barbie video doll worth $50.

Now I don’t know the ins and outs of this social media campaign but a few practical problems seem apparent. To start with, it won’t be the world’s actual Barbie fans, aged 5 to 8 running around with air tickets and iphone on their own –  they’re going to have to bring an adult.

OK so it’s down to mum to make it happen – a tech savvy mum at that. But what smart mum would take their daughter on a Barbie hunt across the city knowing only one Barbie is available in each location. The inevitable tears of disappointment, not to mention exhaustion would mean she’d have to buy her one anyway and presumably they’re not in the shops yet so she can’t.

And if by steely ambition you did manage to get there first by dragging your child across six lanes of traffic, eyes glued to your maps app, why would you then bother to check in on Foursquare if you’re standing in front of the ’street team’ anyway?

So if the smart phoned parents won’t go for it, maybe it’s a publicity stunt, pure and simple, in a format fast becoming a geo-locational social media standard – the treasure hunt. Problem is, if the hunt doesn’t really make sense, all the media you hope might write about it may also start to mock and scoff a bit.

And then you may attract the more extreme comments like this one at the bottom of the ClickZ source for this blog:

A Regus survey of global businesses has found small companies are doing better than large ones at using social media to attract new customers.

44% of small companies have successfully acquired a customer through social networking compared to 36% for medium sized companies and 28% of large businesses.

The most popular use of social media  is keeping in touch with business contacts – 58% of respondents globally declaring they use networks in this way.

By sector, Financial Services (26%) lags behind the Media/Marketing and ICT sectors (48% & 46%).  By country, India is the leading nation, followed by Mexico and Spain.

Following the viral success of their YouTube videos starring former Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Isiah Mustafa, retro aftershave brand Old Spice has taken their social media experiment a step further, inviting questions via Twitter that Mustafa then answers on YouTube. One answer to a question from eminent Hollywood blogger Perez Hilton has clocked up 169K views on its own. Inspired.

Al Pacino has done his first product endorsement ever –  for an Australian coffee brand – Vittoria.

Pacino insisted Oscar winner Barry Levinson directed the commercial, so it looks great but it’s hard to understand why Pacino would promote an Australian product, even if he does usually drink the stuff.

Contrast this with Robert De Nero’s ad for American Express, which literally spells out the constituents of his personal brand and associates them with an American product.