One of the great properties that I get to work on at P&G Productions is the People’s Choice Awards.  In it’s 36th year, I think the 2010 show might just be one of the most exciting ones yet.  Yeah I am biased but we have announced Mark Burnett as our Executive Producer, moved the show to the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles and formed a pretty cool alliance with MySpace.  Those are some cool changes.

And with all that, we have also made it even easier to cast your vote for this year’s winners with voting on both PeoplesChoice.com and on MySpace.  So have you voted yet? [end commercial message]

Following up on my post about my new role at P&G, the Cincinnati Enquirer had a great story in Sunday’s paper about our goals with Digital Content and moving the Soap Opera genre online.  As the story states:

The Webisode [A Parent is Born] is the latest example of how P&G, the inventor of the daytime drama, has moved beyond the soap opera and into the digital world, but with the same purpose it had when it launched the “Ma Perkins” radio serial in 1933: to create an interested audience it can use to build loyalty to its brands… Just as it did with the soaps, P&G is creating places where it can gather a big audience, with the goal of building goodwill toward brands such as Pampers diapers, Iams dog food, Febreze fabric freshener and Dawn dish soap.

To read the full story, visit the Cincinnati Enquier’s site here.

“They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” – Andy Warhol

Without a doubt, I am going to look back on September 2009 as a month of lots of great change in my life.  In fact, two big milestones happened last month that I wanted to share…one personal and one business.

First on the personal side of things, I had the amazing fortune to have Cindy Hickerson take my hand in marriage on September 12, 2009.  As it is meant to be, the night was one of the best in my life as we shared it with our family and friends.  And the whole experience had the perfect conclusion as the new Mrs Knox and I spent the week in sunny Key West, FL on our honeymoon.

Now as for the business side, there are changes on that end as well.  When I returned from my honeymoon, I actually started a new role at P&G as I moved over to become Brand Manager, Innovation & Design for Procter & Gamble Productions (PGP).  P&G Productions is a fascinating part of our company, charged with developing original content and entertainment to create powerful emotional relationships with our consumers.  This is the group responsible for inventing Soap Operas in the 1950’s, running the People’s Choice Awards for the past 35 years and creating multi-platform content such Petside.com.  In this new role, I will be applying my digital background to help P&G Productions to find the next generation of content,  partnerships and entertainment to connect our brands with consumers.

So needless to say, September was a busy month filled with exciting changes.  And both are changes that make me even more excited for the days, months and years to come.

Related articles:

• Turning The Tide: An Insider’s Perspective (darmano.typepad.com)
• P&G; Social Media Night: The Results (blogs.forrester.com)

I just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone that helped P&G last night with our Loads of Hope program.  In just over 4 hours, we raised $50,000 for charity… a sum that was then matched by the Tide brand.  It’s amazing that through the power of Social Media and the support of some wicked smart people, you could raise $100,000 to help a great cause.  You can’t help but feel good about that.

If you want to get a feel for the event, you can check out the Twitter Stream (where Tide was a top 10 term last night) or read the great insights by some of the people that participated last night.

• Ad Age – “P&G Gives Its Marketers a Crash Course in Social Media“
• Cincinnati Enquirer – “P&G Tries Out Social Networks”
• Kevin Dugan – “Being Digital at P&G, Raising $100K for Disaster Relief“
• Peter Kim – “Recap of P&G Digital Night“
• Ian Sohn – “P&G’s Social Media Experiment: Loads of Hope“
• Dayton Business Journal – “P&G hosts Google, Facebook officials for digital marketing experiment“
• Forrester Research – “P&G Tests the Power of Social Media“

Thank you again to everyone for your support.  We helped a great cause and helped to teach ourselves about the power of digital and social media.

And I promise no more mentions of “buy this t-shirt” on this blog or Twitter.

* NOTE: Despite the plugs for Loads of Hope last night and today, this blog remains my personal blog and anything stated here is not the opinion of my employer.