Axe claimed that Tunisian men liked to brag about how many girls they can ‘line up’ and so the brand created a Facebook App through which users could generate a relationship status update, similar to the original function offered through Facebook itself.

It allowed users to show off to their friends that they were ‘in a relationship’ with tens or hundreds of girls – prompting jealous (or perhaps just understandably dubious) friends to click on the update taking them straight to the Axe App and allowing them to share a similar update.

The campaign caught on quickly and spread virally as Tunisian men shared the updates and friends commented, liked and clicked through to the App themselves.

This is an impressive example of the type of digital pr that can be implemented using social media on a limited budget, purely by putting a new slant on an everyday Facebook function.

This shy’s in comparison to Microsoft’s announcement of its mobile operating system Windows Phone 7, which features integration with its own search engine Bing, connected gaming service Xbox Live and media player Zune.  The computing giant wants to turn around its fortunes in the mobile industry with the launch of a range of phones this year.  This is exciting when you know that HTC has already committed to building devices which use Windows Phone 7.

Interesting to note when according to the American Mobile Association, total spend on mobile marketing will grow from $1.7 billion this year to $2.16 billion in 2010 in the US alone.  Google’s $750 million purchase of mobile ad network Admob reinforces that 2010 will be a significant year for mobile.  From this, many expect to see much more consolidation in the mobile sector.

All of this may well mean that mobile may start to take advertising $$ which would previously have been spent online.  Since it is a new medium however, there remains consumer resistance to mobile advertising, so perhaps it is best for advertisers to favour the soft-sell approach of providing useful information in this space through tactful digitally enabled public relations, rather than pushing hard-selling messages.

For instance, this will work with social media and help to evolve search functions.  Search will become increasingly real-time as users take advantage of Google and Bing search results including Twitter and Facebook updates, or use Twitter Search as a stand alone application to be accessed on your phone.