Happy Friday, everyone! Time for Archrival | Dachis Group Presents: Buzz of the Week. Well, we made it through another work week, amigos! Sadly, there’s still a few more hours for us to kill before we can start seriously plotting a way to cut out early without the boss noticing.

Welcome to this week’s edition of Archrival | Dachis Group Presents: Buzz of the Week. Pop-culture was front-and-center this week as much of our chatter revolved around some clever (and not-so-clever) uses of our childhood icons as marketing devices.

Hello friends. Welcome to this week’s edition of Archrival | Dachis Group Presents: Buzz of the Week. The third week of January traditionally represents a critical time for most of us – it’s the point where we find ourselves forgetting about and/or completely abandoning our list of over-valued New Year’s resolutions.

Welcome to this week’s edition of Archrival | Dachis Group Presents: Buzz of the Week. It was a week of miracles as pop-culture got itself Tebowed – forcefully Tebowed, some might say. We discover a remedy to alleviate the laborious task of having to turn a page; we reveal how marketers are able to sell us Kim Kardashian as being “hot”; we’re reminded why it’s always awesome when heads blow up in movies; and 1987 rises from the dead to explain to us what this new-fangled “rapping” is all about.

Welcome to this week’s edition of Archrival | Dachis Group Presents: Buzz of the Week. Here in Lincoln, Nebraska, there’s nothing we love more than to watch our border-rival Iowa come up with creative ways of proving their relevancy and this week, they just might have outdone themselves.

Welcome to this week’s edition of Archrival | Dachis Group Presents: Buzz of the Week. Well, amigos, it’s the final workday of the year which means the majority of you are probably spending today in sweatpants parked in front of your Xbox or PS3 chewing up whatever’s left of your PTO hours.

Welcome to the holiday edition of Archrival | Dachis Group Presents: Buzz of the Week. The holidays are upon us now. Officially. But before you venture out to do your last-minute shopping, take a moment and soak in some very memorable holiday wishes, a movie trailer that’s goose-bump worthy, another awesome way to honor Lando Calrissian, and a new take on road kill.

Welcome to this week’s edition of Buzz of the Week. Perhaps we can chalk it up to unfortunate coincidence, but this week we seemed to have stumbled upon an inordinate number of items containing some rather disturbing innuendo. Obviously, that means we’ve had one hell of an awesome week.

Welcome to this week’s edition of Archrival | Dachis Group Presents: Buzz of the Week. This week we learned that zebras like to give shout-outs at the most random times, parallel parking isn’t as difficult as your high school driving instructor made it seem, there really is something more atrocious than Jar Jar Binks, and cheating husbands just aren’t as trustworthy as they once were.

Hello there, kids! Welcome to this week’s edition of Archrival | Dachis Group Presents: Buzz of the Week. This week we get a sad glimpse into the life of a guy who has never had contact with a member of the opposite sex, we revisit the idiocy of a suburbanite’s thug-life, find out what happens when paranoid conspiracy theorists are allowed to own a chemistry set, and see just how important monogamy is to tattoo artists.

By Don Aguirre, Bart Johnston, and Libby Kohn. Infographic by Michael Nielsen. As a youth marketing agency, we’ve been hesitant about QR codes for some time now, especially when it comes to brands using them to engage young consumers. In the midst of the growing industry pressure to force-feed these barcodes into the marketplace, we noticed a profound indifference being shown to QR codes by the one demographic that can make or break a trend — college students.

Hola, amigos, and welcome to this week’s edition of Archrival | Dachis Group Presents: The Buzz of the Week. Our agency found inspiration this week from the greatest and most politically-incorrect door-to-door salesman ever, discovered that learning is far more enjoyable when overly sexualized, found the need for speed parked on a street corner, and uncovered the world’s most unfortunate book title.

Welcome to this week’s Buzz of the Week. Facial hair seemed to be the talk of the town this week, and for obvious reasons – it’s always awesome. Throw in a real-fake sporting event, political nonsense, and a glimpse into what the kids are up to these days and you’ve got yourself a mighty fine Friday.

When Google+ arrived on the social media scene back in June, it was heralded by a geek fanfare normally reserved for Comic-Con and Cupertino press conferences. As someone who proudly wears the badge of Early Adopter like a military chevron, I jumped in with abandon.

Today, there is more pressure than ever for a young person to get a four-year degree. Personally, I think this is a misplaced priority largely perpetuated by the university system and a pool of employers rigidly following an outdated playbook – a playbook that measures my value as a potential employee primarily on the merits of whether or not I have a framed piece of paper hanging on my wall.

Ever see a bear and a shark get into a fistfight? Me neither, but it makes my beard grow just thinking about it. Why you ask? Because it’s manly. As manly as doing push-ups at a monster truck rally; manly as drinking a quart of motor oil before getting into a bare-knuckle brawl; manly as a mustache that doesn’t take no for an answer.

One of my go-to karaoke songs is I Wanna Sex You Up by the untouchable boy band, Color Me Badd. Last week, as I prepared my Wednesday night karaoke set-list, I looked up C.M.B. on Facebook and was outraged when I saw their page had a measly 704 likes! Urged to shed light upon this injustice, I encouraged my Facebook friends to do the right thing and “sex up” the like button on C.

Like most people, my moments of pure revelation come to me at times when I least expect it. Just the other day as I stood at a urinal, I heard a familiar jingle playing from the stall next to me. The music was unmistakable and I knew instantly what the gentleman was doing besides the obvious — he was playing Angry Birds.

I know that the goal of most campaigns is to get as many eyeballs on their ads as possible, or as many people engaged in their program as they can, but we’ve been finding more and more success with limitations on viewership and participation. Think about it.

The dawning of the superstar athlete came with the adorning of sponsorships. When we, as consumers, began to care for athletes’ off-the-field opinions as much as for their on-the-field talent, the sports world turned upside down. What started as sport-related shoe and deodorant sponsorships have strangely diverted to soda pop and fast food backing.

As we all rush to update our Facebook profiles, send out our latest Twitter feed or wonder what to do with our MySpace page, there are a few social media stars who have gained a following worth capitalizing. Yet, even after years of building their popularity, they still lack the second ingredient — connections to advertisers.