An upcoming Quiznos campaign will tap user-submitted videos to promote its new Torpedo sandwiches, offering $10,000 for the best clip.

On Monday, the closely held Denver fast-food chain launches the contest on ToastyTorpedo.com, where visitors will be able to submit photos or videos over the next four weeks. Quiznos said it’s looking for demonstrations of customers eating one of the $4 subs “in an unusual place or while doing an unexpected activity.” The winner will also be determined by public votes and announced August 3.

“We believe social media and interacting with our consumers in this way is really important to our brand and is in many ways, the wave of the future,” said Trey Hall, Quiznos’s marketing chief. “And who doesn’t love a viral video?”

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PBS revamped its online video offering Wednesday, adding full-length episodes from shows such as “Antiques Roadshow” and “Nova,” as it attempts to broaden its audience and sponsorship opportunities.

The public broadcaster is aiming for younger viewers who don’t tune in to “Masterpiece Theater” on television, but–it hopes–will be interested in its programming if it’s more accessible on the Web. It is adding archived TV, such as the late Julia Child’s cooking series, as well as a show, “Time Team America,” that will debut online in advance of a July air date.

“We know that there’s a certain age group that may not be watching us on television, but it’s not because they don’t have an affinity for the brand,” said Jason Seiken, who heads PBS’s interactive unit. “They love PBS, they grew up with PBS, they have an attachment to programs like ‘Frontline’ and ‘Nova.’ It’s just that they consume their media in different ways than an older generation did. So we feel that this is a way to capture them, to meet that need.”

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When two Domino’s Pizza employees filmed a prank in the restaurant’s kitchen, they decided to post it online. In a few days, thanks to the power of social media, they ended up with felony charges, more than a million disgusted viewers, and a major company facing a public relations crisis.

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After a decade of experimentation, companies have yet to find a reliable way to burnish their brands online. Research shows barely more than one in 1,000 people click on banner ads. What’s more, they rarely hang around long enough to absorb a brand message.

Former Madison Avenue hotshot Matt Freeman aims to change all that. Freeman’s company, Betawave, is developing ways to boost visitor “engagement” and plans to charge advertisers not just by each click or view but also by people’s attentiveness. The concept is untested, but it has generated excitement. Several venture capital shops in December put $22.5 million into Betawave. “Matt’s ahead of the curve,” says Sean Finnegan, chief digital officer at Starcom MediaVest, which buys ads for Coca-Cola (KO), Procter & Gamble (PG), Nintendo, and others.

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For Motorola (MOT), the darkest days may still lie ahead.

Tero Kuittinen, an analyst with Global Crown Capital, this morning repeated his Underweight rating on Motorola, and cut his price target on the shares to $2.50, from $3.50. He thinks the company will miss its Q4 guidance, and fall short of the 2009 consensus “by a wide margin.” In short, Kuittinen contends that “Motorola is now on the verge of losing its status as a global handset brand.”

Kuittinen says that recent discussions with AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) “imply a clear slowdown in sales, just as the level of U.S. competition is vaulting to a new level with the launches of LG Incite, Samsung Eternity and other appealing and conspicuously cheap November debuts.”

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For nearly two years, I’ve been engaged in an activist campaign aimed at improving the performance of Yahoo (YHOO). No more. I sold my fund’s stake last month. The risk/reward ratio of continuing to hold the stock had become too high.

When I started my activism with Yahoo, I was attracted to the Internet company’s strong brand, which continues to drive impressive traffic to its many popular properties. It’s still the No. 2 search engine in the world and it’s also No. 1 for email.

Any new Web company has no hope of emulating those numbers. Microsoft (MSFT), with its online services division, has been trying to achieve credible numbers in all those areas for the last 12 years–with little success to show for its efforts.

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A funny thing has been happening to Google lately. Have you noticed? It’s going up!

And I’m not talking about the one-day pop it got from those surprisingly good earnings, which shocked just about everyone on Wall Street and sent Google shares soaring.

I’m talking about the day-to-day creep-up, the steady momentum, the renewed interest in a company that never deserved to be on the outs to begin with.

The parallels to Apple are pretty striking.

Yes, the two are in decidedly different industries, but the status they enjoy in their respective industries is pretty striking. They are each the single, exciting brand, doing innovative things, controlling their markets, owning the buzz.

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