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Advertising campaigns, from the great to the terrible, used to live on chiefly in people’s memories. But social media have made it possible for marketing efforts which might have quietly faded away to have an eternal digital life.

Here are five highlights and five lowlights from the 2012 world of marketing, advertising, public relations and social media. All of the campaigns or references to them are easily accessible online.

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HIGHLIGHTS:

1. Is the McDonald’s beef washed in ammonia? (No). Do you put anti-nausea agents in the food? (Absolutely not)

Those and a multitude of other no-holds-barred questions (including the “secret” recipe to Big Mac sauce) were answered at McDonald’s Canada’s groundbreaking “Our Food. Your Questions.” social media site, a real-time twist on standard corporate frequently asked questions Web features.

The company gamely promised to answer any and all consumer questions about its food that were not profane. It was pretty much a polar opposite approach to the U.S. parent company’s mum reaction to the 2004 film Super Size Me, in which documentarian Morgan Spurlock gained weight and made himself ill on a steady 30-day diet of McDonald’s food. The critical response to the Q&A site was overwhelmingly positive and in the process McDonald’s managed to debunk a number of long-standing myths about its food.