For many years Google was one of the last companies avoiding mass media advertising (though they’ve done it outside the US). That stronghold ended the last SuperBowl, with the now famous (and parodied) Parisian Love ad:

Even web companies with true fans reach a point when branding becomes necessary to grow a market that’s getting crowded. With many people starting to explore Google’s products and services, an ad that is relevant and tells a powerful story only helps to conquer more users, responding to needs that later get extended to their professional choices (think AdWords or Google Apps).

This need for branding for web companies will become even more evident the next few years, as startups try seduce advertisers by getting more reach and visibility. But instead of using the eyeballs approach, we’ll have a more combined branding approach.

Foursquare, the location based game, and their recent partnerships with Zagat or Marc Jacobs is an example of this sponsorship leveraging a web brand, . Other examples include ExecTweets with Federated Media and Microsoft or even more tactical approaches like the Let It Shine commercial for Honda and Vimeo.

Larger brands should take notice of these opportunities, by teaming up with web brands on relevant, win-win partnerships. As for web companies, Branding, even on a different form, is one step to leave their Beta label behind.

Cross-posted at The Trendwatch

If it is not texting and looking and TV, it’s computer and listen to my iPod (…) If i know i’m gonna miss a show i record it.

I have facebook on my cellphone. I could research a word, do anything on my phone.

— Diamond, 14

The Kaiser Family Foundation released today a report on Generation M(2), a research on media habits of 8-18 year olds, with a sample of more than 2,000 young people across the US. Impressive how this 100% connected generation is using mobile as the main gateway to digital content. Not to mention the multitasking habits. But you knew that already, right?

Key findings of the report include:

• Over the past five years, Young people have increased the daily consumption of media from 6:21 to 7:38

  

• An explosion in mobile and online media has fueled
  the increase in media use among young people.

  

• Youth who spend more time with media report lower grades and lower levels of personal contentment.

For a short overview of what kids have to say, follow the video below:

Nike. Racing. Twitter. Voice recognition.
Oh, just watch the video.

Using an iPhone strapped to their arms and an earphone, simply by pressing a button, the runners were able to share their experiences with the world in real time. The voice message was turned into a text message that was automatically published at thehumanrace.com.ar/envivo/, in their Twitter accounts, and banners on sports vertical portals and news sites.

Good run by BBDO Argentina.

Crossposted at The TrendWatch

Yesterday, the quintessential online ad resource BannerBlog featured two ads for Smart. Both pulled dynamic data — weather and maps — to build a display ad unit. I could be wrong, but the data source was probably some sort of API. For those not so versed in acronyms, Wikipedia to the rescue:

An application programming interface (API) is an interface that a software program implements in order to allow other software to interact with it; much in the same way that software might implement a user interface in order to allow humans to interact with it.

Flickr Mosaic: Crayonbox, constructed with Flickr API. Released under a CCommons license by krazydad

Like digital bridges, API’s request standartized information from public (and sometimes private) web services. From USA Spending to Fedex tracking, from Flickr to Google Maps, the interest for APIs has been traditionally confined to B2B/ERP and the Social Web. But lately the concept is extending beyond these areas: with developers creating exciting and unexpected uses with the new data available, and with consumer brands and the ad industry starting to let go of their closed silos, in essence “letting one thousand flowers bloom“. A good consumer brand example of this trend is the UK grocery chain Tesco, who announced a new API at TechForTesco and invited developers to tinker with its data, search for nutrition facts or send ‘ideas’ to the customer’s ‘ideas inbox’.

Web development frameworks have long been using these large building blocks to enable rapid development by a larger interested audience. They not only ignite the engine of innovation, sometimes stalled by internal corporate politics, but also allow brands to have a comfortable degree of control. With new data sets available, we could start thinking of new kinds of mashups, such as business data built directly into communication solutions, CRM programs feeding custom content or display ads with real-time data, as mentioned in the beginning.

Before a brand dips into this space, it’s challenge is to question which data set respects legal and privacy issues, while at the same time being interesting enough for developers and consumers to act upon. What they shouldn’t be asking is if an API is useful (it’s useful when the data is right).

If you’d like to know more about what’s being done with such web services, I highly recommend checking out the website Programmable Web. It’s a useful resource with over 1500 APIs that have been used in thousands of mashups.

One of these days i promise i’ll share my tons of quotes and random thoughts with visuals at least half as good as these ones from Helge Tennø (aka @Congbo).

His slides are one of the best visual thinking i’ve seen since Armano and Lynette. And don’t forget to check his blog.

When this blog was created i used to follow the Interesting Snippets Flickr series from Lynette. A few months later, she published her book and altough she’s been collecting more interesting quotes, the snippets are long gone. I picked up the habit and started collection my own snippets on Tumblr, and thought it would be great to share a few of these snippets to spice your presentations about digital media.

Photo by occhiovivo

Photo by Mark Busse

Photo by midnightglory

Photo by fensterbme

Photo by william addington

Photo by DHdesign

All pictures were selected from Flickr, under a Creative Commons license, so make sure you credit the authors if you use them.

This week i commented at work the fact that some blogs rival in terms of online audience with same major newspapers, with marketers needing to review their traditional media planning. On a happy coincidence, today the Wall Street Journal writes why many marketers are lagging behind consumers in terms of social media.

Illustration by Matt Hamm under a CC License

Some highlights:

Don’t just talk at consumers — work with them throughout the marketing process.
The conversations consumers have with each other, result in “some of the most interesting insights,” including gift ideas for specific occasions, such as a college graduation, and the prices consumers are willing to pay for different gifts.

Give consumers a reason to participate.
Other companies provide more-direct incentives: cash rewards or products, some of which are available only to members of the online community. Still others offer consumers peer recognition by awarding points each time they post comments, answer questions or contribute to a wiki entry

Listen to — and join — the conversation outside your site.
monitor relevant online conversations among consumers and, when appropriate, look for opportunities to inject themselves into a conversation or initiate a potential collaboration.

Resist the temptation to sell, sell, sell.
When consumers are invited to participate in online communities, they expect marketers to listen and to consider their ideas. They don’t want to feel like they’re simply a captive audience for advertising, and if they do they’re likely to abandon the community.

Don’t control, let it go.
“You have to let the members drive. When community members feel controlled, told how to respond and how to act, the community shuts down.”

Like it or not, the old way of doing (push) marketing is on its final days. Or has i heard yesterday on the Campus Party panel about Advertising and social media, your homepage is now Google.

Todd Andrlik created the Power150 Ranking, now run by Advertising Age, featuring the top English-language media and marketing blogs in the world. With ranking and authority in Twitter causing quite a discussion a few weeks back, i decided nonetheless to have a shot and create the Twitter Power 150, based on the original ranking.

With over 800 bloggers it would be really hard to track down all the twitter profiles, so i focused on the top 300 and with the help of Twitterank and Dapper, and partly inspired by Mack Collier’s Top 25 Marketing & Social Media Blogs, here’s the January 2009 list for the top 150 twitter users with advertising and marketing blogs:

The sweet irony is being left out of the list, with a close call at #156. So, you know the drill: if you appreciated the hard work (i had to visit each blog to get the usernames i didn’t follow already), start by following @armandoalves and help me reach the top 150.

The PHP script that parsed the Power150 OPML file was programmed in less than 1/10th of the time it took me to figure out all the twitter profiles, so feel free to comment  if your blog is on AdAge’s Power 150 and you would like to be added to the remaining 700 profiles.

I had a few surprises along the way, with nearly 20% of the 300 parsed blogs not having a Twitter account and having to decide which profile to rank on multi-author blogs (i ended up choosing the user with most followers). Also worthy of notice is the inverted pyramid for SEO/SEM blogs. In the end, Twitter is more conversational and not very friendly for “get rich today” tweets, and that gets reflected on the top tweeple listed.

Update:

Seems the list is getting some buzz, and it starts to makes sense to build a live ranking.that hopefully will be at: http://www. twitterpower150.com

The past few weeks, sites and blogs have been pushing their trendsetting articles. I haven’t decided yet if it’s worth publishing one myself,  specially after reading Nicholas Taleb’s Black Swan, and realizing that trying to predict these sort of things is mostly an exercise in futility.

Nonetheless, as some of these “trends” do carry a reasonable amount strategic thought, a few highlights about trends:

Consumer

The obvious place to start is Trendwatching’s Half Dozen Trends for 2009.

On a recent discussion at work, it was interesting to realize that i guessed half of them right, before the report was published. Key trends: NicheTributes, Luxyoury, MapMania

Marketing and Media

Mark, Wendy, Dale, Eric and Ben at Talking Digital have been publishing their trends since October, with a plenty of creative juice to drink from. Key trends: Digital Growth, newspaper recession, Ad market competition, Privacy. On this latest trend, do check out also a interesting article by Pedro Rocha at Will It Brand, on the larger trend of Protection.

Design

The classic Pantone color forecast has to be mentioned. Key trends: Fuchsia Red, Salmon Rose, Lucite Green, Lavender.

Technology

I’m picking the recent Gartner study, Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009, with a lot of focus going, of course, to cloud computing and virtualization.

Gaming Trends

Jerome, at Advertising Pawn, as a compact presentation on games. For someone who doesn’t have the time to spend their time on the Xbox, the Wii or PS3, it’s a great shortut to connect to gaming culture. Key trends: Connectivity and participation.

Lifestyle

As I’m finishing this post on my lunch hour, it seems suitable that i’ll end with Epicurious Top 10 Food Trends for 2009.


Illustration © Epicurious.com. Key trends: Top-Rated, Value, Rustic.

On a post about trends, a closing reminder on the latest Google Zeitgeist, an annual report on the hottest worldwide search trends, where you can find the usual suspects (sarah palin, obama). And if you’re really trend freak, there’s always live services like Google Trends or Twitter trends.