The Future of Marketing

Gareth Kay, head of planning at Modernista!, has written a great article on what he thinks will be the future of marketing, in which he makes four key points:

1. Brands will be built on cultural and social missions, not commercial propositions.
2. Marketing will be about what you do, not what you say.
3. Lots of little ideas, not one big idea.
4. People first.
   

There are definite parallels to a fantastic talk by Seth Godin on Tribes.

Laid Off

Stumbled across this inspiring project called Cards of Change. It's a collection of business cards, from people who have recently been laid off. The cards all have a personal message written on them, showing the positive side of not having a job. As well as giving hope to people in similar situations, the aim of the project is to connect people with new opportunities from potential employers and business partners.

Coming To An Ad Near You Soon

Ok so I'm going to be completley honest - I "borrowed" this idea from CMW's blog.
The idea is that if I see something I think might be used for an ad I'll post it under this title - just remember where you saw it first!
Think of this and the Aero advert that resulted.
So the first "Coming to an ad near you soon" is this short film by Chris Milk.

Who Are You Having For Lunch?

Mastercard, in partnership with the Eden Project, are attempting to bring back community spirit into the UK with their latest campaign "the big lunch". From their website:

"Basically, it's a party in your street, in everyone's street. On 19th July we're asking the people of Britain to stop what they're doing and sit down to lunch together. Why? Well for lots of reasons really but mainly to put a smile back on Britain."



For anyone who needs convincing about the importance of community they give some pretty compelling stats:

• According to research conducted by the BBC last year, 97% of UK communities have become more fragmented in the last 30 years.
• "Even the weakest communities in 1971 were stronger than any community now." -Professor Daniel Dorling
  
• In April of last year, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation conducted a survey of 3,500 people. Their biggest single concern, across the social spectrum, was that communities are weak and people are increasingly isolated from their neighbours.
• Numerous studies around the world show that there is almost a mathematical correlation between people's sense of security and happiness and the number of neighbours they actively know.

What's Hot This Week #2

• Webtrends Map – maps out the 333 leading Web domains and the 111 most influential Internet people onto the Tokyo Metro map.
• We Are Hunted - a new music site which aggregates a daily chart of the 99 most popular songs online by looking at sites such as iLike, BitTorrent, Last.fm, MySpace Music etc. Great for finding emerging artists.
• Adidas Marathon App – one of those “I wish I’d thought of that” ideas. For Sunday’s marathon Adidas developed an app that you could tap in someone’s race number and it would tell you where they were on the course, along with information on the best places to stand and the nearest tube and train stations to get there.
• Vimeo and Honda – doing more than just uploading their ad to the internet, Honda partnered with Vimeo to make ‘Let it Shine’ even more spectacular. Great simple way to drive online views. A bit like THIS earlier piece from Nintendo.
• Table Tennis – with Bud Light’s launch of the Hard Bat Classic, a ‘revolutionary one-of-a-kind table tennis tournament and lifestyle event’ I think table tennis could be making a comeback this year.
• Cooliris – a great Firefox add-on that saves an awful lot of time when browsing images and videos online – thanks Jason for pointing this one out.

What Do Piracy and Brand Value Have In Common?

It seems two things happen in a recession. Pirates come out of retirement and brand value increases. At least according to Millward Brown's annual ‘Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands’, released earlier this week. Interestingly “In a year of global economic turmoil, when every key financial indicator plummeted, the value of the top 100 brands increased by 2 percent to $2 trillion.”