Here is a look at some standout brand-building and communications stories that caught our attention this week – as well as some macro trends and themes we’re tracking:

Strategies & Shifts Reshaping Planning, Branding & Advertising (and Business)

• 2011 Consumer Internet Predictions
• Google Zeitgeist 2010: the spirit of 2010, captured in search
• Visualizing the World of Tweets
• Culture Mapping: Managing Brands in a Social Economy
• Social Business Forecast: 2011 The Year of Integration
• The Next Stop for Location Services
• A Few Words About the Great Agency Freakout
• Our World Digitized: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly
• 3 Things Brands Must Do To Reach Millennials Online
• Personality Analytics: The Next Must-Have Feature for Social CRM?
• Marketers Need to Catch Up with the Multi-Screen Consumer
• Why People Are Friending Your Brand on Facebook
• Learnings from Making Digital Work NY
• Top Ad Agency Predictions 2011
• Top 10 Reasons Advertising is Like Porn

Innovation, Creativity

• The Role of A Creative Technologist
• 5 Ways to Get Smarter on Open Innovation
• Visually Inspired X 10
• i.materialise: a 3d printer offering to be a vehicle for your creativity allows you to design their logo
• Innovation: Wrapped, Packed & Stacked (Method whitepaper)

Brand Content (for better and sometimes worse)

• Most Marketers Shift Towards Branded Content
• P&G’s Manhattan Pop-Up Store (and why this is innovative for this behemoth)
• Burberry Brings Interactive Video to Fans’ Facebook News Feeds
• Q&A With Pepsi: Immersion is Key to Digital Savvy
• Google Chrome Bounceball
• Moleskine’s Mini Planners
• Orange’s Secret Portraits

Digital Media, Tech & Marketing News & Resources

• Digital Trends 2011
• Moving Beyond the Click: How Digital Advertising Should Work (on metrics)
• Introducing Cortex for Chrome
• Starbucks Tops Online Media Impact Rankings
• Marissa Mayer’s Next Big Thing: ‘Contextual Discovery’ (the future of search & mobile)
• How to Turn Social Media Assets Into Co-Creation Assets
• 8% of American Adults Online Use Twitter

• Google +1 – Google’s social media product?

• In-App Revenue Growth Forecast: Up 600% in 2011
• How Mobile Photos Will Shape the Future of Marketing
• The Mobile Photo Sharing Boom is Here
• Google Rolls Out NFC-Equipped Places Business Kits (location, location, location…)

Image by Veer.

Veer has recently relaunched its site, Veer.com, with a simplified, easy to use interface allowing for enhanced and simplified image search.  The site, which is a go-to source for creative and affordable stock photography, illustrations, fonts and merchandise, helps people add style to business, marketing, and personal design projects.