This Week In Brand Strategy And Marketing

We’re back with our weekly recap of the interesting and inspiring, with a particular eye for what shifts and ideas brands should be tracking to, evaluating and acting on. Here is a look at some standout business strategy, brand-building and digital media stories that caught our attention this week.

Discussions Shaping Strategy, Creativity & Innovation (or just interestingness…)

• The Truth: Creativity Comes from Blending Dissonant Goals Into Radical Harmony
• Majority Report: Looking Through the Digital Hype
• Clueless in Davos
• I’m Done with Star Wars, the Muppets and LEGO (on rehashing culture nostalgia, at the expense of originality)
• Seth Godin: If You’re An Average Worker, You’re Going Straight to the Bottom
• How We Read Online (based on eye-tracking research)
• Embracing the Mothers of Invention (Kickstarter as a source of discovery for new innovations, ideas)
• Why the US Will Never, Ever Build the iPhone (on our deficit – and China’s advantage – in skilled labor and production)
• Can Pinterest and SVPPLY Help You *Reduce* Your Consumption? (implications for brands)
• Six Building Blocks to Innovation in Your Agency

Notable Ideas: New Products, Platforms, Projects and Services

• Go Halfsies: Eat Less, Give More
• Open Graph Apps: What’s There, What’s Next (A collection of Facebook Open Graph use cases)
• Amplicate: Measuring Opinions on Social Media
• LuxeYard Puts a Social Spin on High-End Flash Sales
• Bluefin Labs Raises $12MM from Time Warner for Social TV
• MIT Mints a Valuable New Form of Academic Currency
• IBM: Mixing Scientists, Social Media and Supercomputers
• Twitter Bots Create Surprising New Social Connections
• Why Big Box Retailers Are Making Smaller Stores (energy costs)
• Gentlemint (Pinterest for men?)

Brands, Companies and Entities of Note (some more obvious than others)

• JCPenney Reinvents Department Store Retailing
• Apple by The Numbers
• The 2011 Warby Parker Annual Report
• AirBnB‘s Global Growth: An Infographic

Digital Media News and Resources

• Online Voting Comes of Age (But don’t expect to use it anytime soon)
• Turns Out Consumers Really Do Care About the Data You’re Collecting
• Twitter to Censor Content in Certain Countries
• Facebook, MySpace and Twitter Chide Google with Search Add-On
• Pay for Your Next Big Mac with Facebook Credits
• Ready or Not, You’re Getting Facebook Timeline
• What Facebook Users Like 
• New iOS Hack Lets You Natively Tweet While Talking to Siri
• Why #McD Stories Didn’t Have a Happy Ending (note: only 2-3% of the Tweets were actually negative)