At our Good Ideas in 2009: Digital salon yesterday, much of the conversation surrounded how our online identities are created, both actively – through our own decisions of what we share about ourselves – and passively – through the actions and perceptions of others. Given that we only have control over half of that equation, how do we ensure that the best and brightest portrait of ourselves is seen by the wider community?
Piers posited his “Red Coat, Black Coat” theory back in 2006, which proved to be a harbinger of conversations to come about approaches to online privacy [...]

A while back, we wrote a short post about the Engaging Ideas Card Pack and mentioned, “We haven’t gotten our hands on the full set, but it looks like a neat package for a broad range of ideas.”  Well, now (thanks to Rob Fox) we’ve gotten our grubs on the entire pack and sifted through the stack of colorful cards.
The first impression is that they look like a deck of large novelty sized playing cards printed on thick stock cardboard.  The front side of each card is an image meant to invoke the message or activity presented on the back.  [...]

A while back, we wrote a short post about the Engaging Ideas Card Pack and mentioned, “We haven’t gotten our hands on the full set, but it looks like a neat package for a broad range of ideas.”  Well, now (thanks to Rob Fox) we’ve gotten our grubs on the entire pack and sifted through the stack of colorful cards.
The first impression is that they look like a deck of large novelty sized playing cards printed on thick stock cardboard.  The front side of each card is an image meant to invoke the message or activity presented on the back.  [...]

The folks at innocent drinks, makers of tasty smoothies, have revamped their site to include a rating and review section. Hoping to foster a more robust brand culture and connection with their audience, innocent is trying out a consumer-centric website. The new feedback area provides simple ratings along with more detailed reviews. A built-in feature promises to randomly select comments to be highlighted on the homepage and further entices visitors by awarding funky prizes each month. The site layout was designed by Soup with a goal of pushing the playful nature of the company into the digital [...]

Eschewing the prevailing theory in advertising that one should never mention your competitor’s product, many companies are taking a page out of the political campaign season and going with attack ads or in the parlance of the industry, “comparative advertising” that do just that.  The trend towards negative marketing is being attributed to the downturn in the economy, forcing businesses to compete for a smaller pool of consumer dollars.
Although a dangerous proposition with plenty of potential to backfire, agencies tasked with creating these campaigns have found injecting humor to be the best method of ensuring success.  Additionally, the charges being [...]

MySpace and Viacom’s MTV Networks announced a deal that will partner them with Auditude, a technology firm that has developed a means of identifying whether uploaded video clips belong to a particular TV Network by recognizing unique electronic signatures.  Auditude approached these two companies with this technology, marketing it as a means of incorporating advertising.  Essentially, any content appearing on MySpace belonging to MTV Networks will be tagged, allowing either business the option of inserting ads.
This represents a significant change in attitude for both companies.  In the past, MySpace TV, the second largest video site behind YouTube, might have blocked [...]

As pop-culture and celebrity gossip blogs continue to see increased traffic, particularly with the youth demographic, advertisers’ views on what counts as acceptable have started to change.  Given the uneasy economic climate and tightening budgets, it’s become increasingly important for mainstream brands to be mindful of where their ad dollars are going.  As a result, following the crowds, even if that means entering non-traditional venues on the web with less respectable material, makes a good deal of sense.  Despite the inherent logic of this move, some in the media still question whether this issue has more to do with negligent [...]

Famous frenemies WPP and Google are joining forces to the tune of $4.6 million dollars to fund a joint research project that establishes conclusively the ways online marketing impacts consumer behavior. Despite an often cited statistic that people spend 30 percent of their time online, current studies don’t show this activity translating into an equivalent amount of total spending on the web.  This inquiry will examine the ways offline and online interact and, one suspects, search for creative methods to bridge this gap.
Considering the fact that these two giants rely so heavily on the online space for generating their revenues, [...]

  
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The way we influence and interact through the internet is constantly changing. We’ve all witnessed how user generated content has brought new creative potential to consumers and opened up the doors of online collaboration. But while UGC’s impact on marketing and the way youth consume and create web content is significant, some believe it still has a long way to go. Screenplay’s Strategic Director Helge Tennø offers a compelling argument on the limitations of the current means for online collaboration, deeming them too rigid and presenting “artificial barriers” [...]

Creative Cities Summit 2.0 concluded this week in Detroit, Michigan, a three-day conference bringing together creative practitioners from across industries (from city planners to educators) in a discussion about the integration of innovation, social entrepreneurship, sustainability, arts & culture and business and their roles in our urban ecologies. Brand Avenue points us to one of the conference’s most enlightening panels – a talk between Who’s Your City?’s Richard Florida, COMEDIA’S Charles Landry, and The Creative Economy author John Howkins (moderated by Carol Coletta of Smart City Radio). As Brand Avenue retells, Landry brings up the important distinction between how big [...]

Gawker and Gothamist report that New York City is putting their subway advertising program into overdrive. First off are plans to wrap entire subway cars with ads (as graffiti artists did in the early days of the art form). The next public transport-ad scheme involves placing a series of ads inside subway tunnels that will create a rough animation as the car passes by. Also up for grabs are turnstile arms and pretty much any available surface.
Although you would hope that all this surplus cash would mean a reduction in fare (it will cost advertisers $95k a month to do [...]

The dairy lobby has always been a powerful force in America, but recently they saw their classic ad campaigns overtaken by cartoon characters that children more readily relate to.  These new school cultural icons easily sway children in purchasing choices.  The proliferation of SpongeBob snacks or Spiderman cereals drove Big Milk to form a modern marketing group known as “Milk Media.”  In the venture’s first deal, school milk consumption increased 34% after the implementation of Disney’s Doug into the milk campaign.  While milk has enemies, they certainly have fans in the federal government who wish to promote the milk alternative [...]

As technology like TiVo or internet streaming enables individuals to avoid advertising, the industry has sought ways to sneak into the shows themselves.  The moral dilemma of corporate control was often dodged during the age of record viewers, but as television budgets tighten and viewers seek alternatives to the tube, network execs push product integration into the plots themselves.  While this long hated practice is often fought by the writers and actors, it is arguably an inevitable development in our favorite characters’ lives.  Tina Fey mocked product placement on 30 Rock, but it was in response to actually needing the [...]

After recently finishing Peter Schwartz’s classic, The Art of the Long View, this article from Core77 was particularly resonant.  Both these works reflect on the important distinction between predictions & assumptions and carefully crafted foresight.
The article deals specifically with product design while Schwartz looks at the broader strategies for society and the marketplace. With regards to product foresight, it pays to be able to differentiate between what’s hip or cool and what signifies actual change.  Kevin McCullagh writes:

The cause of analysing change in a systematic way has not been helped by the self-importance of so many forecasters. Indeed James Woudhuysen, [...]

The Engaging Ideas card pack is a set of colorful photos paired with a simple approach or exercise to make a product more innovative.  Instead of presenting business ideas on a static PowerPoint or written report, these cards add some flavor to the realm of development, strategy and management.  We haven’t gotten our hands on the full set, but it looks like a neat package for a broad range of ideas.  From the Engaging Ideas website:
It comprises 54 cards split into three suites – discover, design and deliver – along with a booklet providing contextual information. The face of each [...]