This Week In Brand Strategy & Marketing

Here is a look at some standout brand-building and advertising communications stories that caught our attention this week:

Strategies, Trends & Approaches Reshaping Planning, Branding & Advertising

• How They Make Those Adverts Go Straight to Your Head (neuromarketing)
• J.K. Rowling’s Plot Spreadsheet (on storytelling)
• Interview with BuzzFeed’s Jonah Peretti: How to help content spread
• Malcolm Gladwell is Wrong (on social media’s role in activism)
• Presentations from Planningness 2010
• Wharton’s Jerry Wind Predicts the Future of Advertising
• As the Ad Market Recovers, the Internet and TV Still Lead
• ‘Yes, But…’: Challenging Shorthand Marketing Rules
• 6 Key Digital Trends Organizations Can’t Ignore
• 7 Trends to Watch (In an Age of Information Overload)
• How Strategy Shapes Structure
• More on the lack of correlation between popularity and influence in the digital space
• IDEO: 6 Case Studies for Why You’d Give Up Your Privacy Online
• Pepsi, Microsoft Say No One Agency Meets All Needs

Innovation, Creativity

• The Social Creativity Equation (on neuroscience)
• Razorfish Tries Hand at Star-Making Machine (expanding agency models)
• Rogue Art Exhibition at MoMA
• Crap Logo Yourself!
• Teens Admire Steve Jobs More Than Zuckerberg (indication of what teens value)
• Hyper Public (not only hyper local, but hyper public tagging – declining privacy)

Brand Content (for better and sometimes worse)

• The ‘Official Word’ On Gap’s New Logo: An invite to collaborate on, or crowdsource a better design?
• NHL, Stan Lee Create New Generation of Superheroes
• 13 Branded Mobile Apps That Got It Right
• Google Latitude
• Gap’s Recycle Your Blues
• Virgin Atlantic’s First Ever TV Campaign
• Uniqlo’s Ultra Light Tweet
• Ford Tries User-Generated Test in Twitter Ad
• When Digital Marketing Works: Pizza Hut’s iPhone App

Examples of Brands as Curators, Facilitating Storytelling

• The World is Full of Interesting Things (from Creative Lab at Google)
• The Standard Hotels: Culture
• Curve by Getty Images: Strategies, Insights and Visual Trends for Business
• Converse Rubber Tracks
• The Smartest Thing She’s Ever Said (Ann Taylor)

Collaboration for Social Good

• The GSMA mWomen BOP App Challenge
• Least You Can Do: The power of a million people doing next to nothing
• Can This Game Help Cure Diseases?
• frogMob: Crowdsourced Design Research
• BBC’s 60-Second Ideas to Improve the World
• 5 YouTube Projects Making a Difference

Digital Media, Tech & Marketing News & Resources

• Evan Williams on Decentralized Social Networks
• Facebook‘s New Groups, Dashboard and Downloads Explained
• Facebook Granted Broad Patent Covering Location-Based Networks and Check-Ins
• A History of Social Media Screw-Ups
• An Insightful Look at Social Networks
• 5% of Babies Have a Social Media Profile
• A Collection of Materials Related to Interaction Design
• Geolocation Services Can Help Build Small Business
• Emerging Digital Spaces
• A Christmas Checklist for Online Retailers
• On Google TV (and Twitter integration – implications for social viewing)
• How Video is Changing the Online Ad Landscape
• Defining Ground Rules for Strategy and Experience Architecture
• Private Sale Shopping Behavior (Google data)