SOTB Omnibus Edition: 2011 Predictions about brands, branding, social media and other stuff

It's that time of year when people are looking forward to the year ahead and making their informed predictions (or guessing) about what's to come. There's tons of stuff. Here's what just a few of the many are thinking:

1) Top 11 Marketing Predictions for 2011: It’s All About Protecting and Nurturing the Brand: MENG
Mark Burgess' eleven predictions consider how companies will adapt to the new world order driven by social media and mobile technologies.

2) Eleven Brands to Watch in 2011: Forbes
Landor's Allen Adamson picked eleven brands to watch in 2011. The list includes: aol, the NFL, SNL and Sony. (He's not predicting that they'll all be winners, just that they'll be interesting to follow as they try to keep (or win back) relevance, differentiation and authenticity)

3)Top Ten Branding Keys For 2011: Branding Strategy Insider
Ten tips for better branding focusing on better quality of interaction and service to your customers

4) Social Media Predictions; Content Marketing Predictions for 2011: Junta42 (via Drew McLellan)
More than 100 participants contributed to this collection of social media predictions. With that many people contributing, someone's bound to be right about something.

5) Predictions From Customer-Experience Experts for 2011: MarketingProfs
Another survey of thought leaders, this time in the area of customer experience.

6) What are experts predicting for 2011?: Samuel Parent's Blog
You want more? Samuel Parent has put together a comprehensive list of which the following are just a limited set:
Forecast 2011: The digital backlash begins, Monocle
Tech Predictions 2011: Winners and Losers, Mashable
11 B2B Marketing Predictions for 2011, Social Media Today
25 Customer Experience Statistics For 2011 (And Beyond!), The Social Customer
2011 Trends: Census Highlights Demographic Shifts, eMarketer
Consumer Trends to Watch in 2011, Marketing Charts
2011 Trends: Content Marketing Is Critical, eMarketer
Five Social Media Trends for 2011, Social Media Explorer
2011 trends: Social media marketing and ROI. Social Media Today

That's it! Back soon with more stories from the world of brand strategy. More thoughts and comments also available on Twitter (@martinjbishop).

SOTB: 2010 Retrospective

It's almost time to say goodbye to 2010. A year that featured the launch of the iPad, the Old Spice commercials, the European debt crisis, Foursquare rising (soon to fall?), Groupon turning down a $6 billion offer from Google, Steven Slater's dramatic exit from his Jet Blue flight (and career), the TSA-inspired catchphrase "Don't Touch My Junk," a Gap logo that was junked following a Twitter outcry and Spain winning the World Cup (while I was there). While all this was going on, these were the six most popular Brand Mix posts of the year:

1) Great Brands of Tomorrow
Credit Suisse released an impressive report on the 27 brands it considered to have the greatest potential in the years to come. Most of the brands on the list are ones that have started to make the leap from niche/emerging players into powerful mainstream brands. Brands like Trader Joe's and Hyundai. These brands still have plenty of room to grow but are more established and have less risk of flaming out than early-stage companies. The report also had some interesting thoughts on the power of brand investing and what, in their opinion, constitutes sustainable brand value creation.

2) Marriott launches Autograph Collection, a tricky proposition
It was nice to see a post about brand architecture, my specialty area, make the top six. This post talked about the branding challenges for Marriott as it launched its new Autograph Collection bringing together high-end, unique properties in an upscale franchise. It's a  tricky challenge to get the balance right between recognizing marketing and operating efficiencies of bringing these properties closer together without eroding the unique characteristics that customers value.

3) Six of the Best: Sticky accelerators, iPad jokes, phone book forts and more edition
Back in January, almost any reference to iPad in your headline was guaranteed to increase traffic. In the early days of the iPad, there was a lot of chat about the name and its unfortunate proximity to a category of feminine hygiene products. In this SOTB, I listed a post written by Hayes Roth, Landor's CMO, who correctly predicted that the product would be a smash and the hoo-hah about the name quickly forgotten.

4) In questions of perception and behavior, font matters
This post reported on an article by Hyunjin Song and Norbert Schwarz in the February edition of The Psychologist that showed how fonts can significantly influence people's assessment about how easy or difficult things are to do. People estimated that an exercise with instructions printed in Arial would be much easier and faster to complete than the same exercise with instructions printed in Script MT. The more difficult-to-read fonts tax our brain's limited processing power and lead us to make false inferences about the task itself.

5) Six of the Best: Branding edition
I should probably put the words brand and branding into my titles more often if I want to get more readership. Anyway, this SOTB featured six posts about various aspects of branding from what we can learn from the remarkable turnaround of Ford to the transformation of Bill Gates as a presenter.

6) Essentials of Branding: FREE! download
Well this post had "branding" and "FREE!" in the title so it should have been the most popular of all. McGraw Hill's Big Book of Marketing is, they say: "The most comprehensive book of its kind... the definitive resource for marketing your business in the twenty-first century." Landor contributed content for the chapter on branding and it's that content that's STILL available for free download on landor.com

That's it! Back soon with more stories from the world of brand strategy. More thoughts and comments also available on Twitter (@martinjbishop).

Photo: last rays by paul (dex)  (Flickr)

SOTB: Holiday edition

It's definitely time, if you haven't, to get into the holiday spirit. To help you out, here's some, mostly Xmas-themed items I've seen over the last couple of weeks.

1) Rudolph (You Don't Have To Put On The Red Light) mojochronic
Red light, red nose. Why, of course, they should be mashed together:



2) Merry Christmas from Grolsch: Grolsch
A video from Grolsch and the Swingtop Philharmonic Orchestra putting beer to music.



3) Christmas Food Court Flash Mob, Hallelujah Chorus - Must See!
The Hallelujah Chorus has been flashing up everywhere this year. This was the one that I saw first. Very high singer to bemused diner ratio:



4) Adam Sandler original Chanukah (Hanukkah) Song
Love the song, love the crowd signing along 



5) Narayanan Krishnan via Mary Slavin Wallace
Capturing the real spirit of the holidays: "What is the ultimate purpose of life? It's to give."



6) The Salvation Army goes all high tech
Small steps on the giving front. How about those red kettles? The kettles outside your grocery store now take plastic! Or, better yet, you can give online, right here, right now.

Donate here!

That's it! Back soon with more stories from the world of brand strategy and somewhat related topics. More thoughts and comments also available on Twitter (@martinjbishop).

Cultural development of the week: The first Cyberwar

Hey, Amazon, I'm Cutting You Off #wikileaks by AdrielH on Flickr

An all-out cyberwar has broken out after WikiLeaks' publication of US diplomatic cables. Companies like Amazon, Mastercard and PayPal have been forced to take sides and are suffering the consequences. As I post, the Mastercard site is down. It has been targeted by Anonoymous and others following its decision to stop allowing WikiLeaks to accept MasterCard-branded products. Amazon, Paypal and Swiss Postfinance have also been targeted after cutting ties.

Those companies that choose to stick with Wikileaks face continuing government pressure and attacks from hackers siding with governments.

Freedom of Information vs. National Security?  Not a choice that business-oriented, non-politically-minded companies want to make or were imagining that they would ever have to make. No easy answer. No safe haven.