media+marketing business trend links
Wii Straps Foreshadow Future of 'Avatar Marketing" - Just as we're entering the age of Avatar marketing, the New York Times reports that Nintendo to Offer Sturdier Straps for Wii. Studier straps! Yes indeed, folks; we are just beginning a wild new ride in interactive media and once the keyboards are combined with SecondLife wii-like technology and video blogging, we'll see brand-entertainment to a degree not seen before (oops - except of course in person).
- iTune Your Brand- Seems like a new marketing technique. Well, it's one CEO Les Moonves is currently doing by reviving one of the greatest and most storied brands in the history of all media - CBS Records. Yes, but how?! CBS is like so old media compared to Google and Yahoo. Answer: by allowing the CBS brand to partner with music providers such as Apple's iTunes. Hey, so, if a big media company can do this, ask yourself, can you and your small business brand do it too? Simple? Easy? Make a podcast. Make an entertaining weekly radio piece and engage your audiences. Become a resource and bang - you've revived your brand.
- Turn Your Monitor Off- Will you keep your computer on stand-by while you are away from your home-office over the holidays? Did you know it could lead to global warming? Thought not, but this is what the BBC is reporting in "Turning off the Digital World". Who would have ever thunk the two could be tied together? "The lights won't be on the office Christmas tree but on the monitors, photocopiers, fax machines, phone rechargers and PCs that will be left on standby or, worse, turned on throughout the break," says the report. Lesson: sure it take more power to turn the average light bulb on/off than to just keep it on in many cases, but unless you are outsourcing your computer to a Third World country over the holiday break, turn the machines off. And, caveat, go see Happy Feet already.
- Business Meetings in Second Life - Have you attended a virtual trade show or business meeting in SecondLife? Seems some users are entrigued by the capability of the virtual world to bring them directly in touch with the 'untouchables'. Reports ZDNet's Dana Gardner, "There is an egalitarian equalizing effect when your avatar IMs with another … even if you know who they are. There's a comfort level with being virtual, and the IBMers seemed eager to chat with lots of folks. I can see getting better access to executives and the creative minds at IBM in Second Life than I do in real life, and that's a good thing."
- Craig Newmark, Help Me Market My Business! - Entreprenuer's Shanon Lewis guides us in how to strategically integrate our small business ads into the World of Craigslist. Shanon Lewis is a web-marketing expert who specializes in marketing on Craigslist. She's also the author of The Unofficial Craigslist Book and regularly shares her wisdom on Craigslist and online marketing at her popular blog.
- Mass Media Isn't Dead - We're pitching company marketers on niche media? On the micro properties that lay in the tail? Telling them that to reach target demogrphics that :30 second spot is so done. And this report comes out? Americans will spend a whopping five months watching and listening to the media in 2007, a new report suggests. Con: five months certainly is an awfully long time...who would want to spend a whole five months like that? Pro: marketers will love to hear that America is still listening to them. Trouble is Americans are actually speaking back at companies and brands. Let's hope marketers remember to focus their marketing not only at Americans, but market with Americans.
- Christian Teen Marketing? Believe it, it is big business. Writes Anastasia Goodstein in the Huffington Post: "I am fascinated by how this subculture [Christians] appropriates popular youth culture and creates its own version of everything -- Christian wrestling, the Christian version of American Idol (called "Gifted"), Christian rock festivals, Bibles that look like teen magazines, Christian manga (Japanese style comic books) and skateboarding ministries. I've met youth ministers at the same youth marketing conferences where marketers pay $1-2K to attend to learn 'What teens want.' It may have a 'higher calling,' but Christian teen media is big business."
- Africanize Your Marketing - Is your marketing and branding integrating Africa? Didn't think so. Looks like Hollywood beat you to the punch. Marketers have embraced cause-marketing, sponsorship and green-marketing. Now it's the "Africa-effect". Read more about what I mean here where MSNBC reports that "Hollywood has embraced Africa -- as a place to shoot films and as a source of fresh dramatic themes." If we put two and two together (Seth Godin's brand storytelling technique) with the Africa new fresh and dramatic theme thing, sure seems an upstart brand could have a one-up on competitors in building a story in the media - if Brad and Anjolie and Madonna are doing it - why can't your brand? Am I crazy? Watch a brand that takes up this technique will be seen so crazy - so crazy all the way to the bank.
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