Marketing 2.0

Shift Happens » SlideShare

Take a look at this slideshow titled Shift Happens. It recently won an award in the World's Best Presentation contest (whatever that is). At any rate, you will find some surprising statistics here that relate to global changes and especially the technology advances that are rapidly accelerating. Here's just a sample to whet your appetite:

• The top 25% of Chinese population with the highest IQ exceeds the total population of North America
• If MySpace were a country it would be the 11th most populous in the world
• Predictions are that supercomputers will exceed the computational ability of the human brain by 2013

Link: Shift Happens » SlideShare.

Really Bad Jobs

Think you've got a bad job? Take a look at this humorous site from Verizon to promote their wireless services. I think this is clever marketing that entertains and appeals to the target audience.

Link: VZW.

Adrants British Hottie Says Hand in Pants Not Hard

If you are not subscribed to Adrants, I encourage you to check out the site. They offer a lot of good marketing and advertising content along with a daily newsletter.

While you are there look at this public service campaign from England. If you thought Paris Hilton selling burgers was over the top, wait until you see British pop star Rachel Stevens promoting routine testicular exams for cancer prevention.

Link: Adrants British Hottie Says Hand in Pants Not Hard.

Resource Compendium for Photographs

Do you spend a lot of time searching for images on the web? I spend an inordinate amount of time looking for just the right images. I incorporate them in the PowerPoint slides used for my lectures at Ithaca College. I find that my students are really oriented to multi-media. They respond to graphics, images and video clips so I try to use these tools to enhance my lectures.

Thanks to Robin Good, we now have a compendium of sites offering free images. He lists and describes several sites that offer royalty-free images for your projects. Read his article and visit a few sites to select one or two that fit your needs.

Link: Where To Find Great Free Photographs And Visuals For Your Own Online Articles - Robin Good's Latest News.

Guide to Punctuation

I continue to be surprised at how writing skills are diminishing in our world. Whether it's grammar, punctuation or spelling — lots of people struggle with the English language. Nothing undermines your professionalism in the workplace like a poorly written memo or letter. I think that the prevalence of e-mail is contributing to this problem as people generally assume that anything goes in electronic communications.

Here is a website that can be a valuable resource for your punctuation challenges. It's called Guide to Punctuation, and is a no-nonsense, clear set of references. If you write for a living or just want to add to your toolkit, I suggest you visit and bookmark it. I found this site courtesy of Marcus Zillman . He is another good resource for communications professionals. Take a look at his site.

In the meantime, mind your periods and semicolons.

BBC Motion Gallery

Via the excellent blog titled Research Buzz, I found the BBC Motion Gallery. This is a good resource for video enthusiasts, researchers and educators. The BBC claims to offer over 300,000 hours of video footage from its archives and those of CBS News. Registration is required but at no cost. The video clips can be downloaded and licensed. Content is available from a wide variety of subjects including news, art, celebrities, culture and natural history.

BBC Motion Gallery - Home Page

Turning the Pages

The British Library offers a dazzling virtual exhibit called "Turning the Pages." Check out the exhibit on Leonardo DaVinci's notebook. This is one of the best examples I have seen of using technology to actually enhance and transform a traditional experience. Most virtual museums offer little more than photos pasted on the web with some commentary. The British Library actually lets you turn the pages. You couldn't get this close to Leonardo's notebook in a brick and mortar museum. Very cool.

What's it have to do with marketing communications? Well nothing really, except I thought you would enjoy seeing this and maybe applying a similar approach to a product catalog or a marketing application. Any suggestions?

Turning the Pages

Digital Storytelling Site

The Center for Digital Storytelling is a nice resource for those interested in using technology to express themselves. Digital storytelling is a broad term and can include many types of presentations. A few that come immediately to mind are family history, memorials, documentaries of important events and historical profiles. Perhaps the most influential practitioner of digital storytelling is Ken Burns, who pioneered many of the techniques such as panning and zooming with his camera to animate old photographs. There's even an effect in iMovie, named after Mr. Burns that all of us can use to create a similar effect with photos in a video piece.

The Center offers tips and techniques for making your own digital stories. While some of the techniques are specific to software tools (Premiere and Photoshop), others offer general advice on planning and creating digital assets.

Digital Storytelling Site

Environmental Design

Good architecture and interior design can create spaces that foster collaboration, learning and creativity. The noted industrial design firm, IDEO worked on a project at the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning. This link will take you to the project site.

I enjoyed navigating this site because it is well designed — simple yet articulate. If you work with web sites, you should appreciate the visual structure that IDEO used here.

If you are involved in organizational communications, there are lots of interesting ideas for structuring the workplace to support your strategic objectives.

ideo.com :: Case Studies :: Stanford Center for Interactive Learning