CES 2011: The title match of tech

We're back from Vegas and it's time to process the dizzying amount of intelligence we gathered at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show. The biggest takeaway: TV is bigger and better than ever! Whether it's 3D, 2D, flat, or razor-thin, no matter how you measure it, the TV set is still the top dog at CES.

That's great news for those of us in the TV biz and the TV marketing world. Because what do all those TVs need? Great content and people who know how to market it.

Among the standout themes this year was "… Read more

We got game

It's a massive business, worth more than $20 billion annually in software and hardware sales alone. Its influence reaches every corner of our society and is as mainstream as it comes. I'm not talking about the television industry, believe it or not. I'm talking about video games.

Interactive games, like so many of the products and trends in the marketplace, come straight out of the "everything old is new again" file. Flashback to 1960, when CBS aired the show "Video Village," produced by Heatter-Quigley, the creators of "Hollywood Squares." The show … Read more

Debating the death of the Web

Earlier this year, prior to my talk at The Next Web conference in Amsterdam, I wrote a guest article on TNW's Web site titled "The Death of the Web Browser." Intentionally hyperbolic, it looked at how we increasingly get more of our Web content through something other than a Web browser--a smartphone app, desktop apps that embed Web-based content into them, and so on--and we can foresee the day coming fairly soon where the browser will be the minority means of accessing the Web. My Next Web talk extended that idea in more detail, in particular looking … Read more

Don't interrupt, disrupt! Be viral without viral marketing

As we're inundated with hero shots of the iPad every day, on every billboard and the back of every magazine cover, it appears to be a good time to rethink the relationship between advertising and product, between marketing and innovation. It's not that Apple doesn't spend any money on advertising--no, it was pouring a whopping $500 million into its launch campaign for the iPad. But what is different is that Apple's marketing doesn't have to be clever or utterly creative. In fact, it is stunningly not so. No major social media campaign needed to be sparked, no user-generated content contest needed to be held. And while the ongoing tongue-in-cheek anti-Microsoft ads are undeniably cute, they are not really an advertising revelation. Gone are the days of the bold "1984" campaigns. Today, Apple earns enough attention to forgo any ostentatious marketing, in fact, so much that a cleverly orchestrated campaign would distract from the brand rather than boosting it. The company simply displays its products--that's all it takes. Apple's products are viral without any viral marketing.… Read more

Touchfrastructure meets the HypePad

by Fabio Sergio, Creative Director, frog design

Those who know me will tell you that I tend to reflect on things, but the sad truth is that my brain is simply slow: here I am, writing about the iPad months after everybody else has put the microscope down and decided to wait for the thing to finally hit the market for real.

From my vantage point of nonengagement I must admit it was oddly amusing to see Apple for once unable to safely ride out the centrifugal mammoth hype tube they managed once more to build around their latest … Read more

Meaning-driven brands: A list of visionaries/sensemakers/disruptors/game changers/contrarians

As the world slowly emerges from the economic gloom, and the “hyper-social real-time Web” requires new organizational designs, it’s clear that business as usual will not be so usual anymore. Yet fundamental concerns remain, both for business leaders, who face the challenge of innovating in a hyper-transparent and always-on environment, and for consumers, who are increasingly searching for noneconomic values amid the shattered trust in business and the information overload. Smart companies recognize the historic opportunity to transform the way they do business and provide customers with more value-rich, sustainable, and meaningful products, services, and business models. From “un-entitlement” … Read more

Microsoft finds its innovation mojo

Microsoft is a bit like Tiger Woods at the moment--industry darling that became too dominant, then had a fall accompanied by a thick layer of schadenfreude, and now is trying a come-back. Microsoft is being replaced in the big-bad-wolf department by Google and Apple and finds itself in the odd position of being an underdog, and people love to root for underdogs. In fact I'd say that Microsoft is further ahead on the comeback trail than Tiger is if you look at some of its recent announcements: Bing, Windows Phone 7, the Courier journal concept, and the just-announced IE9. … Read more

Crowdsourcing the creative

For Wired UK’s “Work Smarter” issue (just released), I had the pleasure to speak with John Winsor, co-founder and CEO of Victors & Spoils (V&S), the world’s first creative (ad) agency built on crowdsourcing principles. You can find a shortened article in the Wired UK magazine. Here’s the interview in full length.

Q: V&S launched a few months ago. How is it going so far? How many clients do you have, and can you share some of the work that you are doing?

It's going really well. We're working with a … Read more

Penguin book innovates in publishing...again

Penguin, the fabled English publisher, is plunging head first into the world of iPad content. Not iPad books, exactly, as these things are not recognizable as books in the normal sense--they are closer to games and full-fledged apps. Even in the case where they are adapting existing print books, there is enough new stuff going on where it diverges significantly from what we normally think of as "book". A Kindle e-book, these are not. Check out the video above for an intriguing peep into what they have planned.

Dan Nosowitz at Fast Company observes:

[P]enguin doesn't … Read more