January 2008 Archives

 A bit of discussion on the current state and potential future of mobile technology, usage, advertising and content from Davos:



Makes me think again about all the discussion of the "keys to the kingdom" of advertising & content. There are representatives of most of the players here, albeit with agencies not surprisingly a bit lacking in their presence. Do they even play a role in this discussion? Or are they all to caught up in their old revenue models to even have a chance?

IKEA continues to prove that they get the importance of being part of the conversation. Currently they are letting NYC based comedian Mark Malkoff stay in a NJ store while his apartment is fumigated. It seems that Mark was running out of option of places to stay for the week of fumigation when he asked IKEA if he could stay in a store in exchange for making a video of his experience...and they said yes.

This is a brilliant example of a brand getting the fact that it should support and engage its enthusiasts rather than ignore them or push them away. IKEA gets that the conversation is happening whether they are a part of it or not, and wants to actively join in. Perhaps they've just been reading Jaffe's new book Join the Conversation and wanted to give it a try.

No matter, it's brilliant and something more brands and their marketing agencies need to learn how to do.

Even the Simpsons is getting into the game of newspaper bashing.

Found on Gawker


Oddly enough, I'm one of the shrinking group that reads both the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal primarily in their print format. Their online presences serve as backup, reference & "realtime" touchpoints.



That said, the advent of the high quality mobile browsing experience provided by the iphone has begun to change how much I lean on printed materials to entertain while in transit, and I imagine that such devices are playing a growing role in the "decline of print".