*supercollider

My goal on this blog is to provide original insight and analysis. I don’t want to just post links, that’s what my Twitter feed is for.

That said, as a voracious consumer of RSS feeds (it’s that little sub-dermal chip connected directly to my brain stem that does it) I’ve been wondering if it might be useful to curate the most interesting things I find on a semi-regular basis, so more people get to hear about them.

So here’s the first edition for your consideration. Definitely let me know if it’s useful or not, and if so I’ll keep at it in addition to my usual but less frequent long-form posts.

Smart.fm: Experience design process by Adaptive Path

Adaptive Path is one of those impressive companies that absolutely lives on the edge of what they do, which is in this case is Experience Design.

Whenever a company like that, whether it’s Apple, or Pixar, or IDEO or whomever, opens up about their processes and gives you a look at how they do what they do best, it’s definitely worth a look.

This is especially true as marketing moves away from simply messaging and towards experiences and engagements, you’d be hard pressed to find a better company to crib notes from.

Smart.fm experience design at Adaptive Path

GM ‘The Lab’ blog + Universal Music Tumblr

Two of the key themes of the Business 2.0 era are transparency and connection. It’s fascinating seeing how companies are experimenting with technologies like blogs, micro-blogs and Facebook to bring people closer to their business in new and inventive ways, and how they are becoming more open and transparent in the process.

Two new examples on my radar this week are GM’s “The Lab” and Universal Music’s Tumblr.

As PSFK notes, GM’s The Lab blog is fascinating because it opens up the transportation design process, something that has traditionally been kept tightly under wraps. The reaction from auto fans says it all — this post on the Bare Necessity Car has 260 comments!

Separately, the Universal Music Tumblr is interesting to me because Tumblr is so the complete opposite of what brand communication used to be about. Tumblr is chaotic, continual, jumbled, informal. For brands to use this technology with any credibility, they’ll have to conform to the nature of the medium. And that’s a big and important mindset shift for marketers and companies geared towards infrequent, big bang campaigns.

Pepsi’s new record label, QMusic

Another one of the prevailing themes I’m interested in is the intersection of brands and culture. With the move in marketing towards creating value, culture is one of the biggest arenas that brands are going to ramp up in, far beyond the association and co-option that has been the standard to date.

Pepsi’s announcement that they are moving beyond just sponsoring acts to grooming their own via a new label in China called QMusic is significant. As Contagious mentions, this is part of a bigger trend. TAG Records, Bacardi being the label for Groove Armada, and most recently, the finally launched Red Bull Records shows that brands are becoming less content to sit on the sidelines and sponsor and more keen to follow Red Bull’s lead in areas like action sports and become an integral part of the culture, investing in creating cultural value directly.

Socializing Banners

Adweek reports that CBS is experimenting with social features embedded directly in banners.

Most people do not click on banners. In fact, most people’s brains are trained so their eyes ignore them automatically. Is adding some social features to a banner going to change that? No. At least not right away.

But there are two redeeming thoughts here.

The first is that that for a while, socialization was something that happened in a social network. Now through Facebook Connect, Google Connect, Twitter and other technologies, social can and should be everywhere you are. It seems obvious already, but still most marketing is not taking full advantage of this opportunity. Which is a shame, especially since Facebook Connect’s results are staggering.

Second, the idea that catching attention and building passive awareness is no longer good enough for advertising. The idea that banners, OOH, and all other advertising as we know it is going to continue to shift towards providing people with something of value, and provoking an action.

The question now is what are you going to get people to do. That action could be contributing a vote or a few words, it could be a share, it could be downloading an app, getting a coupon, getting a name down for an event.

But of course, it’s not that easy. The big question is why would they want to in the first place? And that’s why marketers increasingly need to start from the question “what are we providing of value?”. Which reminds me of this Fanta campaign from Germany, where texting to a Fanta shortcode underneath a bottle cap rewards the customer with 3 minutes worth of talk time.

Penguin Spinebreakers partners with Island Records

Penguin has got to be one of the most interesting brands on the web right now. There was the amillionpenguins wiki-based collaborative novel project. The We Tell Stories digital fiction project. A first step into building services, the We Make Stories suite of web-based story creation tools for children. The Penguin Dating collab with Match.com. They are pushing boundaries left and right.

And now NMA reports on a colab with Island Records, where they are bringing Island artists into their teen social network Spinebreakers by having them review books, and then giving Spinebreakers users Island records to review.

The co-promotion is nice, but really I’m just interested to stumble upon Spinebreakers, as it’s great to see this minimally-branded niche social network thriving away, another example of Penguin looking at declining readership and deciding to see technology as part of the solution and part of their future.

GAP Stylemixer: mobile integrated discounts and CRM 2.0

And finally, my fellow AKQA peeps over the pond in the U.S. have developed a social media campaign for the Gap, and one of the showpieces is an iPhone app called Stylemixer. The primary function of the app is as a “social shopping tool”, allowing you to create, share, and get feedback on outfits.

However as Contagious rightly pointed out, one of the most interesting features is that when opened near a Gap store, the app can automatically unlock discounts for the store. As companies begin to be able to engage with their customers via real-time channels like apps, feeds and widgets, the possibilities in CRM 2.0 explode. Creative innovations like this one are the start of something really big.

First edition fin

Well, that’s it for the first edition, hope that was useful. Any other unique stories from the week you think I’ve missed, please let me know in the comments.