Other key takeaways I found valuable:

• 78% consider content marketing to be important to their organization, although only 49% have a formal strategy
• 35% have seen their budgets for social media rise in the last 12 months
• 84% consider it important to monitor what is being said online about their company, yet only 1 in 5 companies have invested in tools to do this
• The three most popular content marketing channels are e-newsletters (62%), print magazines (61%) and social media (49%)
• 52% see social media as integral to their marketing efforts and 59% see it as an opportunity for marketing departments, rather than a threat
• At a corporate level, companies are most likely to be using Facebook (68%), followed by Twitter (55%), LinkedIn (43%) and YouTube (42%)
• The biggest content marketing challenges are producing interesting (23%) or new / different (21%) content – budget is only an issue for 18%
• 40% of organizations expect their marketing budgets to go up in 2011 with an average increase of 1.4% forecast
• 79% of respondents consider that social media is “owned” by the marketing department – with an average of six people having some social media responsibility

The full report is available here.

Brastemp is a home appliance brand and they implemented a flashmob program earlier this month by working with 11 local radio stations to simultaneously broadcast one message at 9AM one morning. The message went something like this  (via Discuss-o-Mat):

Hey you, driver!  Yes, you — probably heading to work right now. This is an invitation.  An invitation to make your day better, an invitation to get some inspiration and do something very simple — Smile!

Smile to the car next to you. If they’re listening to this, they will understand and smile too.  Make your day better…  A smile can change everything…. brought to you by Brastemp.

I don’t know about you, but for me if I was one of those who participated and/or received this simple act of kindness that morning, I’ll  smile again when I think about Brastemp.

Money is only a motivating factor to a point for getting good results. After that people seek autonomy, mastery and purpose to be fully productive.

The companies who are customer centric—i.e. they see the world through the eyes and experiences of their customers, have the most successful brands. They view each touchpoint as an opportunity to build trust, extend customer loyalty, and fuel word of mouth. The companies that have really strong internal cultures i.e. employees that live the brand, who believe in the core purpose of the brand, and who are passionate about the brand, are off the charts successful.

The best companies have brand guidelines that help employees and other partners understand the brand and make it easy to apply the standards at each new touchpoint.

The brands that are not doing a good job at branding are the ones who are not paying attention to the customer, and the dynamics of the marketplace.

On staying relevant:

A brand does not need to continually reinvent itself. Organizations, however, need to stay relevant, continually find ways to engage their customers, and respond to their needs. It’s critical to have a laser-like focus on answering the question: Why should our customers choose us over others.

There are loads of stories out there on how Google has fundamentally changed our lives. I certainly have been affected — what would my day be without gmail, calendar, maps, analytics, adwords, adsense, etc., ? Where will my son find his entertainment without YouTube? How would I have remodel my bathrooms without Google search? However, what I find particularly interesting on this rainy September Monday is what the dominant super search engine and technology provider is not anymore — Google is no longer the most visited website in America. That now belongs to another college dorm room project, Facebook.

As we try to look out another 12 years, one thing is certain — some unrecognized beginning will once again fundamentally shift how technology affects our lives and changes our behaviors. We won’t see it coming and probably won’t be able to realize the significance when we first encounter it. Our best bet is to not get too complacent with what we have and always remain open to what might be.

Compiled from Wiki by @EricJFernandez

Why is it then, that we fail to act when we think—sometimes even know— that our brand is in disrepair? Well, whether it’s an abandoned Buick on the side of the road, or a brand new Prius with a sticky accelerator, there are identifiable indicators that it’s time to make a visit to “the brand shop”. The following are a few things that may light up your brand’s dashboard:

1.  Your market environment has changed. Your customers’ expectations of how a brand in your space looks, means, and behaves has altered. Are you keeping up with it? What your brand offers is still relevant to your customers, but how they think of you (and talk about you) needs to change to allow you to be more competitive.

2.  Your organization is transforming. You may have identified a new line of business, or adopted a new model, new markets may have emerged—your brand has to evolve with these changes, right down to its fundamentals. While you are not remotely a start-up, in many respects you need to act like one. You must carefully identify the perfect positioning, employ the right strategies and develop new messages and digital properties that are in sync with your transformation.

3.  Your competition is more aggressively managing its brand to better connect with your customers and prospects. If someone in your category is creating a lot of buzz, inspiring messaging and visual expression. You need to react before it’s too late. They say in the next five years there will be more change than there were in the last fifty. If your brand foundation and products are sound, you should be able to adapt and manage any change.

4.  Your communications—print, video and digital—just don’t reflect your brand position. If you’re on top of your offerings and operations, but find yourself apologizing for every brochure and URL you hand out, then it’s time to take a new look at how you express yourself visually. There have never been more tools available to you to refresh your brand.

5.  You took a wrong direction. A lot of things can lead us down the wrong path: Misinterpreted research, aggressive purchasing, even a shift in the market. Or maybe you just took a gamble.  At any rate, your brand is currently out of sync with the direction your industry is taking—or more importantly what your customers are wanting. A brand course correction is needed.

6.  Your brand has changed, but the perception hasn’t. Your products/services are in the forefront – you offer great innovations, higher quality and greater value to your customers. But they’re just not getting it. You need to eliminate this lag and allow your company to move forward. The good news is that you have the vision, model and value to fuel new messages, a new visual expression and a brand that will advance your evolved organization.

Once you have identified your ‘flashing sign’, understanding what course you need to take to transform your brand will go a long way towards ensuring the work you undertake will be necessary and effective.  A good full service ‘brand shop’ should help you better understand what’s wrong (diagnostic), what it will take to get you from here to there (planning), which experience will take you to your destination (creative), and how to continuously stay on the right track (stewardship/optimization).

Google? Topeka?, originally uploaded by Stubbornella (aka Nicole).

Can you imagine waking up one day to discover that your capacity to take in new knowledge has ended?  That everything you are going to learn has already happened and that your brain, now filled to capacity, was blinking “hard drive full”?  It can happen.  I have experienced it.

One thing that occurs when you are the custodian of a marketing budget is that everyone wants to meet with you.  If you allowed every new vendor to come in for a pitch, you could literally spend every day watching Power Point slides.  To better manage your time you set up protocols and processes–your staff and agencies screen new opportunities and vendors and only highlight those that they feel are right and likely to interest you.  This frees you up to focus on running your marketing programs, driving your business, and managing your time.

But all those protocols and layers are traps.  They isolate you from the marketplace and insulate you from innovation.  Your ability to compare and make decisions on new opportunities based on your firsthand knowledge/exposure diminishes… you are going stale.  So what can you do to stay current and in-touch with new options and changing landscapes without being capsized by solicitation?  Here are some fuel for thought suggestions:

• Trends/Data/Marketing News
• Brands on Twitter
• Marketing & Advertising