Posted by Isabel Villegas

A few years ago, the big Latin music cross-over involved Spanish-speaking performers like Ricky Martin, Shakira and Marc Anthony making it big in the American market by singing in English. Today however, the strategy is shifting and we are seeing a different kind of cross-over. The new trend involves English-speaking artists like Wyclef Jean, Beyonce, Dr. Dre and Christina Aguilera crossing-over and capitalizing on the growing US Hispanic market by belting out a few tunes, and in some cases full albums, in Spanish!

Continue reading "Crossing-over...in English or Spanish?"

I watched this demonstration of Photosynth staged at this year’s TED conference. In my opinion, this new application is Web 2.0 par excellence because it links together the images we share on the Web to create real-world, 3D environments we can explore on our computers as if we were holding miniature models.

Continue reading "Jaw-Dropping Demo of Photosynth"

In case you missed it, the 6 August Business Week features the annual Top 100 Global Brands report. (I almost missed it because I was so amused by the terrific "Pet Economy" cover story.)

Some headlines:

-- The top 10 brands of 2006 are still the top 10 brands of 2007 (with some shuffling within the group)
-- Google: 44% increase in brand value, the greatest brand growth for any of the top 100
-- Google's philosophy: "branding by doing... rather than shouting about [products] in ads."
-- According to Google's VP Marketing, "First and foremost, we're always thinking about what's best for the user."

So for me a key conclusion of the 2007 report: that Google achieved the greatest brand growth by starting with customers and creating products and experiences that deliver on what the brand promises.

OK, I promise to stop writing so many posts about Apple's marketing... as soon as they stop doing cool things.

Last Sunday, I'm walking through the men's section at Macy's thinking "my day would be so much better if I could buy a new iPod right here", when I spotted this:

Yep, an iPod and digital lifestyle accessory vending machine. It's the first one I'd seen (Macy's in Walnut Creek, CA) but when I googled it I found that Apple started testing the machines in a few major airports back in May (Atlanta, SF, maybe more by now.)

It occurs to me that if you bought a new iPod for your flight, you'd need some way to charge it and fill it with music. Maybe that's in v2.

It's mid-afternoon on one of those San Francisco summer days that never seems to warm up. So a co-worker and I walk a couple of blocks down the street for a cup of Java, and on the way we encounter this:

This mobile ad space is scrolling Southwest advertising on 3 sides of the vehicle, and there's a guy (on the other side of the truck in the pic) with a bright tie-dye shirt greeting people and talking about the truck.

Turns out, he's not advertising Southwest, he's promoting the truck. The critical piece of info here is that where he is parked is kind of San Francisco's "agency row" -- McCann Worldgroup, Weber Shandwick, Golin Harris, MWW, Jack Morton, and a handful of other potential clients' offices are on this block. So this consumer advertising truck is being used experientially to market the medium to their b2b customers/prospects. Good idea.

Oh, one other thing I noticed on their website, the truck is Biodiesel.

I attended a lunch today honoring Advertising Age's 2007 "Women to Watch" (who include Jack Morton's Chief Strategy Officer and President, US, Laura Shuler) and was struck by the great answers the the question posed by moderator and Ad Age Editor Jonah Bloom: what's the number one issue facing the industry today? Some favorite responses from my notes:

-- Gayle Troberman of Microsoft, pointing to the often irrational exhuberance marketers feel when experimenting with every new media touchpoint available, suggested that what marketers most need is restraint -- not more marketing, but less and better marketing -- marketing that doesn't get in the way, that engages and makes people smile

-- Carole Irgang of Kraft Foods said it's time to stop using all the old above the line/below the line rhetoric (what is that line anyway?)... Let's erase the line and really start working together.

Pretty much everyone echoed the need to be relevant, results-driven and to think in terms of experiences and passions that drive consumer engagement.

Two recent research studies caught my attention. First was the Pew internet study that shows that 70% of home internet users now have broadband access.

Currently, 71% of adults use the internet at least occasionally from any location; of these, 94% have an internet connection at home. Among adults with a home internet connection, 70% go online using a high-speed connection, versus 23% who use dialup.

So what are they using all that bandwidth for? Take a look at this Internet Activity Index from the Online Publishers Association. This report provides a new way of looking at consumer engagement online, dividing Internet usage into four distinct activities: content, communications, commerce and search. This research divides most of the domains out there into one of these categories and tracks usage. The index accounts for 90% of internet users and about 55% of all time spent online. (The index does not track porn sites, so you can theorize what the other 45% of online usage is.)

Key takeaway from the IAI: Content usage is way up (10% growth over the past year), with declines in time spent on commerce, search, and communications. In fact, 49.6% of time spent online is viewing news, information & entertainment. And here's the connection between the two studies: much of the content is now video, which is only possible because of now-widespread broadband adoption. So Google scores with its move to diversify from search into content with its $billion.six investment in YouTube. No lack of smarts over there at Google.

Posted by Claudia Irving

AdWeek’s 2007 Annual Guide to Hispanic Marketing and Media shows that U.S. Hispanics are leading non-Hispanics in their usage of social networking sites. The report reveals that young, tech-savvy acculturated Latinos are surfing the web and utilizing several online media services more than non-Hispanics. This group of Latinos are currently leading the pack in music downloads, streaming video and the creation of personal websites. Some of the on-line players capitalizing on this burgeoning trend are bilingual, Latino-focused networking sites such as MiGente (www.migente.com), Vostu (www.vostu.com), and Quepasa (www.quepasa.com).

Continue reading "E-socializing…en Español"

The September issue of Business 2.0 magazine has a good article on the transformation happening at Facebook (the No. 2 social network with 32 million users), since it opened its platform to hundreds of developers a few months ago, providing access to the site's audience and the programming tools needed to draw them in.

It is transforming the site into a new kind of software platform for "widgets" - small applications that allow users to do everything from scrawling graffiti and sending virtual cocktails to buying music, brokering loans, and joining causes - usually without leaving their Facebook homepage. In just 10 weeks, more than 2,500 new widgets were created, triggering 140 million downloads. IPG has formed a strategic partnership by acquiring a stake in Facebook; venture capitalists are setting aside millions of dollars to develop even more powerful widgets.

To help find the most popular new widgets, Appaholic.com tracks the most popular and the fastest growing apps, which can double in popularity overnight as they are shared by friends through the network. Its viral dashboard allows you track, sort, and graph the popularity of every widget on Facebook. As of today, the 5 most popular widgets are Top Friends, My Questions, Video, Graffiti, and iLike.

Widgets offering the best sponsorship and branding opportunities are Likeness (3 million users, offers quizzes that generate top-10 lists), FoodFight (2 million users, throw virtual food at your friends), and HotLists (1.6 million users, post brand logos to help define your persona).

What a difference a couple of months make...we have made some really good progress on Jack Morton GREEN (as I first discussed in this post).

Here's what has been going on...

Continue reading "Greener by the day"