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P&G is setting up shop in Silicon Valley to “help develop social-networking systems and digital-marketing capabilities with the website” according to AdAge.com.

Why is this significant? This is the arguably the world’s largest advertiser getting even cosier with the worlds largest social-networking site, thus giving even more momentum to the argument for shifting marketing spending to this emerging space.

Game on…

I like many others, love Paul Rand…and by love him I mean in that crazy-old-grandpa-that-was-a-little-scary kinda way.

But he seriously had a way with the pen…and given all the changes recently in the automotive industry, I think it is about time Ford stepped up, grew a pair and embraced their well deserved future.

[Rand] almost singlehandedly convinced business that design was an effective tool. Anyone designing in the 1950s and 1960s owed much to Rand, who largely made it possible for us to work. He more than anyone…made the profession reputable. We went from being “commercial artists” to being graphic designers largely on his merits.

Rarely am I stunned to the level I was when I came across Yulia Brodskaya’s work. Perhaps it’s because of my love/hate relationship with paper in design school? Maybe it’s because I now spend Saturday afternoons with my kids cutting colored construction paper into pieces and using a glue stick to make collages? Or maybe it’s just that she’s that impressive…

Whatever the reason, I’m a fan…a BIG fan of this. I hope you are too…http://www.artyulia.com/

The future of marketing is in on Madison Ave., right? Maybe not… If the folks here in Cincinnati have their way, you may be visiting the Queen City for that next big campaign.

With the likes of P&G, Krogers, Scripps & others, this initiative headed up by Rich Kiley has the firepower to make a real run at becoming the Silicon Valley of Consumer Marketing.

A RT @pblackshaw, reminded me from an earlier article written in the Cincinnati Business Courier.

A Bonanza of Opportunities

2010, two thousand and ten, or twenty ten (whatever you want to call it) brings with it a tremendous amount of anticipation. What will this year bring?

As we look to find the next “big idea” we have to constantly be probing, digging, and trying to forecast where we THINK consumers, the economy, and everything else will be headed. 
I try to stay up on trends through a various group of resources, one of which I am personally fond of, trendwatching.com.
Trendwatching.com has published their 10 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2010. It’s informative and has some good insights into why we are here, and where we’re headed.
I am reposting their overview, but it’s definitely worth the read. Enjoy.

Forget the recession: the societal changes that will dominate 2010 were set in motion way before we temporarily stared into the abyss. More »

Urban culture is the culture. Extreme urbanization, in 2010, 2011, 2012 and far beyond will lead to more sophisticated and demanding consumers around the world. More »

Whatever it is you’re selling or launching this year, it will be reviewed ‘en masse’, live, 24/7. More »

Closely tied to what constitutes status (which is becoming more fragmented), luxury will be whatever consumers want it to be over the next 12 months. More »

Online lifestyles are fueling and encouraging ‘real world’ meet-ups like there’s no tomorrow, shattering all cliches and predictions about a desk-bound, virtual, isolated future. More »

To really reach some meaningful sustainability goals this year, corporations and governments will have to forcefully make it ‘easy’ for consumers to be more green, by restricting the alternatives. More »

Tracking and alerting are the new search, and 2010 will see countless new INFOLUST services that will help consumers expand their web of control. More »

This year, generosity as a trend will adapt to the zeitgeist, leading to more pragmatic and collaborative donation services for consumers. More »

With hundreds of millions of consumers now nurturing some sort of online profile, 2010 is a good year to introduce some services to help them make the most of it (financially), from intention-based models to digital afterlife services. More »

2010 will be even more opinionated, risqué, outspoken, if not ‘raw’ than 2009; you can thank the anything-goes online world for that. Will your brand be as daring? More »

“They’re not writing songs about cars anymore.”

I came across a great interview at Esquire.com, with Ford’s chief designer J Mays. He has some great quotes here, and this last one is my favorite. So true…

There are others that are pretty good too, so I decided to post the rest of it in it’s entirety for your reading pleasure:

Anybody can make a toaster toast. Very few people can make a toaster something you covet.

If you go into a person’s house and look at his surroundings, you’ll see exactly who he is. If you look at the same person in his car, you’ll see who he wants to be.

Believe it or not, there’s an art to plowing a field. My father had an exact way he wanted it done, a laser-straight line over the length of the field. I just had to train my eye. If you lay out the first line wrong, then all the other lines that you disc will turn out crooked. There was a precision in those fields that I took into automotive design.

The dirty little secret about simplicity is that it’s really hard to do.

A designer is only as good as what he or she knows. If all you know is what you’ve garnered from fifteen years of living in Detroit, it’s going to limit what you can lay down. If you’ve had experiences around the world, you’ll be able to design a much richer story for people to enjoy.

Not every car has a story, and not every movie has a story. A lot of movies are no more than special effects. A lot of cars are no more than special effects as well, and they’re all crap.

There have been more not-quite-right Mustangs than Mustangs. It had gone a little bit off the rails in the seventies, came back in the eighties, and went a little off the rails in the nineties. We did a lot of research before we designed the 2005, and we came to the conclusion that the ones that were really important, the ones that everybody logged in their heart, were between ‘64 and ‘70. I wanted the 2005 to feel like we were picking up in ‘71. So I basically erased thirty-five years of Mustangs in order to get the story focused in everybody’s mind again.

I don’t think cars are as important to young people as their computers.

There is a cutoff point where the design is, quote unquote, finished. That’s the day they’re dragging the clay out from under my fingernails.

Wanting a certain cell phone as a status symbol borders on the ridiculous.

People often mistake putting on a crappy suit with a shirt and tie for being well dressed. That’s more formal, but it has nothing to do with being stylish.

Success has a lot of fathers.

Clichés are more correct than we give them credit for.

I encourage friendly competition among the design team. But I also remind everyone that their colleague sitting across the desk is not the enemy. That’s Honda and Toyota.

Cars in the fifties had tail fins. They looked like they were built with rockets in them. That was a reflection of the optimism of the time.

What does the cutlery look like? What’s the plate look like? How’s the food laid out on the plate? Has the environment been completely thought through? Part of the reason I go to a nice restaurant is to get the entire vibe.

I don’t think Americans see themselves as clearly as Europeans see them.

I still measure myself against the hunger that I see coming out of college. At the point that I don’t think I can cut them off at the knees, then I’ll get out of the business. But I still can.

They’re not writing songs about cars anymore.

For all you creative-types out there…being “creative” isn’t enough to be “innovative.” According to the latest Harvard Business Review, a study completed by professors from Harvard Business School, Insead and Brigham Young University have just completed a six-year study of more than 3,000 executives and 500 innovative entrepreneur.

This study shows true innovators inherently share five skills that separate them from everyone else; associating, questioning, observing, experimenting and networking. These skills aren’t just a gift, true innovators just don’t practice these skills this is how they live. Insead’s Hal Gregersen sums it up simply in an article by Mark Tutton, of CNN:

“What the innovators have in common is that they can put together ideas and information in unique combinations that nobody else has quite put together before.”