I’ve been entranced by the Nike Fuelband ever since I found out about it. Not necessarily because I’m a runner and psyched to track my “fuel” (I wish), but because it is one of the first examples of a health-centric feedback loop that is actually cool.

Awhile back I wrote about feedback loops, which are automatic data streams that can alert people about anything from how fast they’re driving to how dry their plants are to how many calories they are burning. These have a powerful potential to change human behavior by making us deal with realities we otherwise wouldn’t know about. For example, if you had a constant reminder that you were eating 500 extra calories every day, you’d probably can it. While you could know this with a manual entry program like Livestrong’s My Plate, a feedback loop would remove the necessity for you to enter info, making it automatic.

The Nike Fuelband calculates your “Nike Fuel,” which according to Gizmodo is done by turning information about oxygen into data, along with using an accelerometer, which has proven to be at least somewhat useful in measuring calories burned. Basically, it’s scientifically impressive and mysterious, while locked into the Nike culture that makes something a lot cooler to be seen in than your standard body monitoring device.

This could be the first mainstream adaption of the power of feedback loops, which could actually help a large number of people become healthier. Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity should definitely take note.

While I can imagine that Fuelband 3.0 might be a bit more unassuming and sleek in design, I’m still impressed by where Nike is at right now. Considering that people are suddenly clamoring to buy these (they’re sold out right now) and the brand today announced its new knit shoes, I’m starting to wonder if Nike isn’t the next Apple in terms of innovation.

Check out the Fuelband here.

-Becky Lang

Here’s what I’ve observed in as clean a sentence as I can conjure: The media companies that are succeeding are relying on physical merchandise and the brands that are considered most innovative are relying on digital media.

First, let’s talk about publications.
People are very cynical when it comes to how newspapers, blogs and magazines are supposed to make money online. “Yes, I will deal with pop-up ads, floating ‘Take Our Survey!’ widgets and constant prods to ‘Subscribe to the Print Edition, Dammit!’ if it means that I can help keep a publication alive,” people implicitly think. But that’s not the future – that’s narrow thinking.

Basically, publications have something very valuable – a reputation. The New York Times, Vice, [cool blog] – all of those have social cachet, which is invaluable and highly coveted by brands. What many don’t realize is that they can use their reputation and “coolness” to help sell physical products, whether that’s cheesy mugs and shirts (College Humor), books (McSweeney’s) or hand-selected objects sold in a shop (Monocle).

The companies that are leading the way right now are the ones who are leveraging their brand and acting like your average Disney movie by selling as much merchandise as possible. This frees them from relying on the less-than-profitable, unexciting world of online advertisements, which actually destroy a company’s reputation if used too egregiously.

Now, let’s talk about brands
This Fortune Magazine article points out something interesting – Nike is becoming more profitable and more socially relevant than ever, and they’ve had an interesting strategy. Instead of blowing tons of money on TV commercials featuring [famous sports guy of right now], they’re creating useful online platforms and technologies that help them connect to their customers.

Nike+ is the main example, but if you look at their mobile efforts, you’ll find lots of useful stuff. Their Nike Training App is something I personally love – it’s a pocket-sized personal trainer that is far less annoying than -ahem- some class leaders at your local gym.

The brand has figured out that the digital space is not only valuable but necessary, and what goes there isn’t just more content related to your TV/print campaign, but actually useful media and services.

Similarly, many retail sites have started hiring ex-editors from major publications, and becoming magazines online. People don’t just want to shop, they want to be entertained, and that can lead them to spend even more.

The Moral of the Story – Digital is a Place to Build Reputation

What I’m saying is that struggling ventures, whether publications or businesses, don’t need to give up hope – they just need to learn from one another. Brands need to learn from the way publications use editorial to gain a following, and publications need to learn from the way brands constantly invent creative merchandise, and come up with interesting ways to sell it. What that starts with is throwing out the idea that you should be using the digital space as a primary way to make money. Instead, it’s where you build your reputation, and it’s in finding new ways to create physical objects that you can make a profit.

By using digital as a place to provide (free) engaging content and services for customers, it can be a more powerful tool than ever at selling a product, even if that product is a publication.

-Becky Lang

A lot of brands have figured out that they should have blogs. What they did with those blogs – well, it varied. For some, they’re houses for interesting editorial content, a peek into their company culture and fun news. For others, they became a place to stash press releases. But aside from the “what” of blogs, the real problem was the “where.” Most blogs were housed right on the brand website, under blog.brand.com or brand.com/blog. This strategy is missing a huge opportunity.

Basically, when connecting with consumers on the Internet, you need to go where they are, not expect them to come to you. And according to the numbers, consumers are on Tumblr and Pinterest.

I’ve written before that brands need to get on Tumblr. Here’s all brands need to do.

1. Sign up for Tumblr.
2. Make a custom theme if you want, but keep in mind that most people read in the dashboard and don’t necessarily see your theme.
3. Simply post everything you are posting on your blog on your Tumblr as well.
4. Measure popularity of different types of posts by how many likes and reblogs they get.
5. Learn from those interactions.

Now that I said my Tumblr bit, it’s time to talk about Pinterest. Pinterest is about to change online shopping as we know it. Here’s why.

On Pinterest, people create a sort of “moodboard” of who they are by “pinning” images that they like. This is a powerful means of self-expression, giving people a new incentive to look for items on other websites that they can add to their pinboard. This means that some people who were not incentivized to visit retail sites online now have a reason to.

Since starting Pinterest myself, I’ve found myself looking for sites that have random, curated assortments of things, textual context not necessary, so I can sort through them and decide what to add to my pinboards. For example, Wanelo, is perfect for this.

If you can create a portal where people can easily sort through images of your product, they’re more likely to end up on Pinterest, where they can be completed with a price tag ribbon and linked right back to your website.

Here’s what brands should do to interact with customers on Pinterest.

1. If you’re a brand that makes things that are generally pretty and self-expressive, start your own Pinterest. Feature your own products, but also images that inspire your products. For example, Puma will share pictures of animals and colors palettes.
2. Outside of Pinterest, present curated collections of your products that update frequently, so customers will turn to you to find new things to add to their pinboards.

If your brand is religiously updating your site’s blog and not getting the interaction that you want, it’s because young people are starting to think of blogs as more and more social. Tumblr and Pinterest are their RSS feeds of what matters with the people and brands they care about, and if you’re not bringing your content there, you’re missing out.

Just remember – don’t just drop into a social network and post your TV/print campaign content. Instead, spend some time on it, see what its functions are, what regular people are sharing, and find a human approach to connecting.

-Becky Lang

For example, Barack Obama has been trying hard to organize a grassroots donation effort, stating that we need to “neutralize the avalanche of special-interest spending to defeat” him. But is it really about matching Republican contributions? Should it be?

Fun fact: In Mitt Romney’s Super PAC, which has fewer than 200 contributors, the average contribution for his main engine is roughly $150,000. Barack Obama’s average contribution is $50.

The way that the election campaigning is happening right now reminds me of brand marketing in the 90′s. It’s all about throwing down as much money as possible, getting on the airwaves and getting your message out there. For example, 96% of Mitt Romney’s Super PAC spending has been on attack ads.

In other words, they’re stuck in an era when marketing was all bout saying the other guy’s burger is 50% smaller. And those are politicians – many brands have long moved away from that game. With the rise of modern branding, brands have realized that messaging-only approaches just don’t work anymore. No matter what your TV commercials say, if your company has bad customer service, you need to fix the customer service, or else customers empowered by the Internet will destroy your reputation. Instead of relying on empty promises in commercials, brands are restructuring their processes so that they can do things better, and do more for their customers. By spending less on telling the story, they are challenging themselves to be creative about using social media, viral marketing and other techniques to get the word out.

So why is the election still all about TV spending? Instead of trying to rival the scope of Republican attack ads, Obama supporters should think of more creative – and less spendy – ways to make an impact. What if instead of asking for money for campaign materials, they used some of what they have to finance small projects or startups, and then publicized their successes? By pumping that money back into efforts that will help the people whose lives they want to improve, they could send a much larger message than any you might find in a commercial.

Look at Pepsi’s Refresh Project – they managed to create their own version of Kickstarter, just using their Superbowl funding.

Beyond how they spend their money, the viral – and free – territory of social media should actually be making funded marketing less important than ever for campaigns. Reputation spreads faster than ever, which is probably why no amount of campaign money can stop Mitt Romney from getting torched by The Onion.

The bottom line is, if our favorite brands have rethought their spending on messaging, isn’t it time for politicians to do so too?

-Becky Lang

I got one of my first promoted tweets the other day. A tweet from McDonald’s was at the top of my feed, leading me to a video about one farmer who raises the cattle for their beef.

Let’s just say I was not exactly sold.

Turns out that McDonald’s attempt to share authentic farmer stories using the hashtag #McDstories quickly evolved into a bunch of Twitter users sharing McDonald’s horror stories. What started as interruptive messaging to promote McDonald’s integrity quickly turned into a way for negative reviews to go viral.

I think that this might have gone wrong for a couple reasons.

1. McDonald’s looked like an older brand trying to “talk to young people, on their level.” Their tweets replaced “you” with “u” and were full of hashtags and links, instead of more singular, simple messages.

2. It was just too much of a stretch for people to believe that suddenly McDonald’s meat comes from heartfelt, ethically conscious farmers. Don’t get me wrong. It’s great that McDonald’s is trying to jump on the bandwagon of being more wholesome, and caring about the stories of the people who provide their product. A lot of brands are. But every customer knows that for McDonald’s, this would be a major overhaul, which clearly hasn’t happened.

That’s why transparency is important. Large brands are actually improving the way they do things, and slowly suiting them to meet customer demands. But it is a slow process, and they need to be honest about that. Messaging that expects customers to believe that your food suddenly comes from wholesome farmers just begs for skepticism and backlash.

Instead, McDonald’s should present any mission to get back in touch with farmers as just that – a mission. When you’re honest about the fact that you’re only a couple steps in, customers are a lot less likely to torch your reputation.

As for promoted tweets, I expect I’ll have to get used to them.

-Becky Lang

“United States Central time new year’s day. We wish you all the best of the new year, research on sophisticated, a happy horse!”

Not a very good translation, as you can see.

As a lover of learning foreign languages, and the mistranslations that can ensue, I’ve been playing around on translation software since the beginning of this century. For the most part, it was laughably erroneous, with AltaVista’s Babelfish tool giving me countless pages of hilarious nonsense.

Since Google translate has come around, I’ve started to believe that software can actually help you learn a language the way it’s used, not the way a bunch of algorithms lay out. Language is itself not always mathematical, or perfect.

Google translate is interesting in that its creator, Franz Josef Och, doesn’t believe in the effectiveness of rule-based algorithms. Instead, they use a comparative system drawn from a large database of texts translated into every language, which they collected from the UN. This system translates the texts into English and back, meaning you eliminate the necessity for collections like “Swahili into Norwegian.” This system isn’t perfect, mostly since English is a wacky language, but they have more human controls that have allowed for suggested translations, as well as drop-down alternative translations. The overall effect is a lot more human, and thus more accurate.

Bing’s translator is nothing to write home about (or to write in foreign languages with).

I know Google and Facebook are rivals, but it’s disappointing that Facebook can’t utilize Google’s translator to help friends speak between languages. Facebook as a place to translate social messages in context could be a huge opportunity for language learning, and it’s too bad Microsoft’s underwhelming software had to be the go-to choice.

-Becky Lang

“Let’s face it: drinking scotch isn’t about geekery, it’s about appreciating the finer things in life while enjoying good company, ideally in a room decorated with rich mahogany. You don’t want to worry about futzing around too much with the app, which is why Zeus Jones’s decision to make Proof an HTML5-driven webapp—rather than a bona fide, download-it-from-iTunes-and-wait App—is a canny one. There’s nothing to install with Proof, so when it’s time to break out the bottles, you just type in a URL and there it is, instantly.”

Check it out here!

Because we were cheap and had no money, we used search results to track the effectiveness of our launch idea which was to participate as a fictional person in a bunch of communities around the web. I’m posting the original deck because I some of of our employees haven’t ever seen this:

Oh, how we’ve overlooked their potential.

One of my favorite articles about branding was published by the New York Times in 2006 called “Brand Underground.” The article starts with the premise that “savvy millennials see mainstream branding as something that appeals to the lowest common denominator.” And it goes on to profile a few young entrepreneurs who asked themselves “How do I turn my lifestyle into a business?” and launched companies like The Hundreds, aNYthing, Retail Mafia, etc. To me this showed that some people have a sophisticated understanding of business and branding and we often don’t give them credit for it.

I think we’re starting to see the digital equivalent of this type of thinking maturing into something that might draw more participants from the mainstream. People are starting to realize that they possess very valuable assets that brands need, but can’t replicate for themselves.

Unique POV and Voice

For years, people have been making a living through their blogs. Some have even become simple corporate shills. But the better ones are using their blogs to cultivate their own personal brand, which gives them the leeway to get into merchandising, personal appearances, partnerships, etc.

Influence and Personal Networks

While we sometimes make fun of Klout, I think it’s an important first step in allowing people to understand the nature of their influence. Despite some people debating the value of targeting influencers, it’s still the general approach digital, social and PR strategist employ to push through brand messaging and build buzz. If a person were to understand where they are now in terms of influence and what it takes to get to a more desirable state, they could potentially turn networking into a job and monetize their influence. Douglas Rushkoff had an article on CNN about how traditional jobs are becoming obsolete and we need to rethink how we can support ourselves. This would be an instance of that.

Data

An entire industry has been created to collect, analyze, visualize and store data. Some businesses are greedily mining data with no particular plans except that it might be useful someday. The crazy thing is that consumers are just giving it away. A few small companies have popped up to help people better manage their own personal data and control who gets it and who doesn’t. Adage had the best headline to sum up the potential of this space: “Here’s my personal data, marketers. What do I get for it?”

I think the sum of these three points show that consumers have an increased understanding of marketing in the digital space. Or at the very least, they are aware of what’s going on. This definitely helps prove the old idea that “marketing to” people is no longer as effective as “marketing with” them. But what’s different is that it’s not exclusively about content anymore. Consumers aren’t content producers, they’re more like business partners because of the value they can potentially add. Here are some examples of brands taking this approach:

1. Converse:

Source: http://adage.com/article/creativity-pick-of-the-day/design-sell-converse/231531/

From the article: “So what if you were to enable people to sell the shoes they design to their mates on Facebook in return for stuff, like free shoes? What if you enabled people to open their own storefront on Converse’s Facebook page? What if you turned the fans of a brand into the retailers?”

2. Trinkhanf:

Source: http://www.springwise.com/food_beverage/customer_made_flavours/

From the article: ” Creative customers are being challenged to create tasty new flavors using fruits, herbs, or other natural ingredients. The contest runs through the end of April, after which a panel of judges will pick a winner, and the winning recipe will go into production. Aware that co-creators should share in profits, Frenkenburger will pay the winner one euro-cent per bottle sold.”

3. Vores Ol:

Source: http://www.lovemarks.com/media/image/vores_html.jpg

From the article: “Danish Vores Øl (‘Our Beer’) claims to be the world’s first open-source beer. The recipe and the entire brand is published under a Creative Commons license, meaning that anyone can use Vores Øl’s recipe to brew the beer or to create a derivative.”

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I’m pretty excited about these developments for a number of reasons ranging from finding a slightly friendlier version of capitalism to exercising a different creative muscle to take advantage of these opportunities.

But the most exciting thing is seeing the emergence of a tangible role for social media with businesses and individuals. Now there’s a real answer to the annoying question of: “What’s the point of Twitter, Facebook, etc.?”

But what a lot of people don’t realize is that era is ending. While I might have grown up to associate branding with

• Unhealthy food
• Sexy spokespeople
• Huge budgets
• Bottom-lines
• The entertainment industry

The biggest brands today are operating in vastly different modes. Kids right now are growing up in a culture where Facebook, Google and Apple are the Big Brand Superheroes, and even if some of us don’t realize it, we have internalized ideas about a brand’s role in culture that depart greatly from what they used to be.

I started thinking about this when reading about how Rupert Murdoch doesn’t believe Twitter will be financially valuable. What any kid who uses the Internet regularly has learned is that brands that have staying power right now tend to

• Grow slowly, without even considering profitability for years
• Understand that social currency is more important than immediate profitability in the long run
• Care about innovation more than marketing messages

Beyond that, we see how a self-taught individual can create a service on a small budget that can not just change society, but lead to corporate success. It will take awhile for that shift in thinking to surface, but for kids growing up now, it will be internalized. Sure there’s a lot of noise – Shake Weights, Slap Chops, ads stuck in windshield wipers – but while those things fade, the people doing it right are succeeding. And that’s a reason to be less cynical.

-Becky Lang