In the last several years the shift of power to consumers has accelerated.

Customers have ubiquitous access to information, competing offers, and research shows their ability to make media now control’s more touch points in many purchase decisions that advertisers and brands themselves.

This is a freedom they’ve earned by purchasing digital tools which amplify their authority relationships. And they have the power to shift the terms of engagement with firms. They’ve migrated to mobile media, identified themselves with social networks, and in an increasing pattern are decreasing their contact with corporate websites and sales teams.

And while this may disrupt some static business models, it carries huge good news. Agile businesses can earn greater proximity to customers. Anyone can make a usable product. In this new relationship economy what matters is creating products that matter to customers – and that means focusing on the total customer experience.

For those of you who are digital marketers, your experience with data driven insights, creative brand expression, and marketing to serve rather than sell is the foundation to this corporate shift. Here are examples of the tools and patterns that adaptive firms are using to cross the chasm and join customers on their own terms.

The days when nobody can tell you’re a dog on the Internet are gone.

Mobile digital experiences are unquestionably the greatest open field opportunity for digital marketers. But this space is still new to both users and firms, and that the state of the art is still advancing rapidly.

The Challenge to Marketers
The key challenge for today’s marketers is to learn how best to serve a newly-empowered customer base, in order to forge lasting customer relationships. And how to line-up their business and technical platforms to deliver these experiences even as this channel evolves.

The Mobile Marketing Crash Course:
Mobile is absolutely the “breaking news” in the digital marketing world, and marketers are working to sort out its fit for their business, and the best way to build new mobile capabilities. So, I’m thrilled to be here in San Diego with ISITE Design’s Director of Mobile Solutions, Gene Ehrbar, where we’ll co-leading a half day Mobile Marketing Boot Camp. (See more on ISITE’s approach to business-focused mobile marketing here.) 

Join Us, or Have Us Join You
If you’re in San Diego for the Online Marketing Summit, please come join us. Or get in touch so we can discuss your mobile challenges personally, or bring this workshop to you. Besides building mobile experiences for clients across the US, we provide advice to teams on building the teams, business vision, and infrastructure to win in the mobile space.

Here’s today’s line-up:

1: Making the Case for “Mobile First”.
I’ll provide an analyst level view of the shape and speed of the changes being driven by huge mobile adoptions – and perspective to separate hype from disruptive change. After all, without a “why to” which is specific to your business, there’s no need to wrestle with creating new capabilities.

2: Mobile Web Crash Course.
Vendors may tell you this is a technical shift, but don’t believe it. Your audience and the brand experience you want for them set the development parameters for the mobile web. Gene will connect that decision around whether to make dedicated mobile sites, or to use responsive web designin, and how those choices connect to Search Engine power and overall user experience.

3: Mobile Apps Crash Course
Gene and I will discuss a typology of mobile apps and the financial models behind them. He’ll talk about the attributes of successful apps, and how app and web channels differ. And yes, we’ll be going deep on virtual reality, real-time social networks, and location based services sharing  real world development expriences.

4: Yes, you can measure it.
We’ll look at special SEO considerations in the mobile world, and specialized tools to measure mobile web and how to design “in-app” measurement features. Finally, we’ll talk about what “good” looks like by discussion what “lift” looks like in a mobile world.

5: Moving the State of the Art Forward
Finally, since people look at the world differently when you give them tools for making change, we’ll do some work together. Groups will take apart successful mobile products, and work on ways to improve them, while considering the development steps behind this kind of creativity.

 There’s a big day ahead, so wish us luck. We’ll be tweeting on the #OMS12 hash, and regardless of where you are today, we’d like to hear from you.

AdAge reports that Microsoft is laying off roughly 200 people in marketing, including Chief Creative Officer Gayle Troberman. She had been in the role just under two years — which mirrors the life expectancy as a CMO. (See Fast Company’s biting announcement of her appointment.)

This follows news that’s unfolded over the last few weeks that the software maker will push marketing budget out to product groups. When was the last time a Microsoft corporate ad impressed you? How about “I’m a PC” and “Bing and Decide” were they closer to “clippy” than iconic?

Microsoft currently spends about two billion dollars in direct advertising, with about 14 billion overall on sales and marketing. The product groups will increasingly drive this spend, and some engineering leads are rising to control product groups as more autonomous group.

Tracking Opposite the Rest of the Industry.
Microsoft will start creating less integrated messages just as much of the tech industry is focusing on creating more unified customer experiences.

The Wild Boys at XBOX
Robert Matthews leads global consumer marketing for Microsoft’s interactive-entertainment division, leads the Xbox marketing team.

They’ve been allowed a renegade approach which has yeilded success. According to ABX’s measurement, their TV ads from TwoFifteenMcCann score high in awareness, call to action and understandability. Xbox is an emerging top performer, as  the top-selling game platform last year, according to NPD.

Change is the life blood of this industry – and Microsoft which as skied on the center of its boards for too long, seems to be pushing autonomy out to help it refind its competitive edges.

Hey, it’s time we caught up!
ISITE Design is sponsoring a free webinar in which I get to share the five things you need to do now to drive your digital business’ success. This has been an amazing year of working with great marketers around the world. I’m thrilled to have a chance to share some of these methods and views — and I want you to be in the house and part of the discussion.

We’re dialing in this Thursday, 2pm Eastern / 11am Pacific, and hope you can join us. (Jump to the registration details.)

What you can expect from #Digital2012
If you care about how the mobile web, video, and social media are coming together, then I think you’ll get fired-up by this. But knowing is different from doing, so we’ll also look at tools and techniques to help get your whole firm behind your digital business vision.

There’s just no way to write a post about all this stuff; it takes a webinar. But in just 60 minutes, it will be fast-moving and cover a ton. Please come join us, and bring friends. ;>

There’s an awesome give-away
Not that incentives are needed, but the first three audience members to log in on presentation day will get a copy of one of  2011′s best reads, Business Model Generation from Wiley Press. I’ll be demonstrating their business modeling rubric, and if you’re early, you’ll get a copy and be designing business revolutions from home.

You’re the first to know, so tell someone.
Since you read UsefulArts, you are the first to know about this free event. Act on this tip now, register here – *and* tip off your friends.

I’ll be tweeting about this using the #Digital2012 tag. Later today, I’ll start putting word about this on LinkedIn, and the usual channels. 

I’d be immensely in your debt if you’d spread the word — and I’ll try to pay you back Thursday with the smartest, most actionable, quotable presentation and discussion I can give. ISITE’s Chief Strategy Officer, Jeff Cram, will moderate questions and help get your voice in the mix.

This webinar is graciously organized by ISITE Design, with whom I have  ongoing business dealings. They do a lot of good promoting the discussion of online experiences that delight, reward, and elevate. I hope this will be one of those…with you in the house, it’s sure to be.

Thanks for encouraging my behavior!
Talk with you Thursday,
Dave

Good morning from London, where I’m with a collection of world class email marketers at e-Dialog’s European annual client meeting.

I had the chance to share some thoughts on the shift from corporate websites to social, the rise of mobile, and the benefit of building a brand identity that matters to customers.

If you’re new to my blog, you can get updates on the emerging future of our industry by email or rss feed. It would be great to stay in touch, so as always please connect with me here on the blog, or over on Linked In.

I’ve also added in a collection of tweets and images from the session. This is a fantastic tribe of marketers, and as I noted they have the skills in data, customer experience, and execution to be the first generation of digitally native CMOs.

As a tribute to Steve Jobs, Saturday Night Live has posted an un-aired video of fellow CEO / tech-rivals admitting how lame their work is in comparison to the now lionized tech legend.

The video crystallizes my criticism of Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, and its a fitting send off to Jobs to allow him to be spoken of well.

I’ve been working on an industry talk that touches on both Hastings and Jobs – and can only hope I can comment on them a adeptly as this.

Watch this video, laugh if you like….then we can discuss it.

Yesterday, Herman Cain became the “Rebecca Black of political advertising.” She’s the teen who made a music video in unintentionally pointing out the banality of teenage life and pop music. It drew ire, and 166 million YouTube views. In a world where all press is good, Black’s epic fail created bigger waves than major label success.

Enter Poe’s Law: It Takes a Smiley to Mock Extremism
We had an interesting discussion of this over on my Facebook page, about whether this is a serious ad, or a parody or attack.

This brought Facebook, where Bill Cammack and Katherine Harris add their humor and professional insight (Bill produces video, Katherine is a former political insider.)

“I used to search for news; now, somehow, it finds me.”  Ever hear someone say something like that?

Well, that “somehow” shouldn’t involve peering through clouds of real-time information on Twitter. There are already too many “inboxes” in my life, and I imagine in your life too.

That’s why curation is a huge buzzword in content marketing.  But it’s a buzzword with a benefit. Here’s what how I’ve been curating.

Know how I find great digital marketing campaigns?  I have a Paperli page that curates the links being shared by several hundred top digital agencies through Twitter. Each day, it seeks out and organizes what these agencies are sharing, and it makes a little newspaper for me called The Digital Agency Daily. I get a consolidated view of what’s on the minds of the creative agencies I watch, and I can even tweak the results and share it as a link, or automatically send it to subscribers. It’s like a newspaper you do almost no work to make.

If you’re passionate about a topic, starting this kind of page might be a great way to follow the space, and even to share your view of its current events with others.

Meanwhile, if you follow the digital space, feel free to use this as another way for news of the digital world to find you.

Military advertising is a tough thing in the best of times; how do you pitch people on an opportunity that may involve getting shot at?

If there’s a war that’s even moderately popular, you can say things like “Protect the Homeland.” If there’s no war – it’s happened at least once – you can pitch getting to use weapons and maybe learn a skill, hence “Accelerate Your Life.”  Alternately, you can dare people; ask if they are tough enough to do what you do. Thus the Marine Corps’ “The Few. The Proud.”  (And yes, they do mean to capitalize it that way.)

That’s about it.  Which is why we end up with things like “Army Strong,” which sounds a bit like “Hulk Smash.” At least there’s authenticity in that.

However, probably the wrong approach is to show what really happens while you’re getting shot at.  Why? See this example from the Navy, which is all over Boston’s MBTA Orange Line.

Who starts a recruiting discussion with a picture of a chaplain apparently administering last rites to a child? After all, when this happens there’s almost always a regrettable story involving phrases like collateral damage.  Wieneke’s first law of advertising: Unless you are selling The Sopranos, avoid associating your brand with death. Especially if your brand actually has anything to do with death.

It blows my mind that the Navy, which is home to Seal Team 6 — a brand so strong, Disney tried to horn-in on their naming rights — is leading with a headline “Compassion Hand Delivered.”

I suppose the SEALS have an unusually potent form of compassion in their hands. This is where the Navy’s new theme “A Global Force for Good” misses what could make the brand resonate. It recasts the valor of the Navy as a macho Red Cross.

The Navy’s ad firm, Campbell-Ewald, renewed their contract, valued at up to $800 million, partly on the Global Force for Good rebrand.

The Navy’s old recruiting slogan, “Accelerate Your Life,” drew on the promise of travel and responsibility.  But the new slogan, “A Global Force for Good,” sounds too much like a non-profit, or a green investment fund making an equally vague claim. Walmart claims to be a force for good, and Delta, and Nu Skin. See the problem?

My beef isn’t abut the Navy doing good; it’s that the tagline creates a huge brand gap. It also sounds superior. And of course, it gets their name wrong. Its the “United States Navy”. There are other 34 countries comprising the Americas. Yes, I digress.

The problem is we’ve seen Hunt for Red October and Top Gun; that’s the Navy of Hollywood. It is hard to square them with “A Global Force for Good.” It leaves too great a disconnect with the Hollywood impression the Navy helped cultivate.

It’s tough to be in the military, even in the advertising department.

Side note: I’m looking forward to enlisting your help in something that will support those serving us in uniform. It won’t make up for a flawed tag line, but its a great opportunity to show that service and sacrifice matter. Stay tuned for details.

Related reads:

• Why the Marines Still Rule Madison Avenue
• Sailors Take Aim at New Recruiting Slogan
• The US Military: A Global Force for Good…Maybe Not.

Marketing is an emotional process. And it’s the strength of feelings we have from brand experiences that sears a brand into our consciousness.

Sometimes brands have great stories to share. Increasingly, marketers are taking a page from P.T. Barnum and creating stunts that become hooks for these experiences.

It can be transfixing. Take the recent stunt that Duval Guillaume Modem produced to reinforce the ‘That Calls for a Carlsberg” campaign.

A theater packed to the hilt with tough-looking biker types, and just two seats for the film remain, right in the middle of the crowd.

The video shows overwhelmed couples considering whether they should take to the exit or pardon their way past the toughies to claim their seat. Of course the tenacious few are rewarded with applause and let in on the joke with a cold beer and a cheerful toast.

This is an ad that takes you on an adventure. It takes a risk, and expects that its audience will get the joke and appreciate its humor. And along the way, it communicates who Carlsberg thinks their beer is for, and what it might be to be a Carlsberg drinker.  That’s more than a stunt; it’s smart branding.