Came across a very revealing article from Forrester Research Senior Analyst, Jeremiah Owyang.

"The distinction between traditional and innovative marketing will become significantly more pronounced as the socially driven online communities continue to gain momentum, according to a Forrester Research report released today. "The Future of the Social Web," by Jeremiah Owyang, a Forrester senior analyst, examines the monumental changes that have shaped -- and will continue to impact -- how consumers engage with each other. That engagement, Owyang writes, will affect the way each company reaches its customers -- and more important, their influencers.

"The community will take charge," Owyang tells CRM magazine in a one-on-one interview, "and that's going to happen whether or not marketers or brands participate." Social networking, he adds, will only continue to facilitate the power shift toward the consumer.

The report breaks down the past, present, and future state of the social Web into five overlapping eras:

1. The era of social relationships: Beginning in the mid-1990s, people signed up for online profiles and connected with their friends to share information.

2. The era of social functionality: As it exists today, social networking is more than just a platform for "friending," but one that can support a broader array of what Owyang calls "social interactive applications." However, identities are essentially disconnected silos within individual sites.

3. The era of social colonization: By late 2009, technologies such as OpenID and Facebook Connect will begin to break down the barriers of social networks and allow individuals to integrate their social connections as part of their online experience, blurring the lines between networks and traditional sites.

4. The era of social context: In 2010, sites will begin to recognize personal identities and social relationships to deliver customized online experiences. Social networks will become the "base of operation for everyone's online experiences."

5. The era of social commerce: In approximately two years, social networks will be more powerful than corporate Web sites and CRM systems, as individual identities and relationships are built on this platform. Brands will serve community interests and grow based on community advocacy as users continue to drive innovation in this direction.
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Original article here...

Ad.WRIGHT are building social tools for clients like PepsiCo for their intranet as well as some social features & semantic stuff for a publishing clients and we are thrilled certainly at where the experts see the market is moving toward and how it is affecting brands and their marketing as well as the change in the rules of engagement.

In PR sense, it used to be spin first, then listen and control. Now the rules of engagement has changed to listen & participate first, then execute and engage.

The article ends off with

"
Owyang says that social networks will likely be much quicker to adopt this model than individual brands will. Eventually, he says, brands should create a strategy in which corporate sites are "fragmented":

* Sites themselves will become less relevant as brands deliver content based on social network identities instead of requiring consumers to surf and search.

* Social networks will no longer be destinations as much as they will be "aggregations" of communities unattached to individual sites.

* The successful brands, Owyang says, will be the ones that "let the most popular content spread to the community and the customer[s] where they exist."
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Ad.WRIGHT has been awarded the Interspire Partner Program here in Singapore just recently and we are very pumped about it. Interspire is a company based in Australia and dare I say, produces some of the best PHP ecommerce system we have seen so far.

They have shopping cart, email marketer platform and others which can be easily integrated if needed. We have been looking out for different php ecommerce platform for years and have used ubercart, x-cart and now, we are super excited about becoming an Interspire Partner here in Singapore.

Moving forward, we will heavily push for this platform over the rest, even though there is an initial license fees attached. The benefits with Interspire from the most obvious point is the control panel / admin area. It's very well organised and very easy to manage the day to day operations of an online shopping business. Most system that we have seen and used fall short in the area of user admin usability.

From our experience in branding and usability design, we can do anything imaginable with the front end template across any platform... and that is an easy sell for us but to really bring a solutions that benefit the customers, one has to look at the ecommerce platform control panel / admin area and that is where the real value of Interspire really is. Far too many customers or business owners spend too much time trying to figure how to edit this product or that attributes with the ecommerce system where more time could be spend on marketing, planning of the business. We have one customer who was using another ecommerce system and literally spent 20 plus minutes just to set one product properly (adjusting attributes, uploading photos... and more)

Interpsire is recommend premium solutions moving forward and we hope to evangelise the benefits and real values that Interpsire ecommerce platform brings to this part of the world.

Thinking Juice wins 'People's Choice Favourite TV Advert' In a recent UTalk Marketing and OMD Snapshots survey of 1,000 consumers.

Thinking Juice, our sister agency in the Uk, with their latest TV advert for Wyke Farms was voted best, beating John Lewis (Lowe London), Sony Ericsson (Iris) and Magic FM (St. Lukes) to become 'The People's Choice' with a massive 33% of the vote.

For original article click here...

Its always nice when one of the team gets recognition from a client or colleague, its even nicer when you see the smile it puts on their face.

My partner Danny got just that the other morning, when he opened his email, certainly justifiable to create a page for it: A Tremendous Relationship