The first is a video clip from a few weeks ago at Social Media Week (via Richard Ting) , but has an excellent lineup of speakers including Gary Vaynerchuck, Ian Schafer, Brian Morrissey and moderated by John Adell.

Social Media Week NY: ‘Making the Brand: Social Media For the Long Haul’ from Panman Productions on Vimeo.

The second piece is from the always insightful W+K London blog, highlighting their recent coverage from the Times of India:

To borrow a quote from a book by another agency a few years ago, who in turn borrowed it from Lao Tzu who wrote it nearly three thousand years ago in his classic, Tao Te Ching: “Evolved individuals know that people who are not intuitive can be dangerous to work with, since they are guided solely by the current appearance of things that are in reality, changing. Evolved individuals seek out others who have intuition and vision – a form of intelligence that comes from cultivating the instincts, observing the direction of change, apprehending the evolution of ideas.”

Peter Kim tapped 14 industry leaders to create this outstanding list of big ideas and predictions for what to expect in 2009:

• “Although it is now cheaper to launch an initiative leveraging Web 2.0 technology – it requires qualified and passionate people to make them successful.” – David Armano
• “You may not always start the year as a leader, but you can certainly finish it that way.” – Rohit Bhargava
• “Intimacy touches emotion; emotion powers conversation.” – Pete Blackshaw
• “Doors are going to close all over the social web. Why? Because the money didn’t come the way people thought it would.” – Chris Brogan
• “The tipping point has not only *not* been reached, but could still tilt *away* from Social Media.” – Todd Defren
• “There’s a lot of fixing that needs to be done.” – Jason Falls
• “Dwindling budgets suddenly make low-cost social media look like the pretty girl at the ball.” – Ann Handley
• “We’re going to develop a set of better metrics to help guide, direct and validate ‘commitment’.” – Joseph Jaffe
• “The movement is rooted in a desire to have quality, not quantity, as people cocoon in the face of the economic crisis.” – Charlene Li
• “After a pre-qualifying wrestling match…” – Ben McConnell
• “These will be cumulative events and interactions that will build brand loyalty for the companies that pay attention to them.” – Scott Monty
• “The recession will force revenue results out of social technologies.” – Jeremiah Owyang
• “Companies that focus on earning love will thrive during hard times, and kick ass when good times return.” – Andy Sernovitz
• “Suddenly, being Facebook friends with your mom will seem less ridiculous than following 4,000 strangers on Twitter.” – Greg Verdino

The full report is available here.

What would you add to the list for social media in 2009?

Typically, I have used the simple statement that social media is people having conversations online.

But I like how Mike Arauz has elevated the understanding of social media to not just account for those conversations, but the actual media content and channels around which the conversations are taking place:

Rather than a wholly new medium of its own, Social Media is the next evolution of all media as we know it. If media refers to our society’s means of communication, e.g. books, newspapers, radio, TV, film, and the Internet, then Social Media is the enhanced experience of media in the context of a self-authored digital network of personal relationships, i.e. a Social Network.

What do you think?

Digital Marketing Lessons from the Obama Campaign
While political pundits and marketing strategists alike will be dissecting the many strength’s of Obama’s strategy for years, there are several fundamental themes that are important for any digital marketer to understand…

Under the Hood – Martin Sexton Gets Social
Like all great musicians, Martin Sexton has a passionately devoted group of fans around the country. But being an independent musician means going it alone in today’s already fractured music scene without any major label support to reach new fans. So to to help promote his new album, Solo, we worked with Martin to create a social media marketing strategy that helped Martin tell his story of life on the road and reach a new audience…

And finally, Google posted an awesome Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. And while I agree with Micah’s perspective on SEO, this guide covers the best practice principles everyone should employ when it comes to optimizing their web site for search.

From the Google Webmaster Blog:

Our Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing. We felt that these areas (like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more) would apply to webmasters of all experience levels and sites of all sizes and types. Throughout the guide, we also worked in many illustrations, pitfalls to avoid, and links to other resources that help expand our explanation of the topics. We plan on updating the guide at regular intervals with new optimization suggestions and to keep the technical advice current.

Some 37,000 people regularly follow the first-person, often-poetic MarsPhoenix Twitter feed. From 35 million miles away, they ask MarsPhoenix questions about life on the red planet. They celebrate its intrepid mission. And now, they mourn the robot’s slow demise due to the onset of an unforgiving Martian winter. (Twitter user laura47 recently lamented: “MarsPhoenix *cry* I don’t want to lose you!! so far away, and yet so close.”)

Of course, the robot itself is not Tweeting across the universe. In fact, its Veronica McGregor from the news office of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

It’s a testament to the power of social media technologies that an organization as habitually detached as NASA can make significant inroads with a public it’s kept at arm’s length. Give McGregor’s astute understanding of the power of empathy and narrative a lot of the credit; it makes following MarsPhoenix compelling in a way that no standard-issue press releases and dry updates from the NASA website ever could be…

Hopefully, the success of this experiment will lead to a sea change in the way people interact with the research community (and vice versa). By reaching out to the public, scientists can keep people apprised of their groundbreaking work—and even offer some interesting lessons, as well. Take for example McGregor’s MarsPhoenix dispatch that informed her readers that the star that looked like it was directly above the moon wasn’t a star at all–it was Mars. “I got a lot of responses from people saying they actually went out and looked; they got very sentimental about it because they never knew that was Mars,” she says. “It’s great to think that people are learning.”

Perhaps like Obama’s powerful online narrative bringing in new voters, the MarsPhoenix social media strategy is an excellent case study for the power of story to breathe new life into a once overlooked agency.

While Dichter’s manifesto is inteded for those leading nonprofits, quite frankly, it’s an inspiring message that anyone who wants to sell an idea should read:

There’s this unspoken idea floating around that “fundraisers” can go about their work in a vacuum, having quiet, unimportant conversations with nameless, faceless rich people, while all the while the people who do the real work (the program folks) can go about their business, separate from and unconnected to this conversation.

What a waste.

Don’t you think that creating a tribe5 of connected, engaged, passionate evangelists for your cause will create a positive feedback loop that will amplify the change you hope to see in the world?  It doesn’t matter if that tribe is 300 powerful, smart, wealthy people or 3 million regular folks who believe in you and the change you hope to make.  If they are passionate and engaged and you give them a way to help, you will amplify your impact.

If nothing else, then, we need a new word.  Fundraising is about a transaction – I raise funds from you, you get nothing in return.

I’d rather be an evangelist, a storyteller, an educator, a translator, a table-pounder, a guy on his soap box, a woman with a megaphone, a candidate for change.  I want to talk to as many people as I can about my ideas – whether in person or in newsletters or on Facebook or Twitter or in the Economist or at the TED conference or at Davos – and capture their imagination about the change I hope to see in the world.

Don’t you?

Read the complete post on Dichter’s blog.

Via Seth Godin.

Small Brands Teach Big Lessons
“…They found the more they listened and engaged with their customers — each spends hours each week personally responding to e-mail messages and even don bacon costumes on the road to hand out samples — the more sales they made, the more buzz they generated.”

10 Pieces of Content That Define Today’s Marketing Reality
From Seth Godin to Brian Solis and the Cluetrain Manifesto, Nick Fell catalogs 10 definite ideas for today’s marketing reality.

What Went Into the Updated Pepsi Logo
As much as $1 million or more?

As the Lines Blur, Digital Agencies are Taking the Lead
“Late last year, Forrester completed a study of several interactive agencies. The report’s author, Brian Haven, argued that interactive shops are closer to the consumer, in a better place to mine the rich insights and data available via the web, and in the right place at the right time to capture consumer behavior changes. Because of those things, interactive shops are poised to be the “foundation for all marketing efforts within the next five to 10 years,” he wrote.”

Welcome to the Social World – Shiv SinghWelcome to the Social World

In the article, titled “The Contribution Revolution: Letting Volunteers Build Your Business,” he puts real backbone — sans Web 2.0 buzzwords or social-media hype — on the argument that customer participation drives tangible enterprise value.

“My job is simply to lay down the pipes and to enable the flow of meaningful contribution by passionate users,” he said. One of his biggest “aha” moments came when he realized that the vast majority of questions asked by consumers are answered by members of the forums. Wilder underscored the unique “nuggets of insights” he finds in these user forums.

Social-media exuberance is at an all-time high, and I worry we may be chasing the wrong prize. Events and campaigns and buzz tricks with unrealistic payout hurdles dominate the social-media landscape, often distracting us from bigger, more sustaining opportunities like the ones Cook outlines. Moreover, we risk cheapening the macro user-contribution ecosystem with short-term success criteria and our sometimes irrepressible desire to bend the message or “influence the influencers.”

Be sure to check out Scott Cook’s article in HBR when it’s available online.

Up next – I’m loving the new spot from Nike, “Fate.”

And finally, this short film from Carlos Lascano is simply gorgeous:

A SHORT LOVE STORY IN STOP MOTION from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.

Created by Justin Dillon, the film brings together artists, politicians and entertainers to address the travesty that is the world’s blind eye towards modern day slavery. Dillon sent out an email to fans of the film today that I found inspiring:

A lot of people asked me recently about Open Source Activism.  What is it?  To me, it’s people getting together on an issue that they care about and doing something about it.  Everyone adds their own code, their own passion, their own talents. This weekend, your community gets to plunge into this movement by taking one small step – seeing a film. See what else people are doing at www.opensourceactivism.com

Last night, one of the C+R staff members pulled me aside and told me that we have received close to two thousand “bring this to my city” emails in the past couple weeks.  This is amazing!  Here is the deal:  We don’t have the money to buy traditional advertising. Even if we did, I’m not sure it would work at first. This is all about word of mouth.  We HAVE to succeed in these initial markets for the movement tol have the momentum to launch into virtually every city. Just like the beginning of any justice movement, this will succeed neighbor to neighbor,  city by city, state by state.  If Call+Response isn’t coming to your city this weekend, will you do me a favor?  Send a quick note to people who could buy tickets in a city in which we are releasing.  This is the only way we can make it to more theaters next week.

I addressed this topic back in March during the Bear Stearns collapse, but this is clearly a shift in the economy that isn’t going away anytime soon.

So, how do brands and digital marketers adapt for the tanking economy?

“It’s during a recession that a brand should position itself as the leader in its category. It is the best and least expensive time to gain mar­ket share,” said Robb Hecht, digital mar­keting strategist for IMC Strategy Labs. DM News

I’ve compiled a rundown of some of the better posts, resources and ideas I’ve come across on how digital marketers can survive the recession:

Harvard Business Review – “Marketing Your Way Through a Recession”

Marketing Charts – Economy Shrinking 65% of CMO Ad Budgets, Money Shifts toward Digital

PR Squared – Will Social Media Help PR Weather the Storm?

Jeremiah Owyang – Four Social Media Questions You Must Answer During an Economic Downturn

Chris Brogan – 25 Ways Social Media Prepares You for the Downturn

Kyle Lacy – Is Digital Marketing Recession Proof?

Convince and Convert – 5 Reasons Why Digital Marketing will Thrive in the Recession

Influxinsights – Welcome to the New Normality, 10 Potential Manifestations

What else should be added to the list? Have you come across other thoughts and resources?