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Brilliant. I have never seen such a collection of awesome and influencing advertising in one place. What’s more, you don’t even realise you’re watching an advert! A must watch.

It’s December. Time for pseudo-snow to uphold the pretence of a white Christmas. Time for Christmas pop songs to replenish the coffers of faded pop idols. And, of course, time for reflections on the year. The biggest trends in marketing communications in 2007 were without a doubt the rise and rise of social networks, and the associated dominance of video content – professional and user-generated. Not a theme ignored on MarCom Professional I can see. This has been a subject close to our hearts since we ran the first blog training course for our clients in 2001 and introduced them to conversational PR not long after. That was the term we used then, but now we talk about the brand as the sum of the quality of its dialogue with its stakeholders, and our Chairman Larry Weber decided, rightly, that 2007 was the year the mass market wanted to read more about it. ...

“If Facebook is the Cathedral, who owns the bazaar?” This evening’s Mashup Event , hosted this time at Merrill Lynch’s London HQ, focused on Social Networks. It was the busiest of the series to date; at over 200 attendees it was twice the size of the one I chaired earlier this year. So congratulations to Simon and Tony on making it happen. Social networking has arrived. I can say this on the sole basis that we were in less-than-5-star hotel venues not long ago, and now we’re hosted by one of the world’s biggest investment banks! Moreover, the breadth of attendees is growing as more and more employers and leaders become interested in how Mashups affect their business, affect their markets, affect their lives. ...

What better way to communicate the DOs and DON’Ts in a media training class than by example. Here’s one for your training collateral. It is an extreme case; I mean how dare anyone mention Apple iTunes and monopolistic behaviour in the same question?! Philip Schiller, Apple’s Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing is featured being interviewed by Channel 4 in the UK. The interview is brought to a rapid close when the interviewer asks “Are you acting in a sort of monopoly way?". Schiller can’t cope with this (whoops, poor media preparation) and looks to his PRs to intercept and take him away from this bad man. ...

I want to sound you out about time. More specifically, billing, prompted by a recent article in the current edition of Business Week. And what’s happened to Business Week? I was so confused by the format changes that I decided to Google the reason for it, and we’re told the redesign is inspired by the design imperatives of the Web. But, not being funny or anything, if I wanted Web I’d go to businessweek.com . Surely, if print is threatened by the big WWW, then differentiation is the key to success, not assimilation? ...

Here at Racepoint we’ve been thinking about the ramifications of one of my previous posts, “Continuous engagement… the death of market research ”. A particular area of interest is the way in which we might help companies interact with stakeholders other than via text-based media. Yes, I know there’s the telephone too, but following the tenet that restricting the channel can only restrict the quantity and quality of interaction, how else can we reach out and engage? ...

When historians write up 2007, they will surely highlight three things. Of course there’s the subprime mortgage disaster and the reunion of the Spice Girls (a subprime pop group?), but my topic here is the mega marketing clash of the huge tech titans. I’ve been in tech for some years now, but unless it’s a case of the nearer the clearer, I can’t recall such furiously fought marketing battles. The last big battles, by popular concensus, were won by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Google’s search. They appeared to trounce the competition, the first by anticompetitive practices according to the European Union, and the second by peer-beating capability. Do you recall an advert for IE or Google? ...

FEMA External Communications… information for job applicants. Please check your answers to the following questions: Question 1. On calling a press conference, should you give the press…? A. at least one hour’s notice B. 17 minutes’ notice Question 2. If no press turn up, should you… ? A. postpone the conference; B. get your co-workers to stand in as journalists in front of the nation’s live broadcasting cameras. How did you do? If you answered “B” to all questions, please send your CV to the Office of the Communications Director, Federal Emergency Management Agency, 500 C Street S.W., Washington, D.C. 20472. ...

ESPN pulled the plug on their cell-phone product after investing $150m including $40m in advertising. This is precisely the failure market research is intended to prevent. How can business harness customers and prospective customers to improve their hit rate and time to market? The following simple figures demonstrate the difference between traditional market research and continuous engagement. There are dozens of differences between the two approaches. Research is ad-hoc or at regular intervals whereas continuous engagement is, well, continuous. Research is one-way, and engagement is two-way. Research is devoid of any direct brand benefit (and research purists will claim this is beneficial) whereas continuous engagement inculcates brand loyalty. Here’s a list of the primary differences: ...

There are people who claim to be natural communicators and there are those who struggle to get their point across. Most client teams have a mixture of the gifted and the frustrated – the natural order of things some might say. But this mix of skills in the workplace can lead to basic communication problems that disrupt progress. What we need is a framework to help train teams to communicate effectively. ...