2011: TOP 10 Marketing Highlights!

by Kurt on December 19, 2011

WOW, what – a – year!

Quite a few marketing highlights caught my attention this year. Let me share a few of these:

1. POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Living in the M.East, I’ve been able to witness from up close the impact of social media on the “general population”. What happened in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Syria during the “Arab Spring” is a reflection of big shifts in the direction of the people. And social media platforms and providers have reacted quickly. Case in point: in Egypt, when internet and Twitter were disconnected, engineers from both Google and Twitter immediately jump up and launched Speak2Tweet -wonderful: Egyptians could tweet by leaving a voicemail on an international phone number.

 

 

 

 

2. GOOGLE+

Google rocked the boat! Awesome. Launching as an “exclusive” on-invitation-only platform, Google+ was much talked about as the new social media gig that was going to overthrow Facebook, Twitter and the rest of it. Didn’t happen. As of yet. But Google+ made things interesting again, and I’m sure it got the Zuckerberg’s of this world back on their toes. Let’s see where it lands (or strands).

 

 

 

 

 

3. Innovation Guru Jobs Dies

A shock to the world. The Apple man that gave us the iMac, the iPod, the iPad is no more. He leaves a huge legacy though! And it will take centuries to beat that. Read the blog post I put up on the day he passed away. RIP Steve.

 

 

 

 

4. Mass Media Event in the UK

April 29 2011: Prince William of England marries Catherine “Kate” Middleton. What a media circus. Seriously. It’s just a wedding! The world was literally part of that the “show”. A social media frenzy. But hey, maybe the world needed a bit of a Disneyland fairytale. I thought it was the most boring thing in the world (despite being kind of romantic myself …so it was really bad -LMAO). If you missed it, you’ve been sleeping under a stone for the past year, so watch a couple of minutes of highlights here.

 

 

5. Charly Sheen is a self-proclaimed “winner”

The drug infected, loose canon and train-wreck son of Martin Sheen, and actor in the sitcom “two and a half men”, Charlie Sheen, repositioned the word “winning” this year. I still don’t quite get his definition of winning as “warlock brain” and “tiger blood”, but it’s made an impact. I’m sure that the #winning hashtag has exploded this year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. Pepperspray sales boost!

Pepper-spray, of all things, became an “interesting” subject all of a sudden, in November. When a mad police man, John Spike, started spraying a bunch of demonstrating kids, all hell broke loose. Too bad someone had a camera on his phone and put it up on youtube. Welcome to the 21st century! Read about it in the following blog post. Pepper spray got record sales this year because of this. How mad it that?

 

 

7. Facebook launches Timeline

I’m still waiting for it, but it seems pretty cool: Timeline. Cool for individuals and social media animals like myself, but equally an opportunity for brands to engage in better storytelling. I “LIKE”. Read about it here. Zuckerberg, Time’s 2010 ‘Man Of The Year’, also announced the Facebook IPO this year, making this the most anticipated stock market debut of 2012, with an expected value of $100 billion -this kid is going places!

 

 

 

8. QR codes on the rise

Half a year ago, no one knew what a QR code (Quick Response Code) was. Now, it’s not only trending, it’s effectively getting implemented everywhere. Half of the android population has a QR reader on his phone <ScanLife, Red Laser, i-Nigma, Blackberry QR Code Scanner, Barcode Scanner, Qrafter>. Nice. And in my humble opinion, QR codes will go places!

 

 

 

 

 

9. Volkswagen is back.

The “Force” is the most watched TV commercial of this year. Simple but emotionally strong story, high memorability and close to the brand. Great marketing execution. 45+ million views on YouTube, 7+ billion impressions worldwide, $100+ million in earned media. Pffew, may the Force be as strong with my campaign as with this one. It was already in my top list for a while, as you can see here. Enjoy watching it again:

 

10. The Red Hot Marketing Blender is alive!

I launched my website this year. Yippie! A big ripple in the marketing world. Haha! Make sure you subscribe to my newsletter on https://www.redhotmarketingblender.com/blog/. Let’s make the #RHMB hashtag BIG!

 

What are YOUR 2011 marketing highlights? Let me know.

 

Thank you for reading this post. I hope to put up some nice stories in 2012. Happy holidays!

Kurt thumbnail

 

 

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