I met with graduates of the Miami Ad School today. 

Lots of smart folks...planners, copywriters, art directors. Or so their chosen academic streams labelled them. 

In truth, the world has changed and these guys knew it. The best of them were thinking conceptually, digitally, and experientially...and their passion for advertising (while still clear) was balanced by a passion for bigger, broader, smarter, more innovative and impactful thinking. 

It all just left me wondering why we still insisted on such narrow labels for their talents. 

Interesting piece on TechCrunch, looking at web responses to the quality of Winter Olympic television coverage. 

We all know that the hyper-connectedness of the modern web-2.0-driven world means that good stories and bad stories alike are getting spread faster and more transparently than ever before...and that organizations are getting real-time feedback on every aspect of their performance. 

A big brand experience challenge for those organizations is going to be figuring out if (and how) to respond to this kind of instant (and, let's be honest, often negatively-skewed) feedback. 

I recently wrote about Google's collaboration with Russia's Trans Siberian Railway. Now check out this Google Maps/Earth project with Madrid's Prado art museum. 

What Google is doing, both in its own right and in collaboration with third-party organizations, is truly defining what it is to be an experience brand...a brand which holds up the experiences it creates for its customers and communities above everything else, and which holds true to that commitment in everything it does.   

There is an inherent Google-ness in everything it touches...from Gmail to Google Wave to Maps and Earth to the simplicity of its core search interface. 

Google is proud of what it does and what it stands for, and unafraid of the simplicity at the heart of its search story (just check out their 2010 Super Bowl spot for evidence of that). 

My company, Jack Morton, has just kicked off a year-long discussion about experience brands...what they are, how they work, why they will dominate in the future, and (crucially) how to build them. 

Access the new Jack Morton experience brands white paper and the video series from here. 

Here's a great example of something totally simply and yet totally inventive.

A brilliant example of an online brand experience...for Russia's Trans Siberian Railway.

Amazing. Inspired. Simple.

A few years ago, my wife and I stayed at the Landmark Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong. 

It's a seriously stylish property and remains one of Hong Kong's more design-forward hotels. It's expensive, aspirational, premium...you get the picture. 

So....why, exactly, would anyone think that I would want to become a 'fan' of this hotel on facebook? I ask because I received an email inviting me to do just that. 

Not only is that horribly forward gesture for a place I have stayed once. But facebook...are they sure?!

I guess that the digital gurus at the Landmark think that I will want to parade my worldly status, increase my social capital, by making my fandom of their hotel public. 

But I won't. And, in the process they have just ensured  that I will tell all my friends that the once stylish Landmark has now gone tacky and mainstream. 

If I were advising the Landmark, I'd be trying to help them find ways to keep in touch with former guests in a relevant, respectful way. And I'm pretty sure that setting up a facebook group would not be how I'd start. 

Or is it just me?

If 2008 was the year of "We need to be on Facebook.", and 2009 was "Oooh, what about Twitter?", then 2010 is likely to add a third tired and tactical digital mandatory..."We need an app!". And, between all the iPad buzz and articles like this in the New York Times, the incessant chatter already begun.

Not that there's anything wrong with apps. After all, we're all going to have apps for phones and mobile devices, apps for normal computers, apps for TVs, and (soon enough) apps for everything from bedside clocks to fridges.

But as marketers we just need to remember one thing...apps are for life. Not 'for life' as in forever (although one sign of a successful app is that its use-by date might stretch beyond its first week of novelty). No, when I say 'for life' I mean for living...for real life...for offering some utility or enhancement to how we want to live our real lives.

A good app changes how we do stuff for the better, or helps us do stuff we previously couldn't (but always wanted to). A pointless app encourages us to do something we never wanted to do just because we can. Needless to say, 99 per cent of marketing-driven apps fall into the latter category. Which means that most app marketing in 2010 will be as pointless and annoying as the Facebook and Twitter marketing of 2008 and 2009.

Used well, apps are brand experiences. Enhancing ones. Valuable ones. Insightful ones. Used badly, they're more clutter. Hmm...

Great stuff from Air New Zealand and Recaro this week...announcing the launch of the Sky Couch.

Super simple, super clever thinking.

So I’m about to have a baby. Which is both hugely exciting and full of learnings, most of them predictable.

One of the less predictable learnings has been about how we shop for stuff. Not that I didn’t have strong views about the act of shopping already, just that it’s rare in life to need to buy so much stuff and spend so much money on a category you know so little about.

In short, shopping around in the ocean of baby stuff helped to refresh my insights into how anyone buys anything these days.

Here are my three headlines.

ONE. Advertising doesn’t influence, but brand does. There is no question in my mind that our shopping was framed by the experience of friends, and then informed by a combination of what was on display in stores and what was recommended to us through a combination of blogs and classes. At no stage has advertising had a dominant influence on our desire to purchase items. Brand, on the other hand, has been seriously influential. Product design, packaging, sales materials, storytelling, heritage, websites, brand personality, feedback on customer service issues, personality and tone of voice…every piece of data on the brands we have been interacting with has been part of our decision. Advertising has, at times, been one piece of that brand jigsaw. That’s all.

TWO. Reviews matter, a lot, both in traditional and new media. The difference? They no matter more than ever, because there’s more of them. And more information means more pressure to access information. And more connectedness means more likelihood that somewhere among the branded content and biased one-offs will be tens or even hundreds of relevant opinions and insights.

THREE. The retail experience is key. Distribution, display, retail staff engagement…it’s all critical. Critical. Just like the consumer electronics category…most product is sold in large, soulless, multi-brand stores where individual brands and products easily get lost. The only way to win in there is through price, unshakable consumer preference, or sales staff advocacy. I know which I’d bet on every time.

That’s it. No rocket science. No revelations. But instead a timely reinforcement of long-held instincts.