The greatest lesson we can teach our children and one another is to “never give up on yourself”. Kleenex please.

Check out this Augmented Reality by Lego.

Have you ever wanted an easy way to see which browsers people are using? Thanks Smashing Magazine for the link!

Three years ago, I thought Social Media would turn into a long-lasting trend. Today, it’s definitely more than that. It’s a revolution. Here’s a good video based on the best-selling book Socialnomics.

Here is a sign of the times. We all know we have special characteristics that cannot be altered. In Feb 2010, ‘Identity Apparel’ premiered its customized apparel line, which provides consumers with the ability to display their special characteristics (DNA, fingerprints, and lip prints?).

The founders, Dylan Ferguson and Aram Melkoumov, met at Ryerson University and graduated from the Ted Rogers School of Management with a Major in Entrepreneurship in 2009. Check out their website.

PRINT will live on. We read a lot about how the Internet is killing off many other types of media. Five leaders of various media companies put this video together. After seeing an increase in the sales of some magazines, I do agree with their video. The fact that they feel the need to do a promotional video does demonstrate that advertisers and media buyers still need some persuading.

The best 2010 web design trends list that I have seen. Well done. (click photo)

There’s a great new way to get your news. It’s called newsmap. You can customize your color coated categories and view topics of your choice from locations of your choice. It’s a great user experience and a nice use of Google’s search algorithms. Find out what’s happening in the news

Because the TED conference is so powerful, I feel compelled to post another video from the 2009 conference regarding drinking water. This important video demonstrates the type of solutions that right-brained thinking can produce.

When discussing technical and creative topics, people often use the words “left-brained and right-brained” in relation to strategy. As a right-brained creative thinker, I appreciate the following video from this year’s TED conference. It demonstrates the type of thinking that is necessary to succeed in the 21st century and presents some solid evidence.

During a meeting last week with over 200 analysts, investors, and media, Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent made a confession…

“There was a period when our company did lose its way,” he said. “We were too internally focused and not focused enough on the changes taking place with our consumers and customers. In essence, we were too busy looking at the dashboard and were not sufficiently paying attention to the world outside of our windshield.”

Coca-Cola has opened their eyes to the possibilities of digital marketing and is now shifting its strategy from purely mass marketing to one-to-one marketing. They will be migrating their spending from TV commercials to content development. What does that mean? They will be following in the footsteps of Nike and Nokia. The plan is to be relevant locally while scaling globally and to utilize many different marketing channels in order to provide a custom message to a consumer who has now become very marketing savvy. Read the full story here.

I have wanted to write about this observation of mine for awhile. Do you remember the book The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing from 1993? It explains very important marketing rules that still hold true today, except one. In fact, it is the #1 rule on this book’s list that is no longer relevant. It states that ”It is better to be first than it is to be better”. This “first-to-market” rule proved to be true over and over again - before the Internet. The main example in the book explains that Coke will always sell more than Pepsi because it was first-to-market. Pepsi has remained #2 in sales even though thousands of blind taste tests have shown that America prefers the taste of Pepsi over Coke. Why? Because, Coke is #1 in the “minds” of consumers.

Today, we have seen this marketing rule broken many times. Several 21st century entrepreneurs decided that they could be better than the #1 brand, and now they are. Look at My Space, Boing Boing (MP3 player), and Archie (Internet search engine). All three of these first-to-market brands have been overwhelmed by Facebook, iPod, and Google. The Internet has changed the rules - even rule #1. Why?Because, the Internet has the power to change consumers’ “minds”.

As the philosophy at AOL shifts, their logo does too. The revised company has a new boss, a smaller head count, different owners, and a new, “more creative” vision. Next month they will also become an independent shoot off of the giant Time Warner. The brand is changing and the logo should too. The logo changes are very subtle. Perhaps the changes could have been “more creative”. What do you think?

The firm Wolff Olins gets credit for the re-branding and the new logo. The font stays the same, but you may notice that the two lowercase letters and the period are new. The logo re-design uses a common trend of today - placing the mark on various background images while reversing it out to white. Onward and upward for the new AOL. I remember the old AOL was my first ISP when I started surfing the web and I’ll never forget those powerful words “you’ve got mail”.

Did you know that Frederick the great was more than a great King of Prussia? He was also a branding genius. During his reign as king, he struggled to persuade his people to grow potatoes instead of wheat in order to lower the price of bread and avoid a famine. During the famine of 1774, he even resorted to force while convincing starving peasants to eat the free potatoes he provided. As a solution to his potato perception problem, he grew potatoes himself in the royal garden and ordered soldiers to guard the field. He also gave them discreet instructions to not guard the royal crop very well! Many peasants believed that anything worth guarding is certainly worth stealing. They soon began stealing the potatoes in order to grow their own crops. Yes, perception is everything in the world of marketing.

I am still amazed by this website. See if you can find something that gets a higher meter reading than “Obama” in the top left. I found two: “world” and “email” - lol.