This and That: 11.6.11

+ In the madness that ensues from returning from vacation and just the general craziness, here are a few things I've read, am in the middle of reading, or have scanned to go back to read or look at that I thought you might find interesting or useful.

Shape of the Industry
+ Forrester’s Nate Elliott has some interesting things to say in his Interactive Brand Ecosystem report.

It’s time for marketers to start taking the brand-building power of interactive channels more seriously [...] Your online content and experiences should be the first piece of the brand campaign you develop, and not the last piece. After all, the Internet is the deepest, richest, and most trusted branding channel you possess — and within a year or two it’ll probably be the biggest too. Your customers have entered an era of interactivity, and it’s time for your brand campaigns to do the same.

For me, leading your brand with interactive marketing isn’t about choosing one channel over another; it’s about rethinking how all our marketing channels work together. The way we “coordinate” our marketing channels right now is broken: Even today, most marketers develop their TV ads first and then hand them to the interactive team and hope they can build a site or a banner campaign that matches. As we’ve all seen, this rarely works well.

Management of Cubelife
+ An interesting read on "engagement" and looking at how it's losing (or lost) its meaning from overuse, wrong use, and more.

Talking about ‘engagement’ is as about as helpful as demanding that communications be ‘good’.

Meaningless and bankrupt, when we talk of ‘engagement’ we reveal ourselves as victims of industry fashion. Or in pursuit of our own self-serving agendas. Or in love with pontificating and generalizing at the expense of understanding the specific and actually being useful.

+ A good read from Nancy Vonk and Janet Kestin for Fast Company, Stumbling Up The Ladder: Ad Agencies Neglect Their Brightest Prospects. Here's a excerpt:

Agencies are losing status as go-to thought leaders because frankly, leadership is in short supply. Clients are parceling out their projects to consultants and 'specialists.' The best and brightest grads aren’t choosing advertising the way they used to, nor taking it as seriously as other talent-based businesses.

Advertising is an industry careless of the talent under its roof. Its greatest asset is the people who go up and down the elevators each day, yet a dearth of investment in their growth has left them feeling that they lack value. Even though employees continue to rank training as one of the primary motivations to stay in a company, it has mostly gone the way of the dodo. Cost has long triumphed over benefit. So people feed their sense of worth by changing jobs more often. The best recognize that without mentors and employer commitment to their personal development, their growth is limited and, well, see ya. Meanwhile, smarter, newer businesses are biting at the heels of agencies, offering campus environments for their newly-minted workforce, as well as training, sabbaticals, and jobs that feel more rewarding.

Design
+ If you're looking for some cool visual eye candy or inspiration, check out 50watts.com, a great resource of book-related design and illustration.

+ Just Be Nice Studio out of Moscow created a typeface that includes all frequently used iconographics and symbols. Web Symbols is a set of vector html-compliant typefaces, so it might be used in any size, color and most browsers.

+ Copy Paste Character is another handy, dandy website and iPhone application for copying the
‘hidden’ characters that comes with the computer’s typefaces, to be pasted into emails, tweets, text documents, forums and whatever else you might need to spice up with an extra ♔, ฿ or, ❒.