85% of Online Marketers
to Increase 2007 Spending

51% of marketers
Alterian’s fourth annual survey of more than 500 direct marketers, marketing services providers and agencies confirms the trend to include email into integrated marketing plans is still on the rise.

The 2006 survey shows that while 50% of respondents plan to increase spending on offline marketing, 85% claim they will increase online direct marketing expenditures in the coming year.

More percentages culled from the survey:

50% claim they will spend more on direct mail this year
81% plan to increase spending on email marketing in 2007

Integrate Online/Offline

As always, don’t forsake the power of integrated marketing. For-profit and non-profit institutions alike can benefit from a well-planned integrated online/offline strategy. Offline direct mail and brand support can help drive online results and ultimately convert visitors to buyers.

For more on how to capitalize on your online marketing this year see our recent “Optimizing Online Marketing” article.

Click here for for more details and statistics on the Alterian survey.
Online Marketing

Arise Sleepwalkers

Bag DuoThe Selk’Bag

There’s nothing chilly about this Chilean sleeping bag. Rodrigo Alonzo’s Selk’Bag drips with cuddly warmth, cushy comfort and complete mobility—a somnambulist’s dream bag.

How Cute is That?

Just donning a Selk’Bag could reduce even the most belligerent among us to a complete, huggable softy. Perhaps if the world’s leaders were required to wear Selk’Bags to the negotiating table, resolve would prove less elusive. A bed that wears like a futon and a wearable that sleeps like a bed—in your choice of cheerful colors. What’s not to like about that?

Best of all, you need never worry about getting out of bed again. For more on the Selk’Bag visit the Musuc website.

Selk bag

YouTube to Pay Users;
a Music Nation Response?

This past Saturday, YouTube announced their plan to incentivize their contributors. Chad Hurley, CEO and co-founder of YouTube:

“We are getting an audience large enough where we have an opportunity to support creativity, to foster creativity through sharing revenue with our users,” Hurley said. “So in the coming months we are going to be opening that up.”

Although Hurley divulged no specifics as to how YouTube plans to share revenue with users, the timing of the announcement comes on the heels of other recent industry-related news.

Music Nation launched their quarterly online contest offering an Epic Records recording contract to the best user-submitted music video artists, a move that has already garnered a high volume of quality submissions. And online video clip rival, Revver, just announced their intention to attach ads to user-submitted videos then share a portion of the profit with the contributor.

With all that in mind, incentivization of online video contributors will further enhance the appeal of online social media. Yet another indication that your online marketing plan should include a strong social media component this coming year.
Chad Hurley

Strandbeest: Yet Another Wind-Driven Machine


Please indulge the recent rash of mechanically-enhanced art piece postings. However, after reading “Kinetic Structure Changes With the Wind,” a fellow wind-driven enthusiast directed us to this eco-friendly contraption on EcoGeek. We just couldn’t resist a .think post on the machine, which was featured in a BMW television commercial. Dutch artist Theo Jansen’s machine is so cool we’re sure BMW will forgive him his delivery vehicle of choice, a late model Volvo.
Wind Machine

Carving Crayons

CrayonFeatured on mynameiskate today, is Pete Goldlust, a man who carves actual size (3-5/8″ x 5/16″) wax crayons.

Assuming Mr. Goldlust to be an adult, we found it comforting to discover that crayon carving is just one of his creative outlets. In fact, perhaps more intriguing, were his fantastical polymer clay sculptures.

A digression: Just imagine what sort of megalomaniac Ian Fleming might have crafted from a crayon carving madman named Goldlust, Pete Goldlust.

Anyway, if you feel so drawn, click here to peruse Mr. Goldlust’s entire collection.Crayons

More Thought

Brainstorm Featured

in Step Inside Design’s recently released, 2008 Best of Web Annual for the design and development of Lumina Foundation for Education’s Camino a la Universidad site.

.THINK now listed on Alltop.com

under Branding. Grouped by topic, Alltop aggregates stories from “all the top” sites across the web (that’s their story and we’re sticking to it). View our .think listing, here: branding.alltop.

RapidoStart (Mac)

Here’s a free Mac app allowing you to call up, via customized abbreviations, any text string you copy and paste frequently. Best of all the text is placed pre-formatted - returns, bullets and all. It’s become a staple here at Brainstorm. You can download your own at app4mac.

PimpMyNews

If you can get past the vapid brand identity and UI, PimpMyNews, the talking social news site, is an interesting concept. The site will read your RSS feeds to you over your mp3 player, iPhone, etc. or computer.
[via: PR-Squared]

The iPlanet

NPI’s personal cosmos transport. Like Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine Happiness Machine, the iPlanet, a holiday product parody, promises a “thoroughly self-absorbed social media experience.”

Twitter Unseat Email?

Robert Scoble explores the notion in this BusinessWeek piece re: the running debate over where we’re headed with aging, albeit ubiquitous, email paradigms versus spam-free Tweets.
[via: Scobleizer]

Track the Hive’s Buzz

Aggregate the aggregators at Popurls.com—simultaneously follow the most current posts from all the top sites like Digg, Newsvine, YouTube and Flickr. Or, “find your favorite thing,” over at Buzzfeed.

Fountain

Peter Bruhn’s Swedish type foundry is preparing a new freshet of fonts to flow forth and flourish among us—according to Typographi and Bruhn himself.
[via: Sheer Brick]

Design by Metaphor

A word from A List Apart about design based on simile.

Master’s Color Palettes

Looking for a digital color scheme that will last the ages? Colour Lovers explores masters inspired color schemes.

Visualizing Volumes

Can’t see how your two soda bottles a day are impacting the environment? Chris Jordan’s images will help you visualize it. View his amazing statistical depictions at Running the Numbers, An American Self-Portrait.

Steve Jobs Unveils the Apple iRack

Regardless of your geopolitical views you’ll likely appreciate the satirical humor of this product parody sketch run amok.

Qbesq

Okay this would just be a goofy flash-based Spirograph-esque toy if it didn’t generate downloadable .svg (Scalable Vector Graphic) files—which it does. Pattern enthusiasts, meet Qbesq.

Those Funny Googlers

Here’s Google’s take on the phrase, “Across the pond.” Visit Google Maps, enter New York to London in the search field, scroll to step #24.

Tip: Reducing Firefox Memory Usage

How to reduce Firefox from a memory hog to a piglet. Caught this Firefox usage tip over on Ade Olonoh’s blog (see comments).

CSS Developments

If you’re a developer or just interested in CSS, check out this article entitled, #IEroot — Targeting IE Using Conditional Comments and Just One Stylesheet,” over on the PIE site.

The History of Branding

An iconic-rich, one-click site on how hundreds of the planet’s most noteworthy brands came to be. Updated daily.

The Hexafluoride Float

From the Bonn Physikshow—A lesson on YouTube regarding the denser than air properties of hexafluoride (likely sulphur hexafluoride) gas.

Worst Website Design, Ever?

Enter at your own risk. A proof of concept that design does matter. Havenworks.com hailed on Digg recently as perhaps, “…the most poorly designed website in the world!”

50 Essential Bookmarks

Originally published in Communication Arts November Design Annual 2006, here’s their list of 50 essential bookmarks. Conspicuously missing, sites such as Delicious, Technorati and Lifehacker.

Greetings Earthling

Sure to appeal to the megalomaniacal extraterrestrial in all of us. World, meet geoGreetings. When you care enough to send a satellite image.

A Modern Medium

An interactive glimpse into the the random and spontaneous feedback Jackson Pollock once realized in his medium—sans the clean up.

Impressive Product

Pressed toast with panache. From the, “Table Manners Collection,” Delfts Toast Pan by Minale Maeda. As seen on “ohmygooshness.”

Other Thoughts

Items we find compelling, of late.

Our latest top 20 list of inane musings from the Brainstorm office white board: Top 20 Thoughts on What No.15 Means

(at right)

.think Flickr

Objects of interest, engaging designs, diagrams, downloadable visuals and any other imagery we felt worth sharing.

Top 20 Top 20 Things to do (we did)
on the 4th of July

  1. Enjoy an apple pie in a Chevrolet…or a nutrition bar in a Smart Car
  2. Wax my upper lip
  3. Overdose on televised sports
  4. See Wall-E
  5. Midnight Parade – Anderson
  6. Read the Declaration of Independence (first part anyway)
  7. Blow off steam, or digits
  8. Enjoy the neighbors’ fireworks, late at night, for weeks
  9. Populate FunctionFox
  10. Rest my dogs
  11. Wax the car
  12. Wax nostalgic
  13. Watch fireworks…Just a thought
  14. Groove to the sounds of Baghdad (try Quantum Sonic Orchestra…or the Bamboos–nostalgia circa 1977)
  15. Fret all night that Homeland Security doesn’t run a keyword analysis and cough up #16
  16. “Celebrate the independence of your nation by blowing up a small part of it”
  17. Grill some burgers & dogs cats
  18. Hope it doesn’t rain cats, burgers and dogs
  19. Grill the Burgher – and his dog – get to the bottom of this “independence”
  20. Join the kids in the bike parade
  21. Celebrate with the Katzenbergers
  22. See the entire board