We’ve identified five focal points of opportunity for 2010. They’re not an end-all priority list for brands, nor predictions, but rather initiatives, items born of trending behavior and emergent technologies being embraced by consumers.

1. Mobile-based marketing

Smartphones are fast becoming the center of consumer experience for work, home and play (see: Is Your Mobile Presence Brand Immobile?). A device capable of connecting people, places and things via text, voice, social networks, apps, tools, email, video, and images is a powerful medium. And the medium’s delivery mechanism is already in your audience’s hand, on their belt or in their purse. Smartphones are a direct way to connect with your audience and influence their behavior each time they use the device.

2. Location-based marketing

Aligning cultural trends and consumer behavior with location-based kiosks mobile and social apps can elevate your brand from relationship marketing to direct sales. Online and mobile apps such as foursquare combine locale, social game play and entertainment with information and tangible incentives. Geo-based marketing can deliver the closest, most highly-rated businesses, directions to get there and real-time incentives to entice a visit.

3. Brand design

Design continues to differentiate, now more so than ever. In a world deluged with cookie cutter applications and off-the-shelf adornments, consistent, appropriate and user-centric brand design compels and communicates amid the cacophony of visual noise.

4. Branded Edutainment

YouTube had more than 120 million viewers and 10 billion video views in August 2009 according to a September 2009 ComScore report. With the proliferation of on-hand, video-ready, mobile devices and a broad array of storage and sharing sites like Hulu and YouTube, online video is becoming ubiquitous.

Video is a powerful and potentially amplifying medium for your messaging when produced, integrated and distributed properly. But, it must be engaging, relevant, interactive, easily-consumed, readily-shareable, educational and/or entertaining for full effect.

5. Strategic Integration

There are many ways to reach and influence your audience—perhaps too many. Just because you have more options to extend your media mix doesn’t mean it needs to be less strategic. In fact, to penetrate the noise and stand out, strategy is more important than ever.

Facebook has hundreds of millions of subscribers. So what? Citing large numbers isn’t a strategy. And developing stand-alone initiatives without an integrated and targeted plan risks losing your message in a sea of irrelevant noise. Be it a person wearing a sandwich board on the sidewalk or an online video, your marketing efforts must be strategically integrated, well-planned, consistently branded, distinctively designed and metric-driven.

This year, don’t obsess over New Year predictions or resolutions. Assess, and act.

Related Reads:

Is Your Mobile Presence Brand Immobile? [.think]
Coca-Cola’s 100-Flavor Interactive Freestyle Soda Fountain
Shazam To ‘Tag’ Dockers’ Super Bowl Ad
Foursquare’s Marketing Potential

More than 30 percent of households with a TV now have a DVR device

Impressions Less Control

At more than double the price tag, CBS has very few 30-second Super Bowl spots left while NBC is struggling to sell 2010 Winter Olympic ads.

Yes, the Super Bowl has a prestigious reputation for the most watched and talked about commercials, but the Olympics start just one week after Super Bowl Sunday. Advertisers invest so much in creating the commercials, why not rerun the same 30-second spots at half the price?

Impressions Remotely Controlled

More than 30 percent of households with a TV now have a DVR device. If most people are like me, they’ll record the Olympics to watch at a more convenient time, and scan through to parts they’re most interested in. We’ll speed up the process and not take the time to view every commercial.

Have DVR, Tivo and YouTube viewers changed the way traditional TV is being watched so much so that advertisers are looking for alternative ways to reach their target market, even during widely viewed, mainstream television events?

Impressions User Controlled

There are certainly options to target more specifically and less expensively, and whether you advertise on the Super Bowl or through an alternate media there’s always the chance your ad will go viral, extending your reach even further—for free.

Image: Tsmall

Hollywood comes to Indianapolis

The annual Heartland Film Festival kicks off a 10-day run in Indianapolis today. This year’s festival features a record 87 films from around the world.

Heartland Truly Moving Pictures
is a non-profit organization that seeks
to recognize and honor filmmakers
whose work explores the human journey
by expressing hope and emphasizing
the best in human spirit.

The Festival will award cash prizes totaling $200,000 to winning dramatic, documentary, short, and student films at the Crystal Heart Awards ceremony on Saturday, October 17th. Audiences rate movies and vote for their favorites throughout the Festival and Audience Choice Awards are presented at the end of the Festival.

The Heartland Film Festival awards ceremony

“We’re excited about the number of opportunities film lovers have to experience the Festival this year,” said Jeff Sparks, Heartland Truly Moving Pictures President and CEO. “If someone has never attended the Festival before, this is definitely the year to give it a try.”

Over the past year, Brainstorm partnered with Heartland Truly Moving Pictures on the architecture, design and development of their Truly Moving Pictures website and we’re proud to be a 2009 Premier Level sponsor of the Festival.