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

Sipho’s image by Fabian Biasio

Sipho Mabona, the origami artist
behind the Clio Award-winning film,
In Pursuit of Perfection.

Simple Vehicles; Collaborative Vision

Often the simplest elements allow viewers the most latitude to add their own vision to and create engagement with your concept or message.

The Nordpol+ agency of Hamburg, Germany created In Pursuit of Perfection, a short film honoring Asics founder, the late Kihachiro Onitsuka.

Central to the Clio award-winning short is the work of Swiss origami artist Sipho Mabona. Devoid of extraneous color and detail, Mabona’s hand-folded works add a human quality, proving the perfect medium to express the essence of the Asics story, from Onitsuka’s initial vision through its rise to today’s global sporting goods heavyweight.

A Tiger, a Microscope, an Octopus, a Foot…

Using only single sheets of square paper, Mabona worked on-site at Nordpol+ for five weeks, producing 17 models. He consulted as his designs were combined with stop motion photography, leading-edge motion control and 3D animation.

“The initial sequence featuring the tiger and the house, and the final trophy sequence are the scenes I am most proud of,” Mabona told .think.

More Mabona

Mabona produces custom-made models, animation, events and workshops for clients such as Antalis, Siemens and Epson. To learn more about Mabona and his work, visit his Mabona Origami web site.

via: A. C. Riley

Huggies: Nothing stops leaks better

Sell the Benefit

When it comes to conveying a message about your company, product or service, keep it succinct. Humor and hyperbole are great devices for memorability — as long as your core benefits are readily understood.

We think you’ll agree, the core benefit Huggies® hoped to convey in this 30 second spot is readily understood by anyone who has ever changed a diaper.

30 Rock, The Simpsons, SNL, The Office,
The Big Lebowski and more—free. Pass it on at Hulu.com

Watch your favorite TV shows and movies.
Anytime. Anywhere. Free.

Save the TiVo

After five months of Beta testing, today NBC Universal and Fox launched Hulu.com, mainstream media’s online answer to socially networked video sites like YouTube. Unlike YouTube, Hulu offers viewers online-anytime premium, recognized content with full production values that can be viewed full screen.

Feature Rich; Feature Friendly

Amid an understated interface and tastefully-sized and unobtrusively placed ads, a simple slider bar allows you to select snippets of any Hulu streamed media and clip it—to the second. You can preview the video clip, email it to friends, copy its embed code for blog insertion, or share it on Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Windows Live, or Google bookmarks.

It’s not exactly Consumer Generated Media (CGM), but it is a great first step toward engaging a post-conventional television audience anew.

Did We Mention Content?

The site offers free streaming video, ad-supported shows and feature films from NBC, Fox, E! Entertainment, the SciFi Network, USA Networks, Sony Pictures, MGM and others. Even the NBA, NHL and the NCAA are signing on. So far, CBS and Disney’s ABC are taking a wait and see approach before joining in.

A Step in the Right Conversation

Whether sites like Hulu can deliver mainstream media outlets from the bonds of one-way communication remains to be seen. But we Beta tested Hulu and think there’s a lot to like.

Snip a clip and send it to a friend on Hulu.