Ever since I added the delicious “What I Am Reading Lately” widget to Hard Knox Life, I have been slacking on writing Weekly Round-Ups as actual blog posts.  I wanted to take the chance to see if people actually miss these posts or if I should just keep using the widget.  Any thoughts from my readers?

In the meantime, here are the posts from around the blogosphere that caught my attention:

• Can a NFL Team reach the Super Bowl with a simple brand logo change? – Over at EyeCube, Rick Liebling changes this very question from the WSJ.  If there is any truth to this, I really hope the Bengals hire a new design agency fast.
• David Armano has a killer job in Amersterdam – Adidas has formed a new type of agency backed by Critical Mass and RIOT, leading to the hunt for a Social Media Director.  Here’s the job description: “The Social Media Director is part strategist, part director, part sports enthusiast and will lead a team of seeders and conversationalists who will actively participate in various forms of social media on behalf of RIOT’s adidas client.”  Sounds like a killer job to me.
• Hey companies, where are your iPhone Apps – That pretty much sums it up.  Companies need to wake up to these mobile opportunities for brand building.   And oh yeah 500 million iPhone apps have already been downloaded.
• Peter Kim writes a manifesto for Social Business to get off their ass – It’s not quite Jerry Maguire style of “who’s coming with me” but Peter Kim makes a good point when he says the blogosphere is lacking original content lately and that “the reverb in the echo chamber has become deafening.”  I might not be helping with the Weekly Round-Up post but Peter’s words are ones we all need to read.
• Brands that Twitter: A Complete List – This has to be the most comprehensive list I have seen of brands using Twitter.  Though they did miss my guys at Tag Records.  I also liked the Mashable in-depth look at 40 brands on Twitter.

The folks over at Organic posted a great presentation about widgets on SlideShare.  In my eyes:

widgets are one of the least understood but highest potential tools of the digital age.

So what is a widget?  Well as Organic puts, a widget “is a small application that does one simple thing, but does it well.”  Love that description.  Right now widgets exist on the desktop, mobile phones (think iPhone) and on the web (Facebook, etc).  But in the near future, they are going everywhere (the Chumby is just the tip of the iceberg).

So why should Brand Managers care about widgets?  Couple of reasons come to mind:

1. Widgets are the ultimate expression of Brand Affinity: In most cases, widgets are being displayed in a highly visible social space (Facebook, blog, etc).  If you or your friends are going to be looking at a widget on your personal page, you want that widget to be say something about you.  A widget is a brand badge that a person is wearing for the world.
2. Widgets deliver relevant information on the go:  If there is one thing all experts agree on, it is the fact that time is the most valuable commodity around.  Despite all the talk about multi-tasking, you can’t make, create, grow, or find more time.  But widgets can deliver information quickly and at your fingertips…giving time back that could be wasted searching.  That is a brand delivering value to a person.
3. Widgets can insert a brand into a person’s interactions with their friends:  Back to point #1 where widgets are an expression of you.  The right widget (usually games like Scrabulous or SuperPoke) create interactions between people.  A brand that is properly integrated into that widget becomes part of the social interaction.
4. Widgets keep your brand top of mind:  How many times have discovered a great site on the web but then completely forgot to go back to it?  Or you heard about a new band you wanted to check out, but then couldnt remember the name.  Widgets keep your brand, website, or band “top of mind” to a person.  They won’t forget about you!

Now I’m not going to get into rules for widget success (the presentation does that) but I will toss out a call to action.  Right now most brands are content with letting developers create the killer applications and then the brands buy the media/partnership from a company like Slide or Playfish.  The argument is that they are then the ones doing the hard work of getting the install base and the users.  But I fundamentally disagree with this.  If you are just buying ad space/placement on a widget, you aren’t building brand affinity.  You can be replaced.

Brands should be investing in building the future generation of widgets…not just buying ad space

We as marketers need to stop applying the interruption model of marketing to new tools like widgets.  Let’s start trying to get an invitation to the party by bring something meaningul to the party.  An ad won’t do that…but a great application/widget that gives people something they want sure will.

Check out the presentation below.  See if it inspires anything for you.  Do agree about the future potential of widgets?

[slideshare id=370511&doc=widgets101optimized-1209049938364091-9&w=425]