Great presentation by Gareth Kay, Director of Digital Strategy at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners that was given at Boulder Digital Works (an event I really wish I could have attended).

Not only is Noah Brier the Head of Strategy at The Barbarian Group, but he is also the guy behind Brand Tags, one of the simplest but most useful sites out there for a Brand Manager.  What this means is Noah knows a thing or two about what innovation really means.   So when I stumbled on the below presentation that Noah recently gave at the VCU Brandcenter, I thought it was worth sharing.

During the 2010 SXSW Interactive, Dan Shust from Resource Interactive in Columbus, OH gave a great presentation on “10 cool things that could happen in 2010…or not.”  While all ten are really thought provoking, a few in particular jumped out to me:

• Commerce Atomizes:  I think this one is inevitable as “click to buy” spreads across any and all connections.  Case in point, a new service called Payvment lets you simply add a fully-functional shopping cart to any Facebook Fan Page.  And you have the much hyped success of Dell Outlet on Twitter, selling over $2 million dollars.
• Life is a Game:  I’ve been on the band wagon of why gaming matters for some time now and its now just because gaming as an industry is bigger than music and movies combined.  It is because brands and services can use Game Theory to make experiences better.  For instance, gaming is what makes the Foursquare Mayorship so addictive (and a big part of why they will reach 1MM users faster than Twitter)
• Interactive Products:  This is the last one that I am following very closely.  My entire career has been working in digital for companies that make physical products.  The blending of the physical and digital worlds through interactive products has the potential to flip our industry on its head.  Nike+ is just the first example of what will be many, many more.

Which ones do you think have the greatest chance of coming true this year?  And more importantly, which do you think will have the biggest impact on marketing and brand building in the years to come?

David Armano, SVP Digital at Edelman, is one of the best in the business when it comes to taking complex theories and distilling them into simple graphics.    In the below embedded presentation, he takes a “pragmatic look at social media for business and what it takes to succeed.”

Social Media Is Dead: Long Live Common Sense.