That may be so, but I think it’s always really important to keep yourself grounded and know from where you come. To remember and acknowledge the highs but also to not forget the lows and to know that, no matter how far you reach, you can always fall.

That being said, I never thought I’d fall or fail. This wasn’t borne out of arrogance or blind faith but the fact that I had nothing to lose and if I did fall, it wouldn’t be far. Here’s a video of my first TV appearance, a few months in to my new online real estate community.

It was nerve wracking being on live TV but I believed in what I had created and had driven myself to make it a success.

I sold the company after 11 months for an offer I couldn’t refuse to a Canadian business listing company. I was thrilled at having created a brand, a busines and a solution to what was a very frustrating and difficult process of buying or selling a house in North America.

I have never been a realtor or related to the property industry in anyway but I had a need; I had a problem. I was incredibly frustrated at the process of buying an apartment in Vancouver and I thought I could make it better. Here’s what I did:-

In a recent tweet, Micah Baldwin boldly declared, “If you do SEO for a living, you will be out of business or irrelevant in 3 years.” We’ve been reading about the death of SEO since the late 1990s when SEO was still very much in its infancy. But lately there’s been something different in the cyber air about the future of SEO and it got me wondering …

In the race for relevancy, could 2010 be the year that SEO is forced to relinquish its organic search throne to give way to the power of search filtered through and against the social graph + geo?

I think so. Here’s why:

Twitter on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs)

A few weeks ago, Google started testing real-time Twitter search results. That got me ‘hmmm-ing’ like crazy.

If what I saw is what there is, wow. This thing is sooooo easy to game. Check this out: Let’s say I’m looking for a new dentist. Do I really care about conversations about dentists, from dentists or dentistry in general? No, not really. But what if I could geo-filter those same conversations? Okay, that’s more interesting. Now what if I could add a second filter to these same conversations, only this time showing only those tweeple I’m following on Twitter? Ahhh ….

Read the rest of the post on Dan Martell’s site

The dance generated nearly 33 million views in less than five months, inspiring a ton of user-generated spinoffs, including the tongue-in-cheek divorce dance, and a spoofy fist-bump from The Office.

But here’s an inside story you may not have heard: The ending might not have been a happy one for the Wedding Dance couple.

YouTube gives copyright holders the right to strip music from user-generated videos if they don’t approve of how their work’s being used. But in a savvy move, Sony—which owns the rights to “Forever”—decided to keep JK Wedding Entrance Dance intact and ride the wave of its popularity. Now when you watch it, an ad enables you to buy the track from iTunes.

Sony wasn’t the only savvy marketer in this equation. Following the unexpected popularity of its nuptial march, the couple in question started funneling users to JKWeddingDance.com, where you can read their story and make a donation to the Sheila Wellstone Institute, a society that raises awareness about domestic violence.

Hey, with cool customers like these out there, the message is clear: You no longer need to do the heavy brand-lifting alone!

The Po!nt: Find your partners and dance! Take a look at how customers or clients appropriate your products for their own messages—and instead of restricting them, ride the wave! You’ll breed loyalty—and a fresh army of evangelists.

But while some claim that the age of the left-brain marketer has arrived, too often we see customer data buried in the direct-marketing department, manipulated and modeled by propeller-heads to create a campaign file. And yet, in a small number of firms, we find customer intelligence elevated into a strategic command center for the business. In these firms, customer knowledge drives decisions across the enterprise — from marketing planning and strategy to product development, and from risk analysis and staffing to business operations and corporate strategy. And most of these firms point to a broad range of benefits, including improvements in customer acquisition, retention and satisfaction to increased revenue, profitability and customer lifetime value.

What defines these leading firms? They treat customer data as a strategic asset, put the customer at the center of all decision making and use data-driven insight to tailor all customer communications. It sounds simple, but can you name five companies that do it? Research shows that fewer than 15% of firms have a strategic customer-intelligence operation. These firms leverage customer intelligence broadly throughout the organisation, they value customer knowledge as a corporate asset and they frequently have an evangelist in the C-suite. They continually demonstrate that customer intelligence drives overall business growth.

So how do you become one of these firms? Start by looking at your corporate culture. Almost every company we speak with claims that they are focused on their customers and many even describe themselves as customer-centric. But very few follow through on that philosophy with any meaningful results. To do so, you need to break down organizational silos, align compensation structures, establish customer-listening programs and implement an enterprise-wide customer-contact strategy. This last element — the contact strategy — is a road map that ensures customers receive the most relevant message at the right time and in their preferred mode. Consider Disney, which uses what it learns from every customer interaction to stay one step ahead of customers at every turn. Disney’s success is enabled by its information-driven and highly dynamic marketing practices, but it all starts with a corporate culture designed around the mantra “know me and be relevant.”

After understanding the cultural changes that are needed, CMOs must hire the right people with the right skill sets. You need critical thinkers who can challenge the status quo and translate business problems into questions that can be answered with deep customer knowledge. In our research, we found that a high-performing customer-intelligence organization needs a centralized team comprised of people from four disciplines:

1. customer strategists
2. marketing technologists
3. marketing scientists
4. marketing practitioners.

These four archetypes each play very different but invaluable roles in the organization. While every firm has someone in the practitioner role, most firms are missing the customer strategist.

Not all customers are created equal, and by some accounts, your bottom 20% of clients may be draining 80% of your profits. Do you know who they are? Does your executive team? Do you have a strategy for changing that equation? Customer value isn’t just a marketing metric, it should be a key performance indicator for the business. As CMO, you will have to help reconcile customer value with line of business and brand managers that are tasked with growing revenue for their corner of the world and make enterprise customer value a high-level metric for the organization. Some firms, such as Farmer’s Insurance, take this further and use customer knowledge to predict the lifetime value of prospective customers and target high-potential value prospects accordingly.

Once you have figured out the cultural element and addressed the people component, you can start to think about technology. Customer intelligence relies heavily on technology. It requires a data-management and analytics framework that centralizes customer data, listens across channels, automates processes, and enables intelligent “push” and “pull” interactions with customers. But all the technology in the world will be wasted unless it is being pointed in the right direction — on facilitating the organization’s ability to put the customer at the center of everything they do — and not just talking about it.

CMOs have always cared deeply about their brands and the emotional connection that they create with their customers. They absolutely must continue to do so, but that kind of connection will be nearly impossible to create with increasingly empowered, connected customers who have limited tolerance for marketing. To succeed, the next-generation CMO must help their organizations to truly understand their customers; they must act as the customer advocate within the organization; and they must focus on building customer value at every interaction.

So ideas and ideals move from sub-culture to hip, to cool, to the next big thing, finally becoming mainstream. (but of course not all survive the journey)

• Sub-culture: There’s some weird stuff going on out here
• Hip: Bridging the gap and fusing cultures
• Cool: Your kids know about it, but you don’t
• Next Big Thing: Kind of self explanatory
• Mainstream: Everyone’s doing it

Through this journey from sub-culture to pop-culture, mainstream thinking gives way for the NEW to become the status quo. However, relevance eventually fades and popularity diminishes as people seek out the next big thing. No wonder so many brands fail to build long-term relationships with their audience. They confuse popularity with success and end up simply providing more of the same without the edge that brought them to popularity in the first place.

The key to maintaining your edge is to identify where you stand and swim against the current. Even the kings of mainstream like P&G, Johnson & Johnson and Unilever are influenced by emerging realities. To maintain relevancy, they have altered the message, meaning and image of many of their iconic brands to embrace changes in preference influenced by emerging cultures that originated far from the center.

Wellness, Environmentalism, Mash-Ups, Social Networking, Extreme Sports… All have driven culture and none were born out of the mainstream.

Depending on whether you’re on the marketing side or the financial side of the business, branding is either viewed as an investment or as an expense. Those who see it as an expense, are unlikely to see returns, and those who can’t articulate the value that branding can bring are unlikely to attain a budget that is sufficient to carry out their claim. If your message isn’t being well received, it’s up to you to change the delivery—when talking to finance people, talk brand in financial terms.

For the purpose of this discussion, let’s avoid the higher level view of a brand being an experience, a promise, an expectation… and stick with a more pedestrian definition of brand:

A brand is both a marketing and legal device for differentiating goods and services. Where commodities are undifferentiated, interchangeable offerings (low margin), brands are considered unique and are legally protectable (high margin).

The above definition isn’t likely to receive a defensive response, because it defines brand as being the opposite of something financial people understand, a commodity. Now we can map that commodity and the brand, on a simple economic curve. This translates “brand” into economic terms, changing the question from “Does branding have value?” to “What is the value of X?”

So, while creatives may see brand as expressing unique and desirable benefits to a targeted audience to create preference, financial people see brand value as the premium consumers are willing to pay for a given product or service.

By aligning perspectives, marketing and finance can have the same conversation and determine appropriate budgets based on a common definition of brand and of success. After all, the differences are semantic. Both parties are essentially defining a commercially viable business as a high profit-to-cost ratio. The difference in viewpoint is how to get there.

“Tiger and his family have Nike’s full support. We respect Tiger’s request for privacy and our thoughts are with Tiger and his family at this time.”

(Which to many sounded perhaps just a touch too melodramatic – as if the poor man had just suffered bereavment in the family!)

Gatorade is another of Tiger’s sponsors. The brand has a Disney-style tv commercial campaign called, Woods of Wisdom” . It is filmed in Disney-style voiced by Samuel L. Jackson as a wise bear guide to a school-age Tiger Woods.

Gatorade said:

“Our partnership with Tiger continues. We wish Tiger well as he recovers and look forward to seeing him back on the course soon.”

Tag Heuer describes Tiger’s “character” as making him:

“a natural partner for the brand.”

Procter & Gamble, which features Woods as well as tennis pro Roger Federer and footballer Thierry Henry in its “Gillette Champions” campaign, announced that:

“Tiger Woods remains a part of our overall marketing plans for Gillette,”

and confirmed that the company had made no advertising adjustments for its television commercials over the past weekend.

This must be sweet music for the golf champ who has run the gauntlet of the media humming with unfounded speculations and supposition over what exactly occurred when Tiger accidently drove his car into a fire hydrant.

Most of the $1bn (in reported terms, $92m – £55 million) which Forbes estimates Woods has earned since turning professional has come from his endorsements rather than prize money. During 2008 he earned approx. $110 million – double that of any other sporting champ. In brand perception terms, last week the media suggested that both he and his brand sponsors such as Gillette, General Motors, American Express and Tag Heuer watches, could have potentially ended up deep in the rough.

Before an official police statement was released, Woods reportedly stated:

“The situation is my fault and it’s obviously embarrassing to my family and me. I’m human and I’m not perfect. Although I understand there is curiosity, the many false, unfounded and malicious rumours that are currently circulating about my family and me are irresponsible.“

For most people, surely that would be enough. However, Wood’s is not the average kitten. Before Woods finally the police made an official statement which included Woods having to pay a small fine and get points on his licence, commentators warned that the more Tiger declined to officially clarify his innocence regarding to what exactly occurred outside his home – via no less than an official interview with the local police – themore veracious the rumours would become – and that surely wasn’t fair to him or his interests.

Tiger’s brand has always been carefully groomed to be presented as the ‘All- American’ ‘squeaky-clean’ family man. The game of golf perfectly suits that image. When the news of the crash first broke followed by unfounded allegations of playing around rather than a round, some in the media seemed all too quick to suggest that his image didn’t fit well with hearsay allegations of wives swinging golf clubs through the windows of the family Escalade.

It’s good to talk

In our Web 2.0 age, conversations between brands (including celebrity brands) and their public are the key to healthy long-term relationships. Silence on the other hand can, if left unmanaged, lead to consumers, fans, advocates … turning their attention to more openly critical debate.

Unquestionably, Tiger’s problem concerned trust and integrity. But perhaps from a different perspective than may have first sprung to mind. On one hand it was charming – even endearing – to have a hero like Tiger shown to actually be an ordinary man with everyday problems. The guy with superhuman sporting powers but, who, like the rest of us also made honest mistakes such as crashing the car. (DC Comics and Marvel comics built their entire empires on such heroes. – What would Batman be without the man behind the mask? Or Spiderman without the naïve kid who only wants to do the right thing?)

One of Tiger’s sponsors is Accenture. They fittingly run a slogan: “It’s what you do next counts” and equally aptly feature Tiger looking down his ball stuck between rocks. If this story would have dragged on, the recent events may have forced Tiger’s PR team to turn the tables on the other players taking the main role in the entire drama? For example, how was this regular guy supposed to trust his own emergency services if those same services were all too happy to disclose the content of his neighbour’s 911 call to the media? Why did he – the upright family man – have to be subjected to alleged and totally unfounded claims of infidelity from car crash mistress chasers? How much should one man be made to pay for the price of talent and fame?

(Since the news first broke, the lady accused of indiscretions said she is not a “home-wrecker” and called the rumours, “ridiculous“).

Prepare for the worst. Hope for the best.

When the news first broke, Gillette, whose multi-million dollar campaign feature all three sporting heroes must have surely recognised the wry aptness of their campaign slogan: “Prepare for the best.”

Before any fire hydrants could even be repainted the Press were running headlines like “The Curse of Gillette” pointing to the fact that in one way of another, all three of its key celebrity endorsers: Woods, Federer and Henry had been struck by bad luck. Woods, with the car accident. Henry, with his “hand-ball’ controversy and Federer loosing an important tennis game. (The brand dropped David Beckham two years ago. He still hasn’t entirely shaken off the legacy of its so-called, ‘curse’).

When celebrities go bad for brands.

On the main front page of brandforensics.co.uk, there is an interview with the BBC Worldservice in which I speak of famous instances when celebrity endorsements have been bad for brands. Sometimes what originally appears to be bad news for companies actually can still be turned around. For example, back in 2005 Kate Moss was photographed in what some claimed appeared to be a compromising shot of her taking drugs. Sponsors like Burberry, Chanel and eventually H&M withdrew their support. However within about a year Kate managed to turn fate around – actually increasing her sponsorship earnings through several important modeling contracts.

Ultimately, the statements from all his sponsors together with Woods’ character and publicised integrity continues to suggest that for now at least, the Tiger brand has more than enough ground roots support to remain on top of the crisis rather than ‘duff’ the shot.

Given the current general mood of distrust of brands and leadership, there aren’t that many other brands out there able to ‘bump and run’ themselves out of the rough like this particular Tiger.

Philips: Carousel from CCW – Lab on Vimeo.

“Created for Tribal DDB, Amsterdam, the interactive campaign—which launched at cinema.philips.com—promotes Philips’ latest entrant into the television market, the CINEMA 21:9. Since the television’s 21:9 frame lends itself so readily to film, Tribal DDB, Amsterdam commissioned Stink Digital to create a piece of filmed content that could hold its own with Hollywood’s best. Stink Digital director Adam Berg responded with an idea for an epic ‘frozen moment’ cops and robbers shootout sequence that included clowns, explosions, a decimated hospital, and plenty of broken glass, bullet casings and money.

The film, titled Carousel, is the centrepiece of the project. On its own, it clocks in at a (totally coincidental) two minutes and 19 seconds, but Berg conceived it to work as an endless loop. Visitors to the microsite therefore have the option to ‘spin’ through the film’s single take shot repeatedly, to stop on a specific frame, or to watch it at the preordained speed. The film also contains embedded hotspots, which, when triggered, transport the viewer seamlessly from the heavily posted film to a behind-the-scenes version of the same shot. This constant moving between two layers of reality proved one of the project’s biggest and most ambitious production challenges. Other details of the online execution play off the cinematic theme; the microsite’s loader doubles as a credit sequence, while rich media takeover banners drive traffic to the site by teasing viewers with an original Carousel trailer.

All aspects of the production, from the film shoot to web design and development, were conducted by Stink Digital and Tribal DDB Amsterdam.