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For the study 353 volunteers were asked to submit adjectives they associated with coolness. Surprisingly, the word "friendly" topped the list, followed by "personal competence."

This ranking positioned socially skilled, popular, smart, and talented people as being the ultimate in cool; individualist hipsters featured lower on the list. Bar-Ilan concluded: "Coolness has lost so much of its historical origins and meaning." That is: rebels are not hot. Or cool.

Another attribute figured prominently in this recent study: physical attractiveness. The prominence of "good looks" in the study echoes the results of work I carried out for my most recent book, Brandwashed. During my $3 million study into the way word-of-mouth works, I asked a family of five to secretly promote brands to a cadre of their friends, family members and colleagues. During this experiment, I learned that the key to the family’s success was neither their extensive network, nor their gift of the gab; it was their good looks.

A writer for USA Today shows that all ages are in on this trend, but instead of an age group, he blames the change on the cloud, the heavenly home our entertainment goes to when current media models die. As all forms of media make their journey into a digital, de-corporeal space, research shows that people are beginning to actually prefer this disconnected reality to owning a physical product.

Even in this strange new world, the economic laws of scarcity apply, and they are precisely what's shifting. To "own something" in the traditional sense is becoming less important, because what's scarce has changed. Ownership just isn't hard anymore. We can now find and own practically anything we want, at any time, through the unending flea market of the Internet. Because of this, the balance between supply and demand has been altered, and the value has moved elsewhere.

The biggest insight we can glean from the death of ownership is about connection. This is the thing which is now scarce, because when we can easily acquire anything, the question becomes, "What do we do with this?" The value now lies in the doing.

social media isn’t only about ROI. And it isn’t only about sales. Social media is about branding, opening channels of communication with customers, building loyalty, being transparent and establishing good will. And if you cover all of those bases, then guess what? If your product or service is worthy, you will most definitely see a return on your investment.

Plenty of companies use social media as an advertising vehicle for their product or service, just as they would with “old” media. But it just doesn’t work that way.

People who are active on social media are there because it’s a way that they can engage with their friends, family and favorite brands. As a marketer, you have to think about how you use Social Media personally, and then adapt your marketing strategy so that it fits in. When you go from looking at pics of your friend’s kid, to responding to another friend’s event invitation, a post screaming “SALE! SALE!” will stick out like a sore thumb.

Instead, post things that are conversational, or things that are just fun or lighthearted. Remember, this is a platform to build your brand’s identity and personality. People should want to do business with your company because they respect your values, admire your culture or appreciate the hard work you do to create your products and services.

What are Ways You Can Use Social Media to Market?Show images of creative uses/applications of your product. It’s still featuring your product, you just aren’t saying “LOOK AT MY PRODUCT!!!”Ask questions about things relevant to your product or service. If you sell real estate, start a dialogue about your worst moving experience or simply ask: “What does your dream house look like?”Post free advice. Position yourself as an expert. If you clean carpets, maybe you could post about how to get pet stains out of your conference room carpet. You’re not killing business for yourself, because people will still come to you when they don’t want to do it or they will refer you to friends. DIY people will find the tips anyway so they might as well be from you.

According to a new report from consumer researcher Nielsen, Net advertising saw the biggest increase among all ad spending worldwide in the first quarter, with a 12.1 percent increase compared to a year ago at the same time.

The report, called the Global Adview Pulse, also found increases in all other media, except magazines. Radio was second with a 7.9 percent increase, followed by outdoor advertising with 6.4 percent, ads in cinemas at 4.1 percent, newspapers at 3.1 percent, and 2.8 percent for TV. Magazines dropped 1.4 percent in ad spending.

Ad budgets in North America grew by 2.1 percent, and recession-hit Europe dropped 1.4 percent — the only region to see a decline.

A new survey by Initiative questioned some 8,000 web users age 16-54 in Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, Germany, the Netherlands, U.S., and U.K. to find out how they were influenced in purchase decisions by social media interactions. The results are kind of amazing: A huge 99% of the "top 10%" of influencers reported that their friends quiz them before making a big purchase. This top 10% has a disproportionate influence on the opinions of others--because 72% of them access content in print, online and mobile form more than once a day, compared to just 18% of the bottom 10% of influencers. 

A different study, by Market Force, underscored the fact that brands are leveraging social media to promote themselves. Embedded in the study were stats on the power of the average user to spread brand-related messages: 81% of U.S. respondents said posts from their friends directly impacted their decision on purchasing something, and 80% or respondents said they'd tried new things based on suggestions of friends.

This is a big departure from the static print ads and traditional TV spots of the past. Initiative's study even included advice for brands to move well beyond the thinking of a traditional 30-second ad spot, and push out additional material like behind-the-scenes footage...all to drive discussion and lead to more online chatter that will lead to brand discovery. It also suggests that brands build a team of "relevant social influencers" to spread new ad campaigns and stimulate dialog.

at the conference there was also a welcome developing story urging content strategists to expand the range of their work and take a more active role in creating new ways of consuming, sharing, and dreaming up ways that content can be transformative. It’s a progression from, “I found what I was looking for” to “Look what I found!”

A good rule of thumb is to talk about your customers and your industry 80% to 90% of the time, and then discuss your own business. That means you need to start a blog, write white papers, explore trends, release case studies and create infographics.

Post frequently and do it consistently. Your ideal goal should be some kind of content every couple of days or so. Avoid going longer than a week without posting.

Thorough, in-depth articles and papers will position your business as an industry expert and thought leader, and keep your fans and followers (and even competitors) looking to you.

According data from comScore, the amount of video watched via the Internet continues to climb. In June, 33 billion videos were viewed online.

Where are people getting all of this video content? Google Sites (primarily YouTube) is leading the pack. In June, Google attracted 154, 507 million unique users that viewed an impressive 1,238.1 minutes per video.

comScore shows Google led the market for video ads in June by serving up 1.41 billion ads that reached almost 25 percent of the total US population.

In the past decade, we have retrained our minds to google just about everything we want to know, according to new research by Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu and Daniel M. Wegner. “The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves,” the researchers, who are based at Columbia University, University of Wisconsin, and Harvard respectively, write in the July issue of Science.

When posed a question, people are primed to think of computers, and when they expect to have access to future information, they have lower rates of recall about the actual information and enhanced recall of where they can find the information.

Whether or not participants had been instructed to remember the information had no impact on recall. However, whether or not they believed the information would be available to them later had a negative impact.

For the first time, desktop computers are no longer the leading method for the country's 538 million connected citizens to get online

Mobile internet users now number 388 million, up almost 10% since the start of the year.

With more than a billion people using mobile phones, China is already the largest mobile market in the world.

Study after study after study shows that more people are using the internet to consume video. In April 2012, ComScore reported that the average viewer watched nearly 22 hours of video in a single month. Most likely, those 22 hours were broken into many short-form videos, each being watched for just a few minutes at a time. The market is moving more toward catering to the Facebook generation's attention span--quick videos that are aimed to inspire, provoke, or excite. Likewise, the viewing experience on tablets devices such as the iPad make short-form content even more enjoyable.

comScore reported earlier this year that there are more than 100 million smartphone users in the United States alone and mobiThinking reports there are now more than 1.2 billion mobile web users worldwide, accounting for more than eight percent of total web traffic.

Gartner predicts mobile will be the number one Internet access device as early as next year.

It's no longer enough to have a website, mailing list, Facebook page, or even a mobile application. Businesses need to create and maintain digital assets that are core to how they operate, provide real value to users, and support them appropriately

On Facebook, only 16 percent of a brand’s fans actually see any one post.

You can leverage existing social networks and ads to propel awareness of your new platform or product or to get a quick spike in sales or awareness, but the home base of your direct-to-consumer initiative should be a site owned and controlled by you.

Forrester Research defines digital intelligence this way: The capture, management and analysis of data to provide a holistic view of the digital customer experience that drives the measurement, optimization and execution of marketing tactics and business strategies."

Worldwide, the site had 955 million monthly active users in June, up 55 million from the 900 million it had announced in April. Meanwhile, daily active users account for more than half of the monthly total now, at 552 million for June — broadly, this fits the historical trend of more than half of all users coming back every day.

Meanwhile, within that 955 million monthlies number, mobile has also continued to grow, reaching 543 million last month. A look at year-over-year percentage growth shows mobile’s growing importance. While MAU grew by 29%, and DAUs by 32%, mobile MAUs grew by 67%.

Since a user’s first awareness of a product depends on an external trigger, such as a call-to-action in an email, a link on a social media site, paid advertising, or a word-of-mouth recommendation, the message must be consistent. “People need to talk about your product the same way, each and every time,” Elman says.

To be most effective, the articulation of what the product is for should connect to when the product should be used. In other words, inception is about attaching your product to a moment in the user’s life.

The best triggers are those that attach to frequent behaviors. Attaching a new action to a current behavior is much easier than attempting to create a new set of actions from thin air. Habits are like the layers of a pearl. The grain of sand at the center is the pre-existing behavior, which provides the base for new routines to attach to.

More than two-thirds of global consumers, young and old alike, seek online reviews or recommendations from others. And we’ve all been put off a product or service by a lone bad review. A fluid and uncertain market is the new normal, which means traditional marketing strategies are no longer effective. In this world, responsiveness trumps efficiency. The ability to engage with customers one-on-one, particularly after purchase, is vital to long-term business success. Doing this adds value, generates revenue and--most importantly--builds customer loyalty.

Every aspect of your business, across all departments, experiences, environments and communications (‘touchpoints’ as we call them at Interbrand), should feel the same. Think of Disney’s commitment to magic, Apple’s to humanizing technology or BMW’s to driving experience.

Brands create value and drive business success. And you need to use digital to make this happen.

As with social networking site Facebook, it’s all about the developing world for growth right now. Brazil was the fastest-growing country, and it now has 41.2 million users, up from 33.3 million in January.

That’s only 8% of all users, however, and 6.6% of tweets (meaning they are less active than their numbers would suggest).

Brazil usurped Japan as the second-largest country after the U.S. in terms of profiles but it is the most engaged. It represents 10.6% of all tweets but only 6.7% of users. Japanese after English is the second-most popular language.

Examples of LinkedIn activities that will get visibility:Update your profilePost a status updateParticipate in a group discussionComment on someone else’s status updatePost to your LinkedIn company pageAnswer questions in LinkedIn Answers