Web

Web advertising, which started out with simple banners, is now run by highly sophisticated software that conjures a miniature, full-featured website within the banner itself. Web advertising not only plays video and animation, interacts with viewers, provides customized content, and gathers information about viewers, it also bills advertisers based on such things as how many telephone inquiries or purchases result from the ad.

Web advertising offers extraordinary opportunities for creating fuller brand experiences. The most effective come from combining the web with another medium— or the product itself—to drive viewers in a happy circle from web to store to product and back to web for follow-up that may include customer care or a better way to use the product.

Wearable

For some reason, people seem to enjoy wearing logos on their T-shirts, caps, and jackets. They act as free, walking billboards for the logos’ owners, on top of generating sales revenue for them.

Many writers have explored the sociology from the wearer’s side, looking at how having a logo emblazoned on your chest/ back/head gives you a sense of belonging, an association with a glamourous brand, or a way to identify yourself through your own conspicuous consumption.

What fewer people have looked at is how wearable advertising affects brands. Seeing an unwashed slob in an Emporio Armani shirt doesn’t do much to raise the perception of that brand. Shouldn’t Armani be more careful about who they sell their shirts to? In fact, fashion brands do take care by setting the retail price of the clothing item at a level that’s meant to function selectively. Non-clothing brands, from Budweiser to T-Mobile to Caterpillar, have less control because they’re more likely to be giving the items away.