2010 was the year of the iPad. 2011 is set to be the year of the tablet. The long awaited iPad rivals will hit stores in Q1. Below is a list of the top tablets debuting this spring:

• Blackberry Playbook
• Samsung Galaxy (Wi-Fi version)
• Dell Streak 7
• Motorola Xoom
• Toshiba Android
• LG G-slate

Branding your business is more than just traditional and digital marketing — it’s about creating a consistent, founded public image for your entire business. So you may ask … how do I create a total, consistent brand?

First things first: establish a corporate philosophy and a set of guidelines to communicate your company’s brand position, key messages, values, attributes and measures of success. This will help everyone within the company know and understand the brand, as well as how to communicate it effectively — alleviating any room for misinterpretation. These guidelines will also help moving forward with your traditional and digital marketing plans.

Second, realize that strengthening your brand beyond your marketing is about great people providing exceptional customer service. Whether you’re selling a product or providing a service, the employees responsible for direct customer interaction should understand and embody your brand.  They are the most valuable asset in delivering your brand and should provide the best reflection of it during their customer interactions and communications.

Social media interactions and your online presence also need a place in your consistent brand strategy. Ensure that your online interactions reflect the public image you have created through your brand guidelines. This will help customers, and potential customers, recognize your business online and offline. Social media also provides a place for satisfied, loyal customers to endorse and highlight your product or service.

Creating a strong, consistent brand through all levels of your business will help drive business growth, increase sales, and attract and retain the best employees. Building a corporate culture to reflect your brand will help develop a positive work atmosphere and positive customer relationships. After all, your brand is only as good as the people behind it.

When I first heard Polaroid enlisted Mother Monster, Lady Gaga, as their creative director I grinned from ear-to-ear. As an avid fan of her music and her fashion, she’s a natural fit for a company looking to modernize and take rebranding to a new level. Yet, I don’t think I fully comprehended the magnitude of this move by Polaroid.

At the CES 2011 event earlier this month, Polaroid debuted Lady Gaga’s Grey Label of digital printing/camera products. Admittedly, I wanted them the minute I saw them, especially the GL20 camera-glasses. Not just because they’re an inspiration from the mind of Gaga but also because it’s a sincerely interesting product. No, they may not be practical for everyday use but to have glasses that you can take pictures with … fashion and functionality. GOLDEN!

Then, earlier this week, Intel announced their new director of creative innovation, Will.i.am. As I sifted through the mound of articles and commentaries on the subject, it became apparent to me that this might be a new wave in brand revitalization. What’s happening here surpasses the idea of celebrity sponsor or endorsement — Gaga and Will.i.am are employees of these companies.

As I discussed with my fellow Marketing + Media team members, we began wagering our own power couplings. Here are our (somewhat outlandish) predictions for 2011:

Emily Carroll: Jennifer Lopez & HP

Emily Van Winkle: Justin Bieber & Swatch

Christy Belden: Katy Perry & Microsoft

Brittany Burdoine-Lewis: Christina Aguilera & Juicy Couture

[Post Contributed by Emily Carroll]

Is your pet online? Does your cat, dog or other animal have a Facebook page? How about a Twitter account? It might surprise you to know that there are thousands of cat and dog profiles on Facebook — even a Cat/DogBook application and numerous social media communities created solely dedicated to pets including PetPop.com, BarkleyAndPaws.com, PetBrags.com and many more.

These sites offer a space for pets, and owners, to interact socially through posts, photos and videos, but to also find tips and resources for common pet questions such as exercise, crate training, housetraining and pet health.

Not only are “pet parents” partaking in the social media world, but veterinarians and other animal professionals are also creating their online presences. Doing a quick search on Facebook and Twitter, I found hundreds of results for animal hospitals/vet offices, local pet and animal organizations, animal rescues and other organizations dedicated to animals. During my search I came across the BarkWorld Expo, founded in 2009. This two-and-a-half day annual conference is dedicated to helping educate the pet loving community to connect using social media. During the 2010 conference, animal lovers and business owners participated in workshops and guest speakers shared tips on animal language — what to say, blogging and SEO for pet businesses, creating a social media strategy, and charity and fundraising. Talk about socializing your pet!

Social media connectivity, interaction and branding have become commonplace among many business, organizations and individuals, so why not our pets and those who work with them? Just as you might use an online resource to benefit yourself or your business, why not benefit from an online resource for your pet? I don’t know about it being a purrrfect match, but it will continue to be a growing online community and resource of which many animal businesses, pet lovers and pet owners will take advantage.

[Contributed by Brittany Burdoine-Lewis]

We often get marketing inquiries for B2B clients. However, rarely does the business owner or marketing director want to add SEO into their digital marketing mix. The reasons behind their reluctance vary. The one we hear most often is our audience does not use the Internet to search for our products.

Rand Fishkin with SEOMoz has a great article regarding SEO techniques for low volume search queries. Many B2B clients fall into this category and, if the below techniques are implemented into an overall strategic SEO plan, then they can expect to see results from this marketing channel.     

• Repositioning the Product – Instead of speaking to the company or brand. Utilize keyword modifiers to help position the company/brand in a new or slightly different light. Adding the modifiers may place your brand in a new search volume thus creating new marketing opportunities.
• Compare the Product – If your company or grand is unknown, use well-known brands to help bolster yours. For example, if you are Sheila’s Coffee and you want to increase your search results, writing an article called “Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts and Sheila’s Coffee can help”.
• Target the Audience – Typically, SEO is product or brand centric when developing keyword lists. However, understanding how your audience searches and what they are searching, then adding those keywords to your list, can help create new search volume potential.
• Brand Awareness – Brand keywords drive a lot of traffic to a website. Ensure at every opportunity you are utilizing your brand name to fully capture the traffic.

These same techniques are used offline in traditional marketing channels when a product of brand is not performing well within the marketplace.  Therefore, implementing these techniques should be familiar to the B2B client and easier to persuade the client to engage in them.

I guess I am showing my age with that title, and if you don’t catch the reference, I am old enough to be your father….

As we start the new year, I offer a reminder: Email is not dead. And it will only get stronger.

If you combine your social media tactics with your existing email plan you can create a powerful platform. It is rather simple: start placing content from social spaces in your emails. If you send a regular newsletter, begin using questions and answers from Facebook. Using Twitter? Start placing your five latest tweets into your email. If you are not already, ask email users to join you on the social spaces by providing links; the same is true for social spaces — start asking social users to sign-up for your email communications. You'd be surprised how quickly your database grows when you allow users to share your content. 

A few simple steps? Yes. Powerful? Absolutely.

You are in need of an updated website design; you are considering a more robust content management system (CMS), and your search marketing and lead generation results have been uninspiring. Perhaps, you need an experienced interactive agency to review and develop an overall strategy. The time has come to search for the interactive agency that fits your needs.

Here at LeapFrog Interactive, we have been approached by prospective clients in just about every way possible.

To find the agency that truly fits your budget and interactive needs, there is one overriding principle to keep in mind to ensure you choose the right agency:

Always share the range of your budget scope.

Simply put, investing in interactive services is a significant expense. Would you ask a real estate agent to find land for your next plant location, but not tell them your budget?

Not sharing your budget range with responding agencies almost always leads to the client choosing the low-cost provider, basing the decision solely on cost — not on the quality of services provided or efficient delivery.

Are you the low-cost provider in your industry? Why not? Most likely because your talent is better, the quality of your work is better, you have more experience … essentially, you really are better and worth the incremental cost.

If budget scope is known, professional agencies will provide you with their very best effort to deliver on your interactive goals within budget and with the highest possible efficiency. The proposal would be very specific in terms of what can and will be provided within that budget range.

To obtain a true interactive partner, share your budget scope. In turn, receive realistic, spot-on, accurate proposals and ultimately obtain high-quality interactive services that make your interactive strategy sing!

(Contributor: Jack Graff)

I don’t have to tell you how excited (and relieved) I was to see an article with the title, “Why display ads are cool again.” Much to my dismay, the majority of articles I read last year about display advertising (my expertise at LeapFrog Interactive), were not flattering. The general consensus was that display ads are an intrusive and increasingly unsuccessful marketing tactic. As I discussed in a previous blog, some consumers have felt that the tactics used for targeting were kind of creepy and volatile to their privacies.

Will Price, of WidgetBox, gets it, though. Price explores the various positive aspects of display marketing, including its real-time web presence, dynamic capabilities and opportunity for granular measurement.

I’ve seen incredibly impactful display ad campaigns served up in the last few years and I have to say that I completely disagree with those who say display advertising is losing all of its flavor. As long as there are vendors like PointRoll and Spongecell exploring the myriad of innovative possibilities, I think display advertising will always have a place in marketing campaigns, digital or integrated.

[Post contributed by Emily Carroll]

LFI has partnered with Business First to develop The Power of Digital Series. The four-part series will feature experts from LFI speaking on various digital marketing topics. Attendees can expect to hear the latest in digital marketing trends and how the trends will impact their businesses.

The first session in The Power of Digital Series is “Ready, Set … Search!” This highly informative session — presented by Christy Belden, VP of Media + Marketing at LeapFrog Interactive — will introduce search, explain how users search and why it is important to understand your customers’ search patterns, and highlight the changes that were made to the search algorithms in 2010.

• Date: January 27, 2011, 8:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
• Place: KY International Convention Center – Conference Theatre

On January, 11^th Google announced it’s most powerful tool to date regarding mobile search marketing. The Mobile Keyword Tool allows users access into valuable keyword search volume and query data. 

Why is this important? As Google states, mobile search traffic grew five-fold in 2010 and saw an increase in 130% from 2009 in Q4. This is an enormous amount of growth within in the search space, which, until now, has been largely been missed by search marketers.

With our own test, we were able to ascertain the following for pet related searches:

• Pets

o   Desktop and laptop local searches: 6,120,000

o   Mobile with full browsers: 360,000

o   Mobile WAP: 201,000

• Pet Hospital

o   Desktop and laptop local searches: 135,000

o   Mobile with full browsers: 22,200

o   Mobile WAP: 3,600

• Veterinarian

o   Desktop and laptop local searches: 550,000

o   Mobile with full browsers: 49,500

o   Mobile WAP: 9,900

Along with the technology, the year of Mobile may have definitely arrived.

Eight months ago, LFI set out to build an agency mission, which would transition our agency into the future. After many discussions, we settled on a mission of helping our clients reach the “integrated consumer.”

Then, last week’s Consumer Electronics Show was full awash in consumer devices that are expected to connect the consumer in more ways than ever in 2011. In the pre-2011 era, consumers received disparate pieces of information on different devices at different times. Now, consumers will be able to integrate all their content needs to their technology of choice: TV, smartphone, laptop, tablet, e-book reader, mp3 player and so forth. The consumer is to be connected at all levels at all times.

LFI is always forward thinking. We are reading trade publications, consumer insights and trends to ensure our thinking, strategy and execution is ahead of the curve.

A well-known contemporary author recently wrote that “anyone can be creative.”

Come on.

A child in the third grade armed with a paper plate, a bottle of glue and a pile of jellybeans can ‘be creative’. Within the context of a commercial world in which seemingly infinite amounts of data must be built, manipulated, deconstructed and built again, being creative isn’t so simple as an elementary art class project. Quite an effort is required to creatively align passion, purpose and profitability in a system defined by the constant struggle between remaining in business and going out of business.

All right, so being creative isn’t easy. Got it. So who can do it and how’s it done? To be clear, there are many components — some controllable, some not — that must be considered.

In a commercial world dominated by a digital framework, the prospect of being creative is made complicated by the sheer volume of available toolsets.

There was a time in the not-so-distant past in which the options for creative communication had three basic forms: a paintbrush, a chisel and a musical instrument of some sort — the human voice included. Those basic toolsets remained mostly unchanged for centuries, even millennia. A notable addition did occur some time in the eighth century A.D. with the invention of the quill pen.

Around 170 years ago, creative communication vaulted into new territories after the invention of still photography and the camera. A mere 50 years more is all that was required to turn still pictures into moving pictures.

Move another 100 years up the timeline and the options multiply exponentially with the creation of the World Wide Web and the digital landscape it enabled. Digital media has not merely created a broader toolset, but has fundamentally changed the perception and application of all media that preceded it, including the original brush, chisel and serenading, lovelorn poet. Some of the greatest modern writers have never seen a quill pen. Grand murals consistent with the masters of antiquity are wholly conceived, prepared and applied via digital means. Digitally controlled machines are now capable of producing complicated “sculptures” through a process known as Rapid Prototyping.

Evaluating and manipulating the myriad options available for compelling communications in the digital realm is hard, and it isn’t for everyone. But, that does not mean that it is not fun. In the coming weeks, this column will explore the characteristics of ‘creative’ people, the means by which they manage to remain ‘creative’, the positions they take in the workspace and the impact their creativity has on our digital world.

Stay tuned for a wild ride.

(Contributed by Jeremy Pope)