Here's a convenient little app from LinkedIn - it watches Twitter and catches tweets referencing keywords associated with your profile (companies, schools, etc.)

Company Buzz is an application that allows you to see what people are saying about companies and topics you care about. Company Buzz uses information from your profile such as companies and schools to find relevant discussions on twitter. Company buzz also shows you how frequently your company or topic has been mentioned and the top words associated with your company and the topic. You may add new topics and customize existing topics with new search terms to get just the results you are interested in.

(Marginally) more info here.

Over at Seth Godin's always-insightful blog, there's this great list of attributes essential to a successful marketer (now, how many of these are applicable to the leaders of N-GEN?):

The marketer's attitude

Traditional job requirements: show up, sober. Listen to the boss, lift heavy objects.

Here's what I'd want if I were hiring a marketer:

• You're relentlessly positive. You can visualize complex projects and imagine alternative possible outcomes. It's one thing to talk about thinking outside the box, it's quite another to have a long history of doing it successfully. You can ride a unicycle, or can read ancient Greek.
• Show me that you've taken on and completed audacious projects, and run them as the lead, not as a hanger on. I'm interested in whether you've become the best in the world at something, and completely unimpressed that you are good at following instructions (playing Little League baseball is worth far less than organizing a non-profit organization).
• You have charisma in that you easily engage with strangers and actually enjoy selling ideas to others. You are comfortable with ambiguity, and rarely ask for detail or permission. Test, measure, repeat and go work just fine for you.
• You like to tell stories and you're good at it. You're good at listening to stories, and using them to change your mind.
• I'd prefer to hire someone who is largely self-motivated, who finds satisfaction in reaching self-imposed goals, and is willing to regularly raise the bar on those goals.
• You're intellectually restless. You care enough about new ideas to read plenty of blogs and books, and you're curious enough about your own ideas that you blog or publish your thoughts for others to react to. You're an engaging writer and speaker and you can demonstrate how the right visuals can change your story.
• And you understand that the system is intertwined, that your actions have side effects and you not only care about them but work to make those side effects good ones.

The cool thing about this list is that it's not dependent on what you were born with or who you know. Or how much you can lift.

Link

AppVee has video reviews of two new apps for Google's Android phone platform - bar code scanners that use your phone's camera for image capture. (see YouTube links at bottom).
From MIT's Ad Lab article:

These applications seem to be among the few with one or two natural business models built into them from the start. Placing contextual recommendations next to price look-up results is one; powering branded wishlists and registries is another.

MIT Ad Lab article about the apps

Previous MIT Ad Lab article about Instant price Checking at retail

YouTube videos:

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2zMPbVFIYE

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZkxkvWq9zE

MIT Advertising Lab has interesting commentary on Burger King's use of video games. Here's a quote:

Burger King ... made the decision to sell the games at $3.99, an extremely low price for disc-based (as opposed to downloadable) Xbox games but, as it turned out, a potentially much better price than “free.”
By choosing to charge even a small sum, Burger King seems to have sent a message to consumers that its games had real value, unlike other advergames they might have played and been disappointed by in the past. Burger King further supported the games with a strong marketing campaign that included advertisements shown during Saturday Night Live and during NFL games. All this sent a very clear message to consumers: “There is something of value waiting for you at Burger King.”

This is actually one of a series of articles abstracting the book Changing the Game: How Video Games Are Transforming the Future of Business

MIT AdLab article Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

And Guy Kawasaki's post about it:
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/09/winners-of-worl.html

Of course, they avoid saying "snail mail" - but these folks offer to turn your email into an actual (physical, like you can hold in your hand) letter.

It wasn't that long ago that "mail" meant the physical kind by default, instead of the other way 'round...

Anyhow, cloud-computing (i.e. having your data and services reside somewhere "out there" rather than on your desk) gives birth to its antidote here - a service that pulls stuff (correspondence in this case) out of the cloud and delivers it into the hands of non-cloud-connected recipients.

The truly mind-bending part is that firing up a lot of technology at both ends and the middle is perceived as easier than getting out a pen, paper, stamp and envelope (where'd I put those stamps...?)
Link

New research into the effects of stimuli on consumer focus reveal a direct link between scents and purchases.

From Canadian Broadcasting Corp:

The mere whiff of a chocolate chip cookie can cause a shopper to stray off-course, abandoning their budget for unplanned, impulse purchases, according to a study on consumer behaviour.

The study, published in the February issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, suggests stimuli that trigger the appetite can cause consumers to opt for immediate pleasures.

"We found that an appetitive stimulus not only affects behaviour in a specific behaviour domain but induces a shared state that propels a consumer to choose smaller-sooner options in unrelated domains," said researcher Xiuping Li, of the National University of Singapore, in the study.

"The findings demonstrated that an appetitive stimulus could induce a general motivational state, called the hot state, which focuses one's attention on the immediate environment."

Two tests involving students at the University of Toronto were conducted. In the first study, participants were asked to select photographs of either food or nature for use in a magazine. Researchers later asked participants if they would prefer playing a lottery that pays out a lower amount sooner or one that pays a higher amount at a later date.

The study found that those who were shown the photos of food were nearly 20 percentage points more likely to select the lottery with the smaller jackpot.

In a second test, researchers found that 67 per cent of women assigned to a room with a hidden cookie-scented candle were more likely to make an impulse sweater purchase, even when told they were on a strict budget. By comparison, only 17 per cent of women in a room without the scented candle decided to make the impulse buy.

The stimulus prompted participants to lose sight of future goals, focusing instead on the present, the study said.

"The scent of the appetitive stimulus led to reduced happiness with remote gains, which implied that participants in a present-oriented state were less sensitive to future values," the study said.

Li noted that retailers might use the findings to create an atmosphere that would entice shoppers to stay longer.

"If retailers want to push their customers to shop more rather than stay longer, they should not only maintain a pleasant environment but also an environment full of temptations and excitement," Li said in a release.

Looking to other continents has always been an effective way to predict what may be on the horizon within the U.S. retail sector. This becomes even more true when dealing with aesthetics and design. The export of the McDonald's brand to European markets has been a long and tedious exercise for the burger giant. Not satisfied with just catering offerings to the significantly different palate of our friends across the pond, McDonald's has been making a concerted effort to not only alter their menu but now their environments. A Parisian design studio was tasked with creating 9 different looks that walk the tight rope of retaining brand identity while overhauling aging environments. Could this signal a new trend in U.S. retail exporting their brands for "freshening" overseas?

McCafe in Germany

McDonald's in Germany

McDonald's Milan, Italy

New Adobe CEO talks to USAToday

Narayen takes over from Bruce Chizen.

From the article:

Adobe, best known for Photoshop photo software and Acrobat and PDF digital document tools, is shifting many of its wares from boxed software to online services.

USAToday interview (quite brief)

Attention Marketers: Consumer trust is highly vulnerable to erosion

Ars Technica has this report on a survey by YouGov that shows the damage that can be done to a brand's reputation by phishing attacks.

Even though some users seem to recognize their responsibility to secure their accounts, still consumer confidence, carefully fostered, can be lost so easily by this sort of thing.

Quote:

42 percent of adults in the UK feel that their trust in a brand would be greatly reduced by receiving a phishing e-mail claiming to be from that brand, according to an online survey conducted by research firm YouGov.

Link

Another article covering this same material is here.
Cloudmark's press release here. This is the closest thing to the actual survey data that I can find. Cloudmark are the sponsors.