As we prepare to downshift our minds for the holidays I thought it might be fun to create a snapshot of what brands that succeed in 2013 will look like. Treat it as a checklist and ask yourself, on a scale of 1-10, how well your brand embodies each of these ten characteristics. And since an undefined brand is unsharable , this oversight is deadly in an increaisngly social and mobile marketplace. INTEGRATED: Even the best defined brands fail without sufficient leadership, employee and consumer buy-off of the brand positioning. ” 7. MORE >>

national radio program was doing a segment on brands who buy Facebook likes and followers. They wanted to know if Twist Image buys likes, friends and followers on Facebook, Twitter or any other online social network. The first time the call came in, I was in a client meeting, so when I listened back to the voice message, I had to stop and think: "does my agency buy likes, friends and followers?" That's not the type of "buying friends" these people are talking about. You can tell your boss that the brand is popular? brand popularity. MORE >>

Mark Pendergast, the channel marketing director for mobile advertising at Comverse Americas explores the power of mobile advertising as an extension of brands via mobile devices. Mark explains how teens and adults send advertising which gets their friends more personally engaged in the advertising and makes them buy into the brands more emotionally. Related posts: Digital Versus Traditional Advertising: Bill Predmore of POP Gives His Perspective Mobile Marketing: The Next Opportunity Social Media’s Impact On Mobile Marketing. MORE >>

“Given their unique ability to move messages among connected users, social networks have been irresistible to marketers looking for ways to deliver advertising and promotional messages,&# the report said. An increasing proportion of that spending will be on promotional campaigns rather than advertising, the consulting firm projects. While 88 percent of social networking marketing spending in 2009 went into advertising, that percentage is expected to drop about 50 percent in 2010 and 36 percent by 2015. Can Advertisers Innovate? The amount U.S. More than 1.5 MORE >>

The following post by Cheryl Burgess ( @ckburgess )  was initially published as a contribution to T he Wharton Future of Advertising Program’s Advertising 2020 Project. Your mind wanders in the silence of the night, and you begin to reflect on how lucky you are to still be a cutting-edge advertiser in a cutthroat world.  Gone will be the days of interrupting consumers’ lives with didactic demands to buy some magical new wonder product. The one-way street model of advertising has never been ideal, but today it’s poised for a precipitous collapse.  MORE >>