I was listening to the Marketplace Morning Report on public radio the other day when host Lisa Napoli’s juxtaposition of the following made me sit up and listen: God and branding.

In my limited experience with Hinduism, religious branding is limited to kitschy bags like the following:

But this wasn’t about bags or other kitschy religious merchandise. Just what was Napoli talking about?

She was having a conversation with James Twitchell, the author of the book Shopping for God. Twitchell claims that while there seems to be a surge in the number of people who consider themselves religious, this increase has to do more with marketing than spiritual awakenings. Television evangelists have become marketing gurus who deftly package God in ways designed to satisfy their target audiences.

I’m reminded of the efforts that have been made to improve marketing and branding by understanding how and why the religious become true believers. What do the devout and brand loyalists have in common? According to this list by Martin Lindstrom, religion and powerful brands both create:

1. A sense of belonging
2. A clear vision
3. Power from the enemy
4. Authenticity
5. Consistency
6. Perfection
7. Symbols
8. Mystery
9. Rituals
10. Sensory appeal

So we’ve come full circle: where once branding executives looked to religion for answers, clergy are now looking to marketing for insights into drawing crowds to sermons. According to Twitchell, religious organizations are studying the tastes of young people and targeting them accordingly. The influence of marketing agencies have led to rockstar-performance sermons, faith-based fashion magazines, and other innovations. And lifestyle branding is drawing people to faith by analyzing what they find most comfortable and relevant, meeting the younger generation’s demand for quick, flashy, and hip ways of being spiritual.

“It’s not only chickens and fizzing soda bottles that get the buzz.”

So says Gary Spangler, E-Business Leader, DuPont Electronic & Communication Technologies.

In the MarketingSherpa e-newsletter that landed on me today, I read about Mr. Spangler and his successful use of the blogosphere to promote marketing videos about the advantages of DuPont science called—big stretch—DuPont Science Stories.

Riveting, eh? Well, maybe not to me, but it must have been to the more than fifty thousand viewers who watched them. That number may not rival the biggest viral videos out there, but still, that’s great traffic, and proof that there’s an audience for everything. With smart online promotion you can find them for a heck of a lot less than blasting messages through broadcast media.

To build awareness for their Science Stories, the folks at Dupont took a few very effective (and comparatively inexpensive) steps:

1. Paid promotion on eight blogs, some specifically targeting the science community
2. Posting videos to YouTube, Google Video, and Blip.tv—all free sites
3. Creating their own microsite to also house the videos
4. Showing the videos in a player that let viewers email the link, connect to the player, or paste the video player directly into another blog or website

There are no monetary figures in the articles, but I can imagine those four strategies all run less than just a couple broadcast spots, not to mention the fact that the blog-based campaign was precisely focused on a relevant audience.

Kudos to Mr. Spangler for leveraging the ever-expanding blogosphere’s ability to reach niche audiences. The one question I’d offer is: could it have been done with zero paid advertising?

The consistently insightful Valeria Maltoni over at Conversation Agent shared her thoughts on Penelope Trunk’s career-catalyzing advice, as taken from the pages of Trunk’s book, Brazen Careerist. Among suggestions like turning down promotions and making sure you hit the gym, you should:

Start a blog—starting a blog is the equivalent of letting people into the way you process information and form opinions; it’s a way to see if you exercise critical thinking and flex your writing muscle articulating on topics of your choosing. This is part ideas lab—the place where I test concepts to see for myself if they hold water. Sometimes I do not know exactly what I’m thinking until I commit it to writing and invite others to poke holes into it. The process is so transparent that it cannot be easily faked. It’s also a way to let others inform our thinking without having specific agendas—on a peer to peer level, with peer being defined as interested person/thinker. This is a very different process from the one we encounter in corporate America, where the person’s title may be the driver in decision making.

Right on the money, Ms. Maltoni.

Blogging is a way to take ownership of your professional, intellectual turf. It puts you in the spotlight (or the crosshairs), but understanding that responsibility liberates us, allows us to take risks, worry less about appeasing authority, and concentrate on innovating, on evolving—on being a thought leader. If a blog is a conduit to that kind of dialog, or allows you to raise your expertise profile, then by all means blogs are on the thought-leadership vanguard.

Put your ear up to the boardroom door; that panicked, scrabbling sound you hear is the old guard trying to understand what the kids are up to these days and grousing about how they can’t control it.

In the current issue of The New Atlantis, writer Christine Rosen takes a hard look at the effect social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, et al) are having on our social interaction. Increasingly, she notes, people are giving up face-to-face relations, content to communicate through “technological surrogates.”

Although social networking sites are in their infancy, we are seeing their impact culturally: in language (where to friend is now a verb), in politics (where it is de rigueur for presidential aspirants to catalogue their virtues on MySpace), and on college campuses (where not using Facebook can be a social handicap). But we are only beginning to come to grips with the consequences of our use of these sites: for friendship, and for our notions of privacy, authenticity, community, and identity. As with any new technological advance, we must consider what type of behavior online social networking encourages.

What are the costs of our connections? How, as communities and as cultures, are our methods of interaction, even our very sense of what constitutes credible relationships, changing?

Rosen weaves an ominous note through her analysis, summed up with a foreboding consideration: “These virtual networks greatly expand our opportunities to meet others, but they might also result in our valuing less the capacity for genuine connection.”

That is a mighty big “might.” Worth considering, to be sure, but also consider that we’ve always found ways to minimize interaction when it suits us (burying our faces in books, hiding under headphones, or just zoning on the couch with our latest Netfllix delivery). It makes me wonder what constitutes Rosen’s “genuine” connection.

Is grocery shopping a genuine connection, or is the time saved using Peapod and instead taking my daughter to the park ultimately more genuine? If there’s nothing worth my two hours and ten bucks at the megaplex, why can’t I say home and watch Cool Hand Luke for the zillionth time? And isn’t someone who screens a few potential suitors using an online dating site saving his or her valuable time and actually expediting the search for Mr. or Ms. Right?

Certainly, there is risk that some might so favor their “interactive isolation” that they self-select from society. My guess, however, is that we’ll use these online means to build richer relationships that translate to more fulfilling real-world connections. And even if someone is content to camp in front of his computer, scarf delivery pizza, and play at being popular, at the end of the day, is that a horrible circumstance? Misanthropes and misfits have always had myriad non-technological retreats, and I’m not terribly interested in making their acquaintance in the first place.

The shakeout from social networking sites remains to be seen. No doubt some will use them as their sole means of interaction. I’m inclined to think, however, that most of us will see them as a way to maintain that comfortable isolation while also permitting as much interaction as we may, at any moment, care to indulge.

We love deadlines. Love ‘em. Chew ‘em up, spit ‘em out. Ask for seconds.

“What,” you ask, ” are you some kind of communications masochists over there?”

Nope. We just understand that people want to see ideas evolve into reality right away (and without compromising quality). Online outreach, e-learning, and web-based interaction have made everyone’s expectations instantaneous. Production cycles have been compressed accordingly. That means zero tolerance for squandered time and talent.

Friday at 4:30 p.m., therefore, seems a perfect time to share some wisdom for preventing procrastination. These are seven common-sense tips to help you make it happen—now.

Set aside blocks of time to do things.

If it comes to mind, then do it.

Use a timer to bring you back to reality.

Do not multitask.

Modify your environment to eliminate distractions.

Compare your actions with your personal values.

Take back your brain!

You can check the article for specifics, but in so many words the key to getting things done is to…well, get things done.

Of course you do. And like us, you spend a fair amount of them online.

Now, it looks like passing fixation is evolving into full-tilt addiction. Reuters reports that we’re sacrificing real-world relationships, interaction—even intimacy—for the sake of our virtual existence. According to a recent JWT survey:

More than a quarter of respondents—or 28 percent—admitted spending less time socializing face-to-face with peers because of the amount of time they spend online.

It also found that 20 percent said they spend less time having sex because they are online.

Pathetic? Perhaps to some, but also unshakable justification for building and maintaining a strong online presence, and for embracing the Web’s increasingly social nature. As one expert explained:

…online and offline lives are co-mingled and [many] would chose a Wi-Fi connection over TV any day…[t]his is how they communicate, entertain and live.

And it’s all about reaching people where they live, isn’t it?

A few weeks ago I took a jab at Google for diluting their brand. In that post I alluded to Yahoo!’s similar moves that came years before Google’s. In this month’s Fast Company, Robert Scoble starts off recalling how Yahoo!’s VP of communications admitted, about a year ago, that the company had a “thin layer of investment spread across everything we do, and thus we focus on nothing in particular.”

Scoble continues by describing how Yahoo! is trying to right the ship. Jeff Yang is back as CEO and focusing on, as Scoble writes it, filling the “cool stuff supplier” role he once did. That new focus is good. Sure, they once concentrated on searching, but now they seem high on Web applications. Give search to Google and rebuild around Web apps if that’s what’s cool today.

Scoble mentions three Yahoo! applications specifically, all centered on community building and content sharing. What I like about the applications he describes is that they are not locked to a particular site.

All three—Flickr (photo sharing), del.icio.us (Web bookmark storage and organization), and Upcoming.org (a calendar of events tool)—offer a way to syndicate content to other locations, like to your blog or organization’s website.

Die, static website, die!

Big-budget organizations may certainly buy applications like those for the sake of customization, privacy, and accountability, as part of a larger content management system install or whatever.

But what gets me excited is how these free applications can help the small-budget folks. Imagine you’re leading a little nonprofit running long on cause but short on funds. With these three applications as part of your site, you can very easily keep your calendar of events up to date, promote other sites/pages, and publish photos—AND you can make all of that content available to others via syndication.

And you can get free help. With the Flickr app, your supporters can populate your Flickr application by tagging their pix with a tag you specify. Del.icio.us and Upcoming let you create networks that promote and syndicate content from your supporters. Let the people talk for you!

Yahoo! fearlessly continues to revise its brand, which can help you build yours.

This had to happen sooner or later. Try to keep up:

An unhappily married couple separately seek solace in cyberspace and end up falling for each other’s online alter ego. When they meet in the real world and realize who each actually is, they file for divorce.

The couple met on an online chat forum while he was at work and she in an Internet cafe, and started chatting under the names Sweetie and Prince of Joy.

They eventually decided to meet up—but there was no happy ending when they realised what had happened.

Now they are both filing for divorce—with each accusing the other of being unfaithful.

Hey, you crazy kids, can’t you work it out in a chatroom?

 

We’re swamped. Everyone’s neck deep in information about a near-infinite number of subjects. How do we cope? By deluding ourselves into thinking we can assimilate everything.

But trying to process all that data from so many media streams is going to turn our brains into soup. We’re already seeing the impact it’s having on social skills (to say nothing of how people drive). Meeting and conversations are rarely in-the-moment events. Everyone is too busy text-messaging and thumbing email responses.

Such is the double-edged source of information and interconnectivity. We know more. We get more done. But are precise focus and valid feedback being compromised because we’re trying to see everything with a wide-angle lens?

43 Folders cites Stanley Bing’s assessment of what the informational deluge is doing to business leaders.

The author’s prediction:

I think one of the emerging leadership skills of the next five years will be learning how to do brilliant filtering—either programatically or by delegating information-sorting to others. To ultimately become someone whose system accounts for incoming data in smart ways and who never has to make excuses about too much stuff.

In a meeting this morning, our illustrious leader noted that he wades through dozens of marketing, communications, multimedia, and video e-newsletters weekly. Like most execs, he’s dedicated to keeping up with, if not outpacing, industry-specific innovations and insights. As information sources grow exponentially, he, like any top dog who wants to stay tuned in, is going to have to limit review to a few favorites and ask like-minded staff and trusted consultants to pick up the slack.

Check out Swamble for a fun and innovative social network (sign up for the “private beta”).

Swamble makes it easy to bet on anything: without cash. Online betting is currently illegal in the United States, but as TechCrunch notes in its Swamble review, that could change soon. On the other hand, non-cash betting can force you to get pretty creative—as in one user promising to shave his head if Notre Dame wins seven games this year. Miller beer and “bragging rights” are also very popular.

See also the Swamble’s recently added pro football facebook app.