ikea's advertising strategy is outstanding. I gather best of ikea ads from several resourses to inspire brandplanner or just enjoy it. As you see below, they are surprizing, colorful and overall very cool. If you enjoy them, please digg the story.

A billboard of Absolut in Soho, but be careful all furnitures are from ikea. Nice collaboration of brands. (via flickr)

ikea room in a cube. Seen in copenhag. (via flickr)

ikea on wheels: A mobile showroom with transparent windows stroll across the usa (via flickr)

ikea celebrates their 40's birthday with cover their Stockholm store as cake.

Agency: FORSMAN & BODENFORS

Lovely guerilla campaign by ikea; "A little fabric makes big differences". They curtain windows with ikea products in sweden. Agency is: FORSMAN & BODENFORS

Another example of concept. "little fabric makes big differences". They cover everyday items such as bench, bycke seat with ikea fabric. And post a note says that "little fabric makes big differences (via trendspotters group)

ikea pimps your bus stop Ikea’ve dressed up bus shelters with some nice modern furniture. (via coolzor, adfreak and curbed)

In anticipation of the grand opening of the Ikea Funabashi Store (Japan), Ikea placed 14 of these outdoor showroom displays along the sides of a street in Aoyama. They are calling the showcase Ikea 4.5 Musuem, which refers to the size of 4 and a half tatami mats. (via advertisingforpeanut and billboardom)

We're getting to have more valuable digital asset. Pictures, files, our archives…etc. Risk of losing or risk of being stolen is getting higher. Protect our mobil asset would be big market for entrepreneurs. Here is innovative ways to protectingour digital assets. For both, entrepreneur minds and all people has a valuable digital assets

Undercover is a piece of software for macs, can now take pictures of a thief if you install it on your macbook or macbook pro using the built-in iSight camera. (via digg)

Stuffbak, boomerangit, trackitback: Reward for return labels for electronic gadgets. You place these labels on all your important gear. Then if something disappears, the label tells the finder how to return it, and get a reward too.

Powerpizza: powerpizza is pizzabox shaped laptop bags. Disguise your laptop with a PowerPizza and reduce the risk of getting it nicked.

MightBackup, Wireless Backup, Vivo Agenda: automatic data backup and restoration for mobile phones. Automatic backups ensure phone book lists are constantly protected, and if a phone is replaced, stolen, lost or damaged, MightyBackup simply sends the user's contact list to a new phone. No hardware or pc connection needed – it all works through the phone's connection to the network, with data stored in a central database. (via springwise)

Theftsensor: New application designed for the new MacBook. Taking a page from the car alarm, MacBook Pro owners can enable TheftSensor by pressing the play button on their Apple Remote. When enabled, TheftSensor will start a loud alarm whenever the MacBook is moved, lifted or when its lid is closed. The alarm can be disabled by pressing the play button a second time.

Safeware: insurance company specialize on electronic gadgets

ztrace, computrace: They are an invisible software security application that traces the location of missing laptops for recovery. They are undetectable and unerasable on a laptop's hard drive.

Do you know other innovative services, please comment

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We were talking about user generated content, didnt we ? Lets go on then! Think about a pool where all the feelings of the users gathered, categorized by emotion,country,gender and age. Imagine, this pool is working constantly, gathering every emotions on the world wide web… Now, you understand the main idea behind the "We Feel Fine" system. According to them, they are gathering 20,000 emotions every day. Using the interface you can create demographic slices with different variables, searching through the database.

What interests me most in this project is, using the already created content, they designed a totally new perspective; from asking simple questions like "what is the feelings of regular user changes? "to more detailed and important questions like "how people reacted the recent events in Israel ?", we feel fine system captures the essence of human society and transforms it to a new tool telling story from internet.

You can check the team's findings here

Of course, I immediately started thinking "How can I interprete this interface to use as a marketing tool? " … Imagine that, you can ask questions like " How people feel about my brand? " or "What is the last year's emotions about March?" then you will have useful data that can be interpreted to marketing use.

Let's talk about this new interface …

Link : We Feel Fine Website

During the last years, we have seen the raise of " user generated content" . More & more, we see projects like ; flickr,blogspot,43things, etc. Most of the marketing guru tells us that the best seller is the buyer itself, so when we think about "user generated content" as a marketing tool, we can come up with some good ideas. Let's check one of the examples;

Lets take a look at "43things", which has google adwords segmented for content as a start. I am sure that they are going to insert different marketing schemes into 43things ( which is already linked with 43places, lists of bests and all consuming, creating a whole experience…)

So what is 43things?

Users enter what they want to do in their life or where they want to go, and people comments those "tags" saying "worth it" or "not worth it". Simple isnt it ? That's the point, actually. So, lets look at the stats ; "362,660 people in 6,559 cities are doing 456,069 things…". over 500,000 entry, which can be used as an advertising tool.

So, let's check one of those ; "Visit Egypt" ( 264 people tagged this entry ). Visit Egypt page has google adwords for start, and user comments telling that you should go and check out the mysterious egypt! Personally , I am ready to be persuaded by a person who is already been at Egypt and who can point me some directions ( you should see that place , you can stay at … hotel , etc. ) how I can spend a good holiday there. "Users promoting places for users" which is not a original idea, but execution is very good at 43things, because the content is vary. You can learn that if its "easy to learn spanish", or "should you go to Bali or Phuket? " and many more. Because the content is segmented, the ads are "targeted". So if you are travel agency, you can put your ads on 43things, knowing that you will have direct connection with your future clients.

What if you use the same idea with a little twist ? Lets think about website where there are lots of items ( items can be objects or for example a travel to spain ) and the more they're requested by the users the cheaper they get. So, if you have a 100 ready customer who wants travel to Spain for a weekend, you can arrange a tour with speacial prices. Or 300 people wants to buy iPod Nano 2GB, so they get %10 sale!

Lets think about it, I am curious about your ideas too…

Mini Uk has started a viral microsite named makesureitsaminiadventure. The story is, around the country, unsuspecting members of the public are being duped into buying imitation Minis. The website will give you all the latest news. It’s got all the vital information you need to tell whether it’s a genuine Mini or not.

They create really funny fake minis, and shows differences of real minis and fakes minis. microsite is supported by videos, photos and guides. I like the concept of site, it strenghtens authentic perception of minis, it is entertaining and details of videos delivers the differences of Mini.

But, there is no incentive or tool to share the site and videos. May be placing the videos on youtube’d be more smart move.

Sexuality with chocolate show that it is good idea at chocolate fovored condoms. What about chocolate with sexuality. I’ve seen orgasmic chocolate on flickr. Officially says that

Orgasmic Chocolates officially launched on 31 October 2005 with a range of luxurious Swiss chocolate bars made using organic and Fair-Trade certified cocoa beans. But unlike any other chocolate, ours contains a substle blend of wildcrafted Chinese fruits, flowers and spices, which can produce a mellowing effect, promote a feeling of euphoria and heighten the sensory experience associated with eating good quality chocolate.

Sex sells? Of course,

Do you remember Henry Ford’s quote “You can paint it any color, so long as it’s black” At first all autos were black. Technological gadgets are the same point as automobile business were. Most of gadgets, laptops, laptop bags are now black. But, they all will be coloured next years.

We are participating many meeting with laptops, we are surfing at Starbucks with our laptops. We have more and more social interaction with laptops. Something to express our personality looks to be hot. May be we’ll be used to “fashion of laptop covers” term.

Today, they are lots of customization tool (stickers, covers, bag). But, they are limited to small initiative at product level. They are huge possibilities to combine fashion and expressing ourselves with technology at business model. Hey, what about starting next accessorize store.

Google Earth is gaining momentum for reaching customer. They are several ways to use Google Earth. At first level, do some roof advertising. Some companies gain alot buzz at roof advertising. Look at (link) how maxim celebrate its 100. issue, or target's roof ads.

At second level, try to produce some content within Google Earth. There are lots of potential between google eath and brand. For some inspiration, T+L magazine, they list best 500 hotels in Google Earth. We'd expect lots of branded content on googleEarth; such as, BritishAirways create mash-up on best places to travel, Bridgestone create F1 roadmap…

On the highest level, use google earth as a a promotional tool. You may hideyour brand in it, you may make a quiz based on Google. Some innovation companies (Fiat and Adidas) has used it, now Mazda has been added to this trend.Mazda USA has unveiled an interactive promotional campaign on Google Earth which will run from May 29 to June 27.Consumers will be solicited to "Search for the SUV they never saw coming," by obtaining clues hidden within short video clips on Mazda's website. Each time they find an icon, users improve their chances of winning a new car. As they move through the game, the clues get progressively harder

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I spotted this cool gadget at urbanreview.This is Wheelman Bushpig which named one of Time Magazine's "Best Inventions of the Year". It is like mix of skateboard, snowboard, surfboard, and wakeboard.  You use body movement to steer and the speed is controlled by a cable type controller held in your hand that contains a thumb throttle and hand brake. It brings different experience to the extreme addicted people. It is patented and price is a bit high (770$). Watch out this video on youtube

I’ve collected an extensive list of trend indicator. They shows what is hot on media, shopping trends, tendencies on lifestyle and changes on digital lifestyle. The list is helpful especially for agencies, brand planner, trendsetters, coolhunters and anybody like to see what’s hot. The list is most helpful when you share it with your workers, friends and colleagues and discuss meaning of indicators

1. Digital Trends

Google Zeitgeist: It is a search statistics are automatically generated based on the millions of searches conducted on Google. They classified list by time, by subjects and by locations.

Yahoo Buzz: Statistics based on Yahoo searches. You can track most populer films, actors, video games, music based on Yahoo search engine.

MSN search insider: Top searches on MSN

GameSpy: Most populer online games. Site offers top online games list and their number of players

2. Media

PeerMind: Peer2Peer sharing is reality is today’s world. Everyday, millions of songs are being downloaded by user. This site tracks peer2peer trends where billboard or itunes list could not cover.

BlogPulse Top News Source: Which news source is most influential on blogs and on people. blogPulse also offers most blogged people, top blog posts and top news on blogs.

itunes top songs: itunes is world’s largest digital music store. In their site they shows top seller songs accurately

EW TV Charts: Ratings of American TV networks

Billboard Top100: pop100 list of Billboard magazine

last.fm: Last.fm charts are based on how many people listened to something in a given week.

EW Box office: Box Office Chart

3. Shopping trends

Ebay Pulse : Shows most populer searches on ebay. It is good indicator of which products and which brands do people willing to buy.

Amazon top seller: Amazon top seller lists are early indicator for offline stores. Amazon offers this list for facilitating people’s choice but we can use it for track shopping trends

Amazon Most wished items: You can view most wished items into different categories such as electronic, music, books, toys… Great and free list for predicting future sales.

Amazon most gifted items: Most gifted items on Amazon.

4. Lifestyle

43things Zeitgeist: 43things is a social website where people share their goals. Tracking people’s goals and their desire is always good indicator of cultural tendencies. 43things offers to see most populer goals and most populer goals based on places.

JobTrends: Indeed gathers over 35 million jobs from thousands of websites. They are allowing anyone to search this archive in order to plot job trends over time. They also offers job posting based capital statistics

to be continued…