The past 12 months have seen some pretty interesting moments in marketing, media and culture. Here are a few that caught my attention (or, in some cases, ire!):

• Facebook’s Capitulation on Beacon — The web 2.0 phenom Facebook hit its biggest speed bump since its founding with the launch of Beacon, the site’s new advertising program. Many felt (this blog included) that Beacon went too far in infringing on users’ privacy, even by the "share everything" ethos of Facebook. The company did the right thing by responding to critics and pulling the Beacon program. Even so, Facebook continues to push the boundaries of privacy. It will be interesting to see if the Beacon debacle represents a turning point for social networking or if it’s just a temporary set back. Clearly, young people today are amazingly comfortable with exposing the intimate details of their lives to their extended "friends" (their social graphs), but even they have limits. Facebook recently discovered some of those boundaries.
• The Huckabee Floating Cross — Talk about cultural/political phenoms, the rise of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee from back of the pack to front runner in the Republican primary is one of the breakout stories of the year. A moment that encapsulates Huckabee’s remarkable emergence was his Christmas ad featuring what has come to be known as the "floating cross." The ad clearly shows how the former preacher Huckabee is unabashedly playing the religious card to appeal to evangelical Christians, who have been searching for a horse to back in the 2008 Republican primary. They finally found their guy, and Gov. Huckabee has been rising ever since in the polls. Huckabee’s Christmas "floating cross" spot demonstrated some real brilliance in marketing. It showed off the warm and fuzzy Huckabee (complete with friendly dimples) and had him wishing happy birthday to Christ himself (no separation of church and state secularism for him). The lessons here for marketers: Know your brand, differentiate it constantly, and deliver what your audiences really want and need.
• The Subprime Meltdown — The so called subprime catastrophe has exposed the grubby, greedy underbelly of capitalism at its worst. Some of the world’s biggest banks have had to write off literally billions of dollars because of bad loans and even worse investments in subprime mortgage backed securities. A lot of small investors have also been hurt. Succumbing to their worst impulses, many of them thought they could flip properties and make quick and big bucks off of the rampant real estate speculation fueled by easy mortgage money. And, a lot of these novice real estate investors are now left holding the bag, with properties that are unmarketable. But, the worst result of this economic mess is the loss of homeowners who are in some cases being turned out of their homes because banks and mortgage brokers did not take the time to check their suitability for the loans being marketed to them. This is yet another, and an especially poignant, example of how expediency and greed are almost always ruinous to businesses and their customers. It will be interesting to see how banks and the entire real estate industry win back the trust they have squandered during this regrettable period.
• The iPhone Phenomenon — Say what you will about Apple and its brilliant CEO Steve Jobs, they are brilliant marketers who consistently show the rest of us how it’s done (except, of course, for the mistake of lowering the iPhone cost by $200 just a few weeks after it was first introduced, thus antagonizing the first buyers of the product).  The new iPhone is a beautifully designed device which completely changed the smartphone landscape. The other major players are still playing catch up with iPhone; Blackberry is the one competitor that has the innovation chops to continue to win in a difficult market. The ultimate question is, where does Apple go from here with its iPhone? Once you come out with such a game-changing product, keeping it fresh, new and relevant becomes an ever increasing challenge. Of course, if anyone can do it, Apple can. But, the company has also set a standard that others now can shoot for. This competition is only good for consumers, who will have more choice than ever before.
• The Greening of Green Marketing — What more can be said about the greening of America and business? Marketers have started to jump on the environmental bandwagon big time, prompting charges of "greenwashing" (basically when companies undeservedly claim the green mantle). The hip retailer Barney’s is even touting a "Green Holiday" in their ads and stores, and on their shopping bags. I’m not sure what Barney’s is doing to promote environmental consciousness or advance green initiatives, but they certainly are piggy backing on the green brand. Silicon Valley is also abuzz with the new "green tech" trend, pumping hundreds of millions into sustainable technologies and start ups. Let’s hope this will actually lead to innovations that improve sustainability and encourage people to adopt greener practices in their everyday lives. I remain pretty skeptical, though. Just look at any mall or airport parking lot and most of what you see are SUVs. Consumers clearly have not yet gotten the green memo. But, with the 2007 Nobel Prize going to the green Paul Revere Al Gore, there is new hope in the air.
• Battling Buzzwords — We marketers love our buzzwords. I love to loathe them. There are two devised by leading agencies this year that I find particularly objectionable: "Brand Swarm" or "Swarm Marketing" by the venerable agency DDB. And, "Communications Planning," dreamed up by the hot English shop Naked (you know, that "media neutral" agency). Both of these buzzwords are just new ways of describing, or supposedly differentiating, what an agency does for its fees. And, anyone in this business knows that agencies feel absolutely compelled to come up with clever and trendy new ways to label their "proprietary" practices and methodologies. I would have added Saatchi’s Kevin Roberts’ "Lovemarks" to this list, but it was introduced in 2006. One of these days ad agencies and marketing communications firms will feel sufficiently confident to call a spade a spade instead of obfuscating their services with a trendy handle. That said, I am not going to hold my breath on this.
• Viral Videos — What could be more fun than a cute little Bulldog riding a skateboard (pretty darn well, by the way), a cat playing piano, or thousands of Filipino inmates expertly copying the intricate dancing of Michael Jackson’s famed Thriller video. Viral videos have become a basic part of the web’s appeal and value proposition. It didn’t take long for marketers to latch onto this trend. Web videos are fast becoming a key tactic in web marketing. As you can imagine, this has produced some good videos ("Tea Partay" for Smirnoff and OfficeMax’s "Dancing Elves"), and some stinkers, too. The beauty of the truly user generated videos is that they are fresh, relatively unscripted and even slightly naive (of course, many are becoming increasingly well produced). The web videos created by marketers usually lack those qualities, and thus end up falling pretty flat. But, viral videos and their corporate versions are here to stay. Effectively employing this strategy as a marketer will likely become even more challenging as the trend matures. But, they also hold great promise for marketers looking to engage consumers and customers by capitalizing on the viral qualities of the Internet.

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