Four years shy of turning 100, Boeing just launched its first official app for iPad, 'Milestones in Innovation', in Apple's App Store. The app celebrates nine decades of aviation innovation through beautiful imagery and an interactive timeline, from its first 1916 launch (above) to the Boeing 787, winner of the 2011 Collier Trophy for aviation excellence, below.Continue reading...

Brands can ask their fans to do some crazy things to show their love, but Nike Japan has found a new way to get its devotees to make themselves look a little crazy while helping to spread the Nike name.

Their marketing team's latest stunt: Free Face, which asks consumers to, well, load an image of their face that the magic of technology will use to create an oddly similar image of a Nike shoe. This, of course, has led to some hilarious results.Continue reading...

The insatiable Chinese consumer is one of the big reasons luxury brand marketers like the French conglomerate LVMH took the recent economic downturn in stride. 

LVMH, owner of iconic brand names including De Beers, Fendi, Givenchy and Louis Vuitton, recognized years ago that China represented a burgeoning luxury market. Along with European competitors like Hermes and Burberry, LVMH aggressively sought out Chinese retail channels for its products.

Even though luxury products continue to enjoy popularity, there are signs that store sales may be leveling off in China. That's why LVMH is looking to the Internet as a new way of engaging upscale Chinese consumers, as evidenced by the launch of a Chinese-language version of its Nowness.com portal.Continue reading...

Above, Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts discusses Burberry World, the luxury brand's relaunched website-as-social network that went live last year (powered by Salesforce) to engage its customers and serve as an interactive platform from which to live-stream its fashion collections and bring the brand's heritage to life.Continue reading...

Next Issue Media, a consortium of five of the world’s largest publishers—Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, Time Inc. and News Corp—is betting consumers will download "the world's greatest magazines" from their digital newsstand. It's a big bet.

Almost a year ago the publishers launched the first iteration of the "Hulu-Meets-Magazine" app on the Galaxy Tab and since then consumer resistance to pay-per-issue or per-subscription offerings has grown.Continue reading...

When Boomers were kids, playing in the stream meant just that. But now, it refers to a generation of kids “with the average preschooler now more able to play video games than ride a bike or tie a shoe, and with three-quarters of all middle school- and high school-age kids already owning a phone.”

So when, how much and from whom should our kids be learning about digital technology? After all, we can't leave it all up to Salman Khan.

Sara DeWitt, VP of PBS Kids Interactive, believes the transmedia approach to learning works best with kids today and comments on the ease of touchscreen technology in this video from SXSW 2012: "How Kids Learn With Technology."Continue reading...

“Alohomora!” J.K. Rowling's Pottermore website to keep the world of Harry Potter alive on digital has finally opened its e-bookstore.

While Rowling's books have sold an estimated 450 million physical copies and been translated into more than 70 languages, the author had retained the digital rights as part of her book publishing contracts, so the e-book editions weren't immediately available — until the Pottermore (think "Potter" plus "ever more") digital brand extension plan was announced last June. Already, Slate is calling it a game-changer for publishing.Continue reading...

The organizers of the Digital Media Summit today in Toronto tweeted the following question: "Are you guilty of 'social notworking'?"

Some new research spearheaded by Jeff Mancini, Interbrand's New York-based senior director of digital strategy, who's also a participant at the conference, reveals how companies are guilty of 'social notworking' — and what they can do about it.

Interbrand's just-released survey of 672 companies across 10 sectors — in a new report titled "From Digital Strategy to Brand Mastery" — takes the pulse of corporate social marketing efforts with some telling results:Continue reading...