I guess this is the thing to do this time of year – summarize the passing year and make predictions for the upcoming one – so I’ll put my two cents in. However, I w will stay away from the standard safe-bet predictions out there – the push to digital media will accelerate, social networking will continue to evolve, Apple will release its tablet computer, the economy will start edging up, etc. Rather, I’ll focus on what types of companies will be successful in 2010.

The biggest winners will be those companies who start ramping up their marketing now. Although we certainly won’t have recovered from the economic downturn, there are already signs up an uptick. Moreover, as we saw in the final week before Christmas, there is a growing pent-up demand by consumers that is starting to be realized. People will still be cautious and look for value, but more and more they will be ready to buy. Therefore, the companies who are out their increasing their presence will be the prime beneficiaries of the expanded spending. Similarly, businesses that have been holding off their spending will start to loosen their reigns somewhat, again giving opportunities to those who are ready to sell.

So, as an investor, look at which companies are already expanding their marketing. As a marketer, look at your own company. Have you already begun to ramp up your advertising, PR, and sales campaigns (both online and off)? Or are you going to suffer another disappointing year?

Domus, Inc. is a full-service marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. For more information, please visit our web site at http://www.domusinc.com.

Quick question: who is the leading provider of high-definition, on-demand content in the US? Comcast? Time Warner? Think again. The Xbox 360 Live platform offers more than twice the number of hours as either of them. How about user engagement? Here’s one statistic: there are more men today, ages 18-34, spending more hours playing games than watching any of the broadcast TV networks.

What does this mean for marketers? Microsoft has a full suite of advertising opportunities from in-game ads to branded destinations, and more. If you offer products or services to that demographic, it’s time to think outside the box of traditional communications channels.

Domus is a Philadelphia-based full-service marketing communications agency. For more information, visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

2009 was the year that the local search business officially changed. First, the fortunes of the paper directory publishers dramatically nose-dived. Not only did all of their losses accelerate, but two of the largest Yellow Page publishers – Idearc and R.H. Donnelly – had to file for bankruptcy. Additionally, strong campaigns are afoot nationwide to scrap the automatic distribution of white pages phone books.

On the other hand, online local search providers have been growing and competing more fiercely. Aside from the online offerings of the traditional Yellow Pages providers (Superpages.com, YellowPages.com, YellowBook.com) and aside from the local offerings of the major search providers (local.yahoo.com, local.google.com, bing.com/local), a number of independent local search companies are making inroads. In fact, over this past weekend the buzz was that Google was in negotiations to buy Yelp.com for over $500 million. Moreover, as of this morning, the reports are that the owners of yelp.com have turned down Google. Obviously, there is a lot of money to be made in doing local search right.

As marketers, therefore, it’s worth refocusing on local search as an integral component of overall marketing efforts. Even national retailers can make effective use of local search shopping sites, such as ShopLocal.com, to drive business to each of their locations. Some simple steps include getting and verifying listings in each of the local search sites, encouraging and addressing reviews on those sites, and including advertisements on them.

Domus, Inc. is a full service advertising and PR agency based in Philadelphia. For more information, please visit our web site at http:/www.domusinc.com.

From one perspective, 2009 was a difficult year for Microsoft. It lost overall market share in the browser wars, MS-Office was being challenged by Google Docs, and Windows Vista was still being attacked by users and especially Apple. Overall, it missed its profitability targets and it was forced to do some cost-cutting (read: layoffs). Many have been saying that Microsoft has started its decline.

However, another way to look at 2009 is to look at the company’s actions in response to the changing marketplace. The most successful companies are not always the ones who lead the innovative charge, but the ones who keep building on their own and others’ innovations, responding one step at a time to consumers’ desires. Microsoft, in fact, is famous for this – most of their major products became industry leaders only after four or five generations of updates.

So how has Microsoft responded to the competition and marketplace in 2009? The list is pretty impressive. On the legal front, Microsoft successfully got the European Union to stop bullying it (for now) – it just dropped its antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft. On the product front, Microsoft introduced new versions of Silverlight, a new HD Zune player, a new version of Internet Explorer, a completely revamped search engine (Bing) with a continuing stream of new features, a Bing App for the iPhone, and its Surface computing hardware. On the partnership front, Micrsoft signed significant deals with MySpace and Yahoo, and it launched a significant WebSpark program for small developers. On the advertising/promotional front, it launched massive campaigns supporting both Bing and Windows 7, it consistently posted some of the most watched videos on the internet, and it opened the new Microsoft Stores. And, on the R&D front, there are advances for the XBox (Project Natal), a new version of Office (Office 2010) with web-based availability, a possible new tablet computer (their Courier Tablet), and new work on IE 9.

Microsoft is certainly not standing still. And if 2009 is any indication, 2010 will be another interesting year. Anyone who discounts their competitive potential is making a mistake. In fact, most companies who are struggling in this recession should exude the same energy as Microsoft in updating their products and services to fit the changing marketplace. This is not a time for complacency.

Domus is a full service marketing consulting agency based in Philadelphia. Please visit our main web site for more.

How many people reading this have agencies or other businesses that are down in their revenues this year? Of those, how many have not already put in place an aggressive sales campaign and other marketing efforts to turn their business around?

If you haven’t, why not? Does anyone really think that the economy will return back to the way it was pre-2008?

There are so many fundamental changes occurring in our economy and society that the chances of a return to business as usual – at least for a very long time – are minimal. Therefore, once a company has cut out as much fat as possible – which most have already done by now – the principal hope it has of financial recovery is through new growth strategies.

Whether that means more aggressively pursuing traditional opportunities or embarking on new marketing models, the most important thing should be that the plans get implemented now, and with the highest priority. By this time next month, will you have significantly increased the breadth and depth of your sales pipeline? Or will you be withering?

As a dynamic marketing agency, Domus is uniquely positioned to help companies turn 2010 into a growth year instead of a negative one. For more information, please visit our web site at http://www.domusinc.com and then reach out to us.

Yesterday our blog post was titled, ” Dell and its Twitter Sales.” As a follow-up, it’s interesting to look at Apple. They have virtually no corporate-imposed social media presence. They don’t Tweet, they have a minimal presence on Facebook, they don’t make great efforts to engage with their customers online. On the other hand, they spend a lot of money on traditional advertising. They buy up significant television commercial time (Mac vs. PC ads, iTunes ads, iPod ads), they buy billboard space, they buy glossy magazine ads, etc.

Yet, can anyone doubt that Apple is a successful company? Can anyone doubt that they are in touch with what the consumer wants in this digital age?

Does this mean that new media does not work? Absolutely not. It’s a reaffirmation, though, that what matters most isn’t as much the media as the brand itself. Media is the vehicle for spreading a message, but if a company does not truly have an impactful message emanating out of an inspiring brand position, the distribution of that message does not have much impact.

And an inspiring brand position can’t just be some slogan made up by a group of people in a room. It has to be part of the heart and soul of the company – starting with the person at the top and including everyone below. It has to be evident in the product, in the culture, in the service. Everyone knows that Steve Jobs created and continues to inspire creation of innovative, high quality products that enhance consumers’ computing and multimedia experiences.

With an inspiring brand position solidly in place, a company can distribute their message effectively in many ways, including new media. But without one, a company might be best off by first figuring out how they can truly stand for something meaningful to their potential customers.

Domus is a marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. We help companies build inspiring brand platforms and then develop and execute effective communications programs, including advertising, public relations, internet presence management, social media marketing, and others. For more information, please visit our web site at http://www.domusinc.com.

How enamored we are with social media sites like Twitter? Yesterday, the news was filled with story after story of how Dell sold $6.5 million using its Twitter accounts. (E.g., see Dell Sells $6.5 million via Twitter.) Story after story reported this as if it were a major achievement, proof that new media was where business ought to be. (Manish Mehta, Dell’s VP of Social Media and Community, even wrote an article titled, “Isn’t the Value of Social Media What Business Is All About?”.)

Very few sites, though, have have stepped back and looked at Dell’s actions from a broader perspective. One blog, digitalseachange.blogspot.com, did post an analysis showing that Dell probably lost close to $3 for each dollar of profit from the $6.5 million in revenue it received. But, otherwise, no one looked at Dell’s overall strategy and results.

The fact is, as Dell has been increasing its Twitter sales, its overall sales have declined. (See Dell Shares Slump on Fears of Being Left Behind in PC Market or Dell Disappoints on 3Q Sales and Profits.) At the same time, its major competitors, HP, Acer, Lenovo, and Apple (although Apple is not as direct a competitor) are all showing upticks in their sales. In fact, Acer just passed Dell to become the second largest PC maker in the world (Acer Surpasses Dell To Take Second Spot in PC Sales).

My point is that, as marketers, we cannot focus on any one channel or campaign in isolation. Our success or failure must be measured in aggregate. That’s not to say that any one program cannot be deemed successful or not on its own, but the company or brand itself must be looked at from an overall perspective. Moreover, from a strategy planning and execution point of view, successful marketers are those who can coordinate and integrate all programs and channels under a unified, effective brand platform and campaign. Dell apparently hasn’t done so; otherwise, it wouldn’t be the only one of the five major PC manufacturers to show an overall sales decline.

Domus is a unique marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. We’re an advertising agency, a PR agency, a digital agency, a social media agency – we’re all of these – but most importantly, we’re all of them together. We approach every brand we market from a high-level strategic, integrated viewpoint, grounding our thinking in classic marketing principles. We develop inspiring and effective brand positioning platforms, and then integrate all of our strategies, tactics, and message exchange channels around those platforms. For more information, please view our web site at http://www.domusinc.com and then contact us to find out how we can jumpstart your marketing efforts.

Verizon and AT&T have both dropped their law suits against each other, deciding to keep their competition within the market battlefield instead of the legal one. This is good for consumers because there is no value for us when companies get distracted from their actual business of delivering goods and services.

Unfortunately for AT&T, though, the courtroom wasn’t as much of a distraction as a desperate effort to move the fight out of the arena where they are losing. Their fundamental problem is that they have lagged behind on the important battle fronts – they have not been fast enough building out their 3G network and they have been dismal in providing satisfactory customer supoprt. In fact, Consumer Reports in their upcoming January issue is rating AT&T last among the four major carriers in 19 of the 26 cities they surveyed. The biggest thing going for them is that they have an exclusive contract with Apple for the iPhone, but even that might end in 2010.

Watching the action between AT&T and Verizon should reinforce some lessons for all marketers. Strong, aggressive advertising (as from Verizon) works – as long as you are advertising from a position of strength against a clear and importantly perceived weakness in your competition. On the other hand, no amount of advertising, internet presence management, social media interaction, and especially legal actions will help you if you haven’t successfully dedicated your organization to satisfying your customers with great products, services, and support. AT&T should have been spending its cash on these instead of on its lawyers.

Domus, Inc. is a full service marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. We build inspiring brand platforms and aggressively communicate them using appropriate mixes of marketing media, including social networking, other internet presence management, online and offline advertising and PR, and other vehicles such as events. Please visit our web site at http://www.domusinc.com for more information.