It's a fact of life - the same route to work, the same coffee shop, the same issues pilling up in the in-tray - we can’t avoid the comfort of the familiar. Without realising it we all get very good at ‘pattern thinking’ - repeating today what worked yesterday. The history of commerce is piled high with once great businesses that were so focused on their current competencies and investments that they failed to spot the new wave of opportunities, and eventually it drowned them. This disruption theory is well known to corporate innovators. What is less well known is just how powerful a programme of provocation is – experiences that are designed to deliberately broaden the minds of executives.

Harlem Shake and Gangnam Style – if I’ve lost you already then I’ve only got one thing to say: Where have you been hiding for the last year?! Both have taken the world of online video and social media by storm, and if you’re anything like me you can’t help but start bopping your head as soon as you hear either tune start playing.

It’s great that these ‘YouTube sensations’ (as some would call it) have seen massive global success, but this new, interesting infographic from Ghergich & Co uses Twitter data to compare how they were picked up in social media in the first 30 days after launch.

After comparing the total number of tweets, positive and negative reactions, tweets by country, total exposure and the peak performance, the team at Ghergich managed to pull together this pretty cool infographic comparing the two. Can you guess who came out on top? Scroll to the bottom for the winner – you might be surprised!

They say these days that the 40s are the new 30s and that for advertisers, chronological age is becoming less and less of a measure by which to segment audiences.

This idea was brought front of mind to me recently when talking to Richard Jacobs, head of commercial strategy at Real & Smooth Radio Ltd. The station has a specific target audience of 40-59s; a demographic that historically would have been considered ‘old’. But no longer is this the case. For the first time in history we appear to be at an evolutionary stage whereby the generation gap between those in their 20s, 30s 40s & 50’s is closer than ever before – meaning that different generations can & do enjoy similar interests and pastimes.

As Jacobs pointed out; “these are the children of the baby boomers, we’re running the country, operating and managing businesses large and small, we are doctors, teachers, software developers and media planners!

“We buy ipads, brand new cars, clothes, crisps, smartphones, deodorant and expensive holidays. We are a group of consumers that the marketing industry hasn’t quite got its head around. You’ll seldom see us appearing in ads, which is fair enough as no brand wants to be seen as old, but the problem is that in many cases, we’re not even appearing on media schedules anymore. How many times do we see brands actively targeting consumers beyond 44 on a media schedule? We believe our research goes some way to addressing that problem and some of the insight is genuinely surprising and hopefully behavior changing.” 

From its own research, Smooth Radio suggests that because of increasing divorce rates (13% of all over 40's are divorced and 25% of over 40's are either divorced or still single), this age group has a ‘second lease of life’ mentality. In addition, having children later means more parents with young children in their 40’s. This creates a need for marketers to start extending their targeting to reach older people doing more and things in life you’d traditionally expect 20 & 30 somethings to do. As those in their 40s and beyond feel younger than ever before, perceived age versus chronological age is becoming ever more separate.

In fact these days it is not uncommon for the over 40s to be considered the ‘Highlifers’ in advertising circles. This demographic is in better financial shape with money it is willing to spend at the click of a mouse button. This doesn’t mean that this audience is not exercising control in a still cautious financial market,

The recession has made this group careful but still prepared to spend on what they feel is important or what they really value.

Real & Smooth Radio’s consumer research department, MediaLab, has spent the past two years examining the lucrative over 40s market and honing in on where advertisers can find it ‘hanging out’.

Perhaps most crucially of all (certainly to advertisers), the over 50’s have accumulated around 80% of the nation’s wealth and is the demographic with the healthiest rate of expendable income overall. This is due in the main to big increases in the value of their homes and economic benefits now less readily available to younger generations, such as generous salary pension schemes and affordable housing.

This group isn’t shy when it comes to embracing new technology either. Some two in five consider themselves to be early adopters. In focus groups, technology usage is described as ‘intuitive’ and absolutely vital to the way Highlifers live their lives today.

This is a demographic keen to retain looks and good health too. Eighty-seven percent of women say they actively seek beauty information with 91% saying that they trust word of mouth when it comes to beauty products and treatments – an interesting face perhaps for those brands looking to target 40+ women via social media sites. Eighty-one percent are interested in their health and seek information on keeping healthy, but 40% claim they have little time in which to actively research health products and would like help with it.

So what does all of this tell us about how advertisers should approach this increasingly youthfully-minded audience? Smooth Radio’s own strapline; ‘Love life, love music’, is designed to resonate with an audience enjoying the best time of its life. Yet it wasn’t that long ago that as far as advertisers were concerned, the 40 plus market was considered ‘past it’. It wasn’t unusual to see ads for the 40s market tailored to pension planning, and even funeral care! Fortunately, today’s adverts for this demographic are becoming ever more neutral, positive and engaging. Brands are realising that the 40-plus demographic is no armchair group. It is actively using social networks to engage (social networks are considered crucial to rekindling friendships or old romances for this group). MediaLab found that 77% use popular social networking sites - Facebook, Twitter and YouTube being the main ones visited.

And it not just the virtual world they are embracing either. MediaLab research tells us that, in the case of over 40s that have grown up children, they are increasingly indulging in past passions and hobbies. They’re going to concerts, festivals, gigs and comedy shows.

The ‘Highlifers’ or ‘Modern-Midlifers’ as MediaLab call them are a fascinating and economically rich group of consumers. They can really help to optimise a brand’s success, so long as they are communicated to and engaged with in the right way. And rule number one is to treat the over 40s as anything but a grey market!

It takes a tremendous amount of passion to do innovative things every day – and if there's anyone that has that passion, it's publishing legend and editor-in-chief Jane Pratt of xoJaneand xoVain (both Say Media properties). At her talk at SXSW, Jane wowed the crowd and lit up Twitter when she shared her hard-won secrets of a publishing renegade.

Among the revelations onstage were the news that Hilary Swank has optioned the rights to play Jane in a movie about her life, the magic happens outside your comfort zone, and nobody likes you (even Drew Barrymore). 

As the New York Post teased ahead of the event:

"We hear she’ll dish about how she photoshopped Ashton Kutcher’s nipples off of a cover photo, was forced to eat veal at Anna Wintour’s house during a dinner party though she was a vegetarian, and showed up to an editorial meeting on no sleep after partying all night with Jimmy Fallon and Janeane Garofalo. “I wanted to call the session ‘Secrets of a Media Renegade: How I Burned Down the Old Media Model to Do Whatever the F*ck I Want,’ but that was too long,” said Pratt.  

Yep, the always irreverent and entertaining Jane Pratt delivered all that and more. The founder of Jane and Sassy magazine revealed what went on behind the scenes as she burnt bridges, said things she shouldn’t say out loud, and built a platform for women to express  themselves honestly. Now, with xoJane.com, Jane has once again revolutioned the way media talks to women and has built one of the fastest growing online publishing brands for women in the history of the web, now complimented by xoVain, a new destination for beauty comment, tutorials and reviews, and where readers can purchase products direct from trusted beauty retailers. 

In her panel, Jane revealled why the current print model doesn’t work, the myths traditional media has been feeding you, and the outrageous anecdotes from 25 years in media. 

Her advice? "Be bold and be preposterous."

A brand’s reputation hangs on the success with which it projects and maintains its core values, providing consistent quality and a unified image that is at once universal and culturally relevant. So in a world as instant, integrated and interconnected as ours, how feasible is it for international brands to stay in complete control of their identity, protecting themselves from being compromised by actions beyond their control? All it takes is for one user-uploaded photo to go viral, or an unvetted decision in a regional market, for a brand to lose a grip on its image.

Take the example of some mannequins in an Adidas window display in Russia during an LGBT-rights demonstration, which were reconfigured to mimic Nazi salutes. It would appear that this was done by staff members in support of the violent, far-right faction who were opposing the march and attacking activists under the seemingly indifferent eyes of onlooking police. As the author of this New York Times article states, “what are Western companies to do when a country’s culture becomes so toxic that even situating a clothing-retail store there can implicate the company in violent ideology and in violence itself?” Demands were made by a US-based human rights organisation in an open letter to Adidas HQ about the sorts of conditions that are imposed on their authorised dealers around the world in such circumstances. But while it is possible to train staff and monitor activity and conduct closely, can anything be done to prevent the deleterious effects of a few hapless individuals on the ground?

A similarly unfortunate intervention affected Ikea last year, when it was revealed that the Saudi Arabian version of their catalogue had been manipulated to exclude women. This is a brand that promotes inclusivity, harmony and fairness, so much so that it is prepared to speak out radically on behalf of the gay marriage lobby in Italy, so why on earth is it marginalising female identity in the Arab peninsula with the stroke of the airbrush? The brand’s official response blamed a third-party franchise for the creation of the catalogue, apologising for not monitoring the production of this catalogue more closely, especially when it so contravenes the “group’s values”. Whatever the situation, surely here we are seeing the complications of maintaining a tolerant universal identity while simultaneously appealing to a local market whose values are themselves intolerant towards the representation of women?

Google cite transparency as one of their core values, and publish a biannual transparency report detailing search traffic, removal requests and user data requests. However, there have been reports that a Google censorship notification feature in operation in China – aimed at alerting users to potential government-backed service disruption for certain search terms – has been disabled on the quiet. This is arguably an act of ensuring search quality and efficiency, which had been compromised by government censorship, but it does also go against the brand’s pledge for transparency in a region where freedom of speech is so delicate. How can a brand maintain all its integrity when trying to operate at an optimal level in a country where its core values are not shared?

In the past, controversy has been something that has been courted deliberately to provoke and publicise – take just about any United Colours of Bennetton ad ever created – but in this day and age the challenge is much more to do with avoiding unintended, perhaps inevitable, media attention when core values have been compromised. The glare of the internet and the omnipresence of camera phones mean that scrutiny of global brands is never far away.

If there’s one word that stole the show at this year’s WFA Global Marketer Week in Brussels, it was ‘Purpose’. Indeed, even a survey carried out by the WFA and Edelman found that some 83% of marketers believe that brands should have a ‘purpose’.

Brands need to put purpose into their marketing – they need a purpose to thrive. And that’s exactly something that Diageo’s global chief marketing officer Andy Fennell highlighted during his presentation to a room full of chief marketing officers. “We simplify things. We ask ‘What’s the brand’s purpose’? We don’t talk about the benefit anymore,” he said.

Check out this infographic from performance marketing specialist Intela, which shows some interesting comparisons between consumers in the UK and the US when it comes to shopping on smartphones and reactions to mobile ads: