New product developers and marketers tend to be slaves to trends. And Pepsi was no different in the early '90s when it jumped on the clear trend. It was consumers' perception that clear meant healthy. It worked for one of their competitors with the introduction of Clearly Canadian, and it was working in other categories like personal care and laundry detergent, so why not for them?

Pepsi introduced Crystal Pepsi, a caffeine-free clear cola in 1992. Although initial sales were good, it quickly fizzled and was discontinued in 1993.

"One of the benefits of the Annual Broadway League meeting held every December is that you get to pick up your glossy copy of the Broadway Audience Demographic Study," writes Broadway producer and blogger Ken Davenport. If you say so! But his post does provide some fun statistics about the demographic of the average Broadway fan who marches through the miserable crowds just west of Times Square to make it to the theater in time to get a sippy-cup full of white wine before the curtain rises. The results of the study will probably not blow your mind.

We critics have long argued vehemently that if major musical institutions hope to be regarded as vital, modern institutions, they must keep their listeners (and performers) in touch with the ideas, trendy or otherwise, that excite the composers of their time. But truth be told, we are a little bipolar on that subject. Though we criticize the big organizations for fostering a museum culture, we actually value the museums they have become.

The year 2012 is finally here. 2011 was a breakout year for Web marketing developments, and as the geography of the field has rapidly evolved, those who have taken greatest advantage of these new innovations have reaped the most rewards.

So you've made the resolution that in 2012 you are finally going to "get into" social media and use it to build a brand for you or your business. But you're not a geek and you’re not with a big corporation that already has a social media team or a fairly savvy marketing department. For you, time is of the essence. You don't have all day to give to this endeavor, which is why you haven't done it already. So here's what to do in 10 easy steps.

At MTV, we have long suspected that understanding the relationship between Millennials and game play is one of the keys to understanding the generation as a whole. Our 2011 study, "Let's Play Brand," attempts to understand some of the implications of this "meta-game-mentality" for brand builders and marketers. The study has given us startling reaffirmation of our intuition that a "game-like metaphor" applies to almost every aspect of Millennial life.

As the cast and crew hurried to prepare for their 7:30 p.m. curtain call in Connecticut's Norma Terris Theater last month, patrons filled the house and prepared to get lost in the production of Hello! My Baby. For some, that meant powering on their smartphones and iPads and telling all of their Twitter followers about the musical with the hashtag #hmbmusical.

I’ve put together 10 points below drawing on experiences from around the web. These are 10 steps to get into social media and to see a route toward influence, the basics. Is it necessary to have this knowledge? I think so. There is valid scepticism about the numbers game. Nonethless I think young people, and some of us older ones, will enhance our career prospects by contributing to the web through creating and curating valuable content.

The Walker Art Center launched a new website last week that should be a model for other institutions of all kinds. The site repositions the Walker, in the words of Artlog, "at the center of the global conversation about contemporary art," by incorporating ideas, words, and art from far outside the museum's walls.

As a business owner, I’m always looking at how to structure relationships. I’ve joked that a sense of humor is our main concern when evaluating new clients at Karten Design. But when I really think about it, compatibility and the ability to have fun with your clients is a serious matter.

Clamp on headphones, start up the iPhone app by the musical duo Bluebrain, and walk into Central Park. The music does not begin until you pass through an entrance and head into the trees. Then it sounds like an orchestra tuning up, a chaotic jumble of wind chimes, electronic moans, and discordant strings. Push farther into the park, and a sweet violin melody emerges over languid piano chords.

Business schools and most jobs don’t teach you how important it is to sweat the small stuff.

In fact, we’re mostly told the opposite--don’t be a micromanager, don’t be penny wise and pound foolish, don't miss the forest for the trees. The implied wisdom is that abstract and conceptual thinking always prevails over narrow determination and single-mindedness. And yet, when we look at the greatest inventions, greatest companies, and greatest teams of our time, their success always comes down to tireless concern over every last detail.

There aren't many marketing opportunities that can target 800 million people in one—so it’s no surprise that 96 of the top 100 U.S. advertisers are marketing on Facebook. But there's a problem: Many of those companies tell us they’re not finding Facebook nearly as useful a marketing tool as they’d hoped. In large part, that’s the result of the disorganized approach many companies have to Facebook marketing.

The lights dim, the orchestra tunes, and the audience is told to "please turn off your cell phones." Except in the "TweetSeats" at Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra concerts in Music Hall. That's where iPhones, Blackberries, and tablets light up and concertgoers start tweeting live along with the music.

One of the many lovely things about being a theater critic is that when you turn up at some far‑flung venue, you can be sure of a warm welcome—and, at this time of the year, maybe a mince pie, too. But when press officers and artistic directors tell me how grateful they are that I've made the journey, my response is that I'm only doing my job. Sometimes, a day or two later when they read my review, they may wish they'd never issued the invitation in the first place. Not that I've ever noticed the subsequent welcomes being any less warm—or mince pies more scarce.

Frontline employees—the people behind the counter, on the phone, in the cloud, and walking the floor—possess a large measure of control over the customer experience. Their actions determine whether a customer becomes a brand evangelist or detractor. Understanding how best to motivate these employees--and designing processes and strategies to ensure that they're empowered, energized, and personally vested--is at the core of delivering standout service and creating a compelling brand experience. Here are four critical areas to consider when creating a standout experience.

Last month, Australia went crazy. It had nothing to do with the usual summer cricket rivalries, nor did it involve a visit from the Queen. This time, the frenzy was over newly released cans of Coke. A local agency had dreamed up an entirely new way of revitalizing the 125-year-old brand, reversing its steadily declining sales and tapping into the diminishing youth market.

Everyone wants their own mobile application. In the last year, I have heard this consistently. In fact, mobile analytics firm Distimo claims 91 of the top 100 brands have their own mobile app (up from 51 just 18 months ago).

On the surface this sounds great, right? I can use my big brand name to get people to install my application, and then I can market to them via the palm of their hand whenever I want. If you're a big brand, I have no doubt you will get a ton of downloads. But downloads are a vanity metric; they don't measure success.

1. Display Subscribers and Friends
The more “Subscribers” and “Friends” your nonprofit has, the more exposure you get on YouTube. You are also much more likely to get new subscribers and friend requests if you display subscribers and friends on your channel. The avatars of your subscribers and friends also add some color and personality to your channel, and send the message that your nonprofit is engaged in the YouTube community.

With so many museums, exhibits, art galleries, and lectures to choose from every day, how does a busy young arts professional keep up? For Francesca Merlino and about two dozen of her colleagues who work for museums and arts groups in New York City, it’s following each other’s 140-character updates on Twitter and the hashtag, #artstech.
 

What do companies want in their social media reports? Basically they want to see two things.

1. That it's working

2. That they're getting value for money

Social media managers & consultants need to show the true value of social media activity to our clients. Social media return on investment cannot just be measured in monetary terms so when you are compiling your reports for clients we have to show them whole picture of what we are achieving on their behalf.

Photo by RambergMediaImages

The Dayton Opera intends to shed its old-timey reputation among young adults by not only allowing smartphone use during performances, but encouraging it.

The arts organization has set up discounted "Friday Nite Tweet Seats" where tech-savvy patrons — young or old — can sit and tweet, post updates to Facebook, send text messages or e-mails or blog about the night’s performance as it's happening. Enthusiasts hope it will attract a younger audience to the opera and create a new buzz around the centuries-old art form that they say deserves a listen.

Popular culture is buzzing with secret messages.

I've written about the Fox TV show Fringe before: it's freighted with an especially complicated storyline. Besides the great acting, one of the things that sustains it is a series of secret messages that appear at the end of every segment: a stylized icon of a seahorse or a flower for the fan(atic) to decode.

But last week Fringe took a step forward, actually inserting a frame or two in the middle of a show. For the blink of an eye, we saw an image on the screen. Then it was gone.

We interact with brands almost every moment of our day. From the moment we wake up, we're being bombarded with logos, advertisements, and products, all designed to make our lives easier but also to make us feel a connection to companies. But most of that work is totally meaningless: most people don't care about brands, and think that only a few positively impact their lives. More importantly, brands that are perceived as irresponsible or just creating products with no meaning are in danger of being severely punished by consumers.

Social share buttons allow users to share relevant information with their friends and associates. Many businesses don’t always see the value of the share button, but it definitely helps. The social share button is not about joining the social media bandwagon; it’s about getting relevant information to a greater number of people.

Jon Lawrence Riviera described the audience participation phenomena by saying: “At some point, we're going to come up to [the] theater [and] it's [going to be] just like how people decide on who's the winner for America's Got Talent. We're going to have keypads in each theater and we're all going to decide how the play's going to end. At intermission, you press [a button]. There is something about the culture where they want to have control over what happens and I feel like at some point there's going to probably be some lever that people decide - does [this character] die or live?

Many arts organizations have tracked fluctuations in attendance rates during the economic downturn. Two separate funding initiatives, the James Irvine Foundation and the Knight Foundation, seem to have responded by saying, “Yes, changes have occurred. Embrace them.”

Recently at Jump, I had the pleasure of interviewing Oren Jacob, the former chief technical officer of Pixar, in front of a small group of invited guests. Oren shared a number of fascinating stories of what went on behind the scenes at Pixar during his 20 years there.

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while. The tributes to Steve Jobs, and this recent blog post from Ian Moss on usability studies in arts programming seem like a good jumping off point. The thing I’ve always loved about Apple products, and the thing I’ve sometimes found irritating about Apple products, is that they’re so damned usable. The amount of processor time on the original Macintosh devoted to the graphic user interface alone makes the point.

“It’s kind of weird to be here,” said Sanjay Patel, a Pixar animator, standing on a stage Tuesday inside the Asian Art Museum. “Normally you would see Buzz or Woody or Mr. Incredible or Sulley or Carl from ‘Up.’ ”