Graeme Wood has put together an excellent, comprehensive roundup of what’s happened in marketing and communications, where are we coming from and where are we headed. From the value of a brand in mass marketing to the value of a brand in the world of social media, recommendation and reputation.

You can read the whole article in his GeekMedia blog here, together with his presentation that is also available on Slideshare (the illustration above is my own, but inspired by by Graeme’s text).  As a teaser for the article, here are some of my favorite bits from it:

“The next big development will be the move from the Internet of data to the internet of things – everything can communicate with everything else.”

“We are going to move over the next few years from millions of computers CONNECTED by the internet, to one huge computer that IS the internet. Every device will be a window into it.”

“This will obviously mean that a huge amount of data is flying around, and that where there is more information, there is less attention. So brands will have to work even harder to earn that attention.”

“Remember, the internet is not a medium, it is a way of organising and structuring information. To have more chance of unlocking its potential, we need to think of it in terms of other systems for structuring information. For example, the alphabet. We haven’t worried about relying on the alphabet to store our information for the last 1500 years. And we don’t use the alphabet as an advertising medium. Well, we do, obviously – copy is written in words, ideas are created and sold in words. But it is something so fundamental that it goes on in the background. If we think of technology in terms of media channels like TV and radio, our frame of reference is too narrow.”