Planet Jupiter

Link: Gary Stein: Jupiter Research Advertising Coverage: Focuses for 2005.

I've only recently come across the blogs at Jupiter, who I've always valued as producers of strong research.  But the blogs allow the researchers themselves to give some flavour of where their thoughts are.  Gary Stein, one of the marketing analysts, posts his views on where his focus will be in 2005 and I reckon he knows more than most where technology and business will be headed.  Two of the main areas he mentions are particularly interesting, if not exactly new:

Communal-Creation of Brand Equity Centered two strong forces: blogs and affiliates, will form the core of a new way of talking about managing your brand. The notion of managing your brand monolithically is truly giving way to a stakeholder-created, dynamic environment of ideas-about-products.

The Search Marketplace
As search goes mainstream, the collection of agencies and consultants who provide SEM/O services are going to be better integrated with the Marketing Mothership.

Of course "communal creation of brand equity" is very much underway now, not least in the Jupiter blogs -they practice what they preach, yeah!

One of his other points is that 'digital marketing' will be more closely integrated into organisations as they become integral to managing brands and products.  This is well overdue and in line with the move toward media convergence.  Anyway,  I look forward to hearing more of these plans and seeing the research. 

update: I suppose I should also mention Forrester's blog by Charlene Li.   It offers some good insights too, search especially seems well covered.