The following post is Part 1 in a multi series post that will occur each day for the next two weeks. It’s based on my favorite speaking engagement of this year that I presented to the marketing leadership team at GE. If you haven’t subscribed yet this might be a good reason.

I'll be ranting about the following for the next two weeks....

The Future Is For Those That Have Courage

In a recession measurable results, transparency, and customer satisfaction will be more important than ever. We’ll be forced to improve the personalization, targeting, and quality of our messages and I will continue to make these recommendation to our clients, but I think there is a bigger opportunity.

There’s an increased opportunity to do something that stands out from the crowd by either being there first or by standing out from the pack in terms of cleverness, quality, or innovation.

While others might get skittish and play all their bets safe, I encourage you to take a small portion of your marketing budgets (or budgets of your clients) and take some risks, because the payout could be exponential.

Continue to build great micro-sites, build your content into portable widgets, and develop clever banner campaigns, but over the next two weeks let’s take a look at some areas you probably haven’t conquered yet (and potentially not for a lack of trying). These topics will include:

• Some trends in social networking you should be aware of.
• Some likely trends in search to be conscious of.
• The continued influence of video on both the large and the small screen.
• What it really means to “reach your audience”.
• Embracing the new creative process.