In the book we published last month, Digital Advertising: Past, Present, and Future, I write an essay about good digital integration and the end of the big idea. My routine/fixation with doing good digital integration across channels got me thinking: can these channels also be used to create brand ideas.

Could we potentially test loads of small ideas across different channels and see what sticks? And, could we potentially start with a small idea and then make it big? Couldn’t things like a smart partnership or remixing engagement platforms also be big ideas?

Hopefully you have bought the book and agree with what i say. Fortunately many of my fellow authors do:

Digital Advertising: Past, Present & Future – Small Is Beautiful from Edward Bishop on Vimeo.

Irrespective I thought it would be nice on the blog to highlight some of the best ideas that started small in 2010 taken from my own thoughts as well as those of my fellow authors. Anyway here are mine:

Smart Partnership – Rapper Meets Search Engine

Instead of a normal book launch Jay Z put pages and snippets of his new autobiography in weird places that users could decode and find using Bing. You can read more about the campaign at Fast Company.

Refreshing The Old – E-Commerce Gets a Social Lift

In Asia, the computer giant Dell did something really smart: they combined a tired e-commerce platform with flashmob behavior to create a social shopping experience. The more people interested in buying a certain machine could create a swarm to take its price down.

Remixing engagements platforms – call center and twitter

BestBuy smartly started offering the knowledge of its brick and mortar employees on twitter.

I will be posting those from my fellow authors later this week.