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I attended a speaking event by Chris Brogan and as he was talking about how attached people are to their smart phones, he made a little dig at BlackBerrys. Now I am a BlackBerry user and the phone isn't a flashy iPhone and it doesn't talk to me or have a touch screen, but it's exactly what I wanted from my phone. It makes calls, texts, forwards me my emails, and allows me to respond. I don't particularly like responding to emails on my phone but as least now, I am always in the loop.

An interesting point that Chris Brogan poked fun at is the message that comes through on the top of at least 50% of my emails: "Have trouble reading this email?"
Chris made a great point: As a marketer, is this the first thing that you want your customers to see when they open their emails? And since more people open emails via smart phone, do you really want them to see a bunch of blank boxes instead of your content?

Chris Brogan suggested putting a funny message at the top line or the most important thing that you want your reader to see. Why not? It's the first message that your business is using to communicate and it decides whether they delete it...or not!

Here's an example of a company that's always sending me witty messages as the top line on my BlackBerry:

Breakfast: The Most Marketed Meal of the Day

I saw this Kellogg's commercial the other morning and it put me in such a good mood.

Kellogg's is offering to share a breakfast with kids in schools without breakfasts for every "breakfast picture" uploaded to their site (shareyourbreakfast.com). I visited the site and enjoyed looking through the pictures-- see if you can spot the 'Boston breakfast picture'! (Hint: it has a glimpse of sign that I've passed on Boylston Street.)

Kellogg's is really making an effort to connect with a new generation of consumers: Social Media generation. Most of the pictures are taken with Smart phones and Kellogg's has even Facebook page and twitter (#ShareYourBreakfast) to make pictures easy to upload. (NYT lists details of the campaign)

If that wasn't enough to munch on, I found another article on branding breakfast cereals for Kids. The article and study concluded that kids will say that cereal tastes better when popular characters are on the box. This study has raised a debate between Mommy and Marketers; are companies using Dora to tricking kids into eating unhealthy cereals? Characters today are mostly on kid's products that aren't the healthiest cereals like the Fruit Loops Toucan. But with this new information, couldn't healthy cereal companies start sponsoring Nickelodeon characters on the box? The study tested kids on the way cereals tasted (healthy vs. sugary) and the name of the cereal (Healthy Bits vs. Sugar Bits) but these weren't driving factors impacting preferences. If this is true, healthy cereal companies could call the cereal "Healthy Bits", make it out of whole grains and low sugar, and stick Dora or Diego on the box to make both Mom and kids happy. Spongebob bran flakes anyone?