The iPad is once again another ground breaking technology from the minds at Apple.  For those who see it simply as a “large ipod touch” are missing the bigger picture, literally.  The iPad represents a new user interface.  None of us are about to start touching our computer monitors or swiping the screens of our laptops anytime soon so a tablet fulfills this destiny.  Even more important is that the App is the perfect portal into EXACTLY what we want.

Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of WIRED just published a new cover story that “the web is dead, long live the internet.” The simple graph he provides shows that traditional browser surfing is down, and we are to blame.

It would seem that WE all really want a direct link and don’t want any interference in getting to it.  Apps reign.

This experience is exactly what the iPad provides along with all the technologies who look to follow in its path.

Not only is the iPad a start of the evolution of computing, but it might just change our lives permanently (it will need a camera or the ability to link to an iPhone with a camera, first).  The first time my 7 year old daughter picked up the device she knew what to do with it, and she loved it.  When considering what to get her laptop/desktop/iPad, the decision is clear: iPad.  Portable, interactive, multifunction long battery life and no accessories required, it’s a hands-down winner.

Lastly, with more and more cloud services coming to consumers, who needs storage? The notion that at one point in time we all relied on unstable, fragile rotating storage disks that have the propensity to fail for our most precious data is clearly now outdated.

With local retail taking a huge hit in the wake of the recession, temporary storefronts have become suddenly accessible to even the smallest of brands — more specifically, to artists.  Pop-up stores that were once the exclusive territory of large media companies are now available for artistic occupation. Some artists are taking this opportunity to go hyperlocal with their marketing, bringing the gallery to the street level.

Smartspaces is just such an endeavor.  Ellen Scott, founder of Smartspaces, writes that her “vision is to create a sustainable, scalable platform for public art in storefronts.” In a retail space on lower Broadway, formerly occupied by the U.S. East Sportswear Inc., Ms. Scott invited artist Lisa Kirk to exhibit “Revolution!”

Kirk’s occupation of the former retail space is essentially a marketing initiative for a fake fragrance brand called Revolution. As if you couldn’t tell from the packaging (shown right), Revolution is a symphonic blend of scents like smoke, gasoline, tear gas, burnt rubber, and decaying flesh.

Don’t worry, Revolution isn’t a real fragrance, even if it’s marketed like one. This is art, after all.

In the long history of advertising, we’ve seen marketing take cues from artists time and time again. Artists developing their own pop-up shops represents the opposite: art taking a page right from marketers’ playbooks.  Build a shop, offer consumers multiple touch points.  Allow consumers to share their experience, and offer exclusive purchase opportunities.

For Revolution, passersby can catch a glimpse of this “brand” as it’s brought to life in the two shop windows, take a virtual tour by calling a phone number or buy an actual bottle of this revolutionary fragrance just up the block at the trendy Ace Hotel.  All this brand exposure adds up to a pretty solid marketing initiative, on a pretty low budget… if the brand were real.

Many agree that art is subjective, but media is certainly not.  Artists around the world are starting to explore the use of vacant space in the form of pop-up stores: Brooklyn, the UK, Berkeley, Virginia, and even Winona, MN, to name a few.

The ways that artists will continue to occupy, react, and expand on viral marketing techniques remains to be seen. Though the genre of the pop –up store was born out of the world of media, it’s bound to get schooled by our friends in the art world.  Look what art did for Campbell’s soup…or was it the other way around?

In this fast-paced world of technology, each new advancement enables me (the consumer) to talk louder, and carry and even bigger stick. Social media has become our stage on which brands can be championed or vilified and clients have found they are hard pressed to police all this chatter.

In this age of social media the only thing you really own is the ability to embrace or alienate the crowd.  So, which is it?  Live the life of Mad Men and keep pushing the 30 sec spots, or embrace the fan and start setting up blank canvases everywhere for the crowd to paint for us?

I recently sat with Frank Rose, of WIRED magazine who is currently writing a new book entitled “Welcome to the Hyperdome.”  Frank outlines how the internet is changing storytelling by saying, “we are moving into a hyperdome, into an all-encompassing info-maze where everyone and everything are connected.  Boundaries that once seemed clear—between storyteller and audience, content and marketing, illusion and reality—are starting to blur.”

We have already seen the signs of this with your basic restaurant review.  Would you prefer to read one review from Time Out magazine or the posts of 50 consumers like yourself on Yelp?  Sorry TONY, your reservation was canceled.

The result of this world social order power struggle is that it’s time to think of your brands as clubs—they can be health clubs, night clubs, private clubs or social clubs.  As with any club the members make up the most important element of the club, for without them the club is just another empty space.  Every club member is an advocate, ambassador, spokesperson and mascot. It’s our job to give them the tools to do their jobs and smother them with praise when they work for us.

As for the detractors—the nasty Nellies—the ones that never have anything nice to say: If we do our jobs right, the advocates should drown out the dissenters.

Why don’t I have a membership to Club Kitchen Basics?  I don’t know, but I should.  They know I’m here.  I’ve sent them love letters.  Turns out, they don’t have a club.

So if you’re a brand manager (at Kitchen Basics) remember that every positive email from a customer about your product, work, and customer service is a brand new club member.  You should add my name to the list of brand advocates, friend ME on Facebook.  Send ME a birthday card, put MY name in lights.

As Winston Churchill once said… “There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.”

….And I talk a lot.