4. Apple's 3G iPhone and Steve Jobs' health.
On its surface, this seems like a minor story, but one part was prompted by the announcement of the other. Earlier this month, Steve Jobs, the venerable and quite possibly irreplaceable chief executive of Apple, announced the second generation iPhone would be released in mid-July to millions of adoring fans.
At the time, a number of people noticed that he didn't look very healthy. He appeared wan and much thinner than usual. Certainly the slimming black he always wears didn't help, but concerns that he may not be well were aired around the web on blogs and in news reports.
First, the significance of this new device coming on the market: What the next generation of iPhone promises is the American market's first real, practical glimpse at what mobile computing and communicating devices might actually be able to offer. We will get to see what the rest of the world is already experiencing with mobile and why they seem to be so excited about it… and why mobile marketing service providers are always so hyperbolic in their expressions about mobile advertising at all the conferences and meetings. With the new iPhone, the online advertising, digital marketing and emerging media markets might finally see reason to believe that mobile will go from being the equivalent of soccer in the U.S. to, at the very least, college basketball.
As for Jobs' health, this is an important story because he may well be the world's most irreplaceable CEO and the executive whose own brand is inextricably linked with that of his company. No other company confronts that scenario. There are certainly companies that have had highly visible CEOs, but none of them have ever embodied the company they represent more so than Jobs. If he is ill (he battled a rare form of pancreatic cancer four years ago), it could negatively affect the traction Apple has had in the marketplace, where it has revolutionized the consumption of entertainment media (iPod, iTunes) and gotten people like me to convert to a Mac. Gartner reported at the beginning of this year that Apple will double its U.S. and Western Europe unit market share in computers by 2011. Fear that Apple won't be the same without its venerable leader could affect the market more significantly than any other company losing a CEO.
5. Marketing and agency executives going publisher-side.
Funny how a senior-level person leaving a company makes news for one day and then fades away. Sometimes, if the executive is senior enough, it might make for trade fodder for more than a couple of days.
This year, however, there have been several important departures of senior people, particularly from advertising agencies, that likely herald a much more serious trend.
You've had Sean Finnegan, who was chief executive at OMG Digital for six months and held very senior positions with the company for years prior, take the CMO role at Vibrant. Mark Kingdon, who was CEO of Organic since 2001, joined Linden Labs -- the Second Life company -- in April as CEO. Troy Young, former EVP and chief experience architect at Organic left to be CMO at VideoEgg. Dan Goodman, former chief digital officer at Ogilvy, went to helm Media Rights Capitol, an independent studio that produces and distributes content across all media platforms: film, television, internet, mobile and broadband. And let's not forget David Verklin, erstwhile CEO of Carat North America, who left to head up Canoe Ventures, a company looking to develop a single national platform for the cable industry to sell new and enhanced forms of advertising. And these are just the high profile defections.
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