Google launches it's online 'shopping mall'

With Youtube getting on the shopping band wagon and Facebook launching 'deals' it was only a matter of time before Google also took part in the conversation.

On Wednesday, Google launched Boutiques.com, it's very own online shopping centre. The website is designed to give users a personalised shopping experience allowing you to browse through designers, follow them and be followed. It includes bloggers recommendation pages, celebrity style pages and popular trend pages. Perfect for those who need inspiration to build their wardrobe.

Googles Product Management Director, Munjal Shah wrote:

"It lets you find and discover fashion goods by creating your own curated boutique or through a collection of boutiques curated by taste-makers -- celebrities, stylists, designers and fashion bloggers. These days, bloggers, stylists and everyday fashionistas are expressing their sense of style online. We invited them to create boutiques so people could shop their diverse styles. But you have a unique and independent style too, so Boutiques also lets you build your own personalized boutique and get recommendations of products that match your taste."

The site is set up to let users filter their searches by size, silhouette, patterns and colors. Google also is offering what it's calling "inspirational photos." If a user searches for brown boots, photos will pop up on the right showing brown boots with matching outfits.

However, Boutiques.com is currently only available in the U.S. and only for women's fashion. Google has said that it intends to expand but has yet to state when.

Apple Declared “Marketer of the Decade”

Ad Age has unveiled its very first Marketer of the Decade award recipient: Apple. Although the famous fruit has only won Marketer of the Year once in the past decade (but has been a contender or runner-up nearly every year), the Ad Age staff decided to pull the company out of the running for the 2010 Market of the Year Award and just give it the crown for the whole decade.

As Ad Age notes, the aughts were a pretty magical decade for Apple, starting with the launch of the iPod in October 2001, segueing into the iPhone (iPhone) in 2007 and ending the decade with the successful launch of the iPad.

For all the criticism — deserved and not — that Apple as a company gets, it would be hard to argue that marketing is an area it lacks. We can count at least three iconic ad campaigns from the past 10 years:

* iPod silhouette print and television ads (circa 2004)
* “Get a Mac” campaign with John Hodgeman and Justin Long (circa 2006)
* “There’s an app for that” (circa 2008)

And that’s without even mentioning the 2002 “Switch” campaign featuring proto-meme Ellen Feiss.

Lee Clow

Apple’s longtime advertising agency, TBWA has been a crucial part of Apple’s advertising success. An intrinsic part of TBWA is Lee Clow. Clow, the chairman and global director of TBWA\Worldwide and the former Chief Creative Officer at TBWA\Media Arts Lab — a division created first and foremost to serve Apple — is the man behind the iconic “1984″ Macintosh ad, the “Think Different” campaign and the “Get a Mac” ads.

In a recent interview with MAD (Media Arts and Disruption), Clow discusses some of the core elements of Apple’s marketing strategy.

“There isn’t a single thing Apple does that isn’t a message that confirms or reinforces how you feel about the company. I often tell people that the best ad we ever did was the Apple Store (Apple Store). We do great TV commercials, we do wonderful billboards, but you walk into an Apple store and you’re now immersed in a brand that’s going to change your life.”

He continues:

“The reality of the new media world is that if your brand does not have a belief, if it does not have a soul and does not correctly architect its messages everywhere it touches consumers, it can become irrelevant. It can be ignored, or even become a focal point for online contempt.”

Frankly, we cannot think of any company that has a more meticulous vision for its branding strategy than Apple. It’s also hard to argue that this strategy hasn’t been overwhelmingly successful.

Apple surpassed Microsoft in market valuation back in May and crossed the $300 a share mark last week. The company will release its fall quarterly earnings report later this afternoon.

As a company, Apple is certainly more than just branding and marketing, but the branding and marketing reinforces, as Clow states, every other aspect of the company.

Christina Warren for Mashable