Every day consumers are bombarded with thousands of marketing messages from companies trying to sell their brand. Once upon a time it was simple print ads or TV commercials. Now they get hammered with product placements and spam to their email box. Over time consumers have found ways to adapt through TiVo’s and federal spam laws. As a consumer, I openly admit to practicing ever measure I can to limit this flood of unwanted data.

As a marketer, I understand that these approaches create top-of-mind awareness and sell product. As much as times are changing, brand recognition is still important and will remain an integral part of the marketing process. People buy the products they know.

Apple has launched iAds. A new marketing measure with a million dollar buy-in to place interactive ads in front of iPhone users (using iOS4). These ads place even more daily brand images in front of the consumer.

Nissan is one of the first to participate in this new form of advertising. They are using it to market their new Zero Emissions, 100% electric Nissan LEAF vehicle. The video below is an Apple ad, advertising the capabilities of the iAd platform while promoting the Nissan LEAF, essentially an ad selling ads.

Will it work? Only time will tell but I applaud Nissan and Apple for their willingness to explore bold new avenues. I will always appreciate innovation as I believe that marketing will always be about differentiation. In that flood of daily images, you must dare to stand out to succeed. What do you think?

***This post was created entirely on my iPad***

I am on a quest. I want to determine if anyone can develop the perfect tool for the social media ecosystem. As I have mentioned before, this ecosystem is evolving so rapidly that staying on top of it can be more difficult than finding a 4G iPhone in a bar. I want to know if Apple’s iPad can provide the hardware necessary to make it converge more smoothly than all the other devices I have tried.

With that in mind, I got in line and bought a 3G iPad. Tomorrow, I will begin attending the Social Media Success Summit 2010 so I thought this would be a perfect time to share some of my initial thoughts.

1) it is much more pleasant to type on that I expected. I believe I prefer typing on it in landscape mode over just about any netbook that I have tried. I have not yet clocked my speed but I would expect that with practice, I might be able to rival a physical keyboard.

2) iPad apps look amazing. IPhone apps on an iPad…not-so-much. The resolution and reaction inputs just seem to work better on the “Made for iPad” apps. I am anxious to see how all of my favorite iPod/iPhone apps evolve to the platform to use the increased real estate. I believe I actually prefer the iPad TweetDeck app to the one on my tablet PC. It is clear that they have designed it for the large touch interface of the iPad verses the other way around.

3) Battery life is great! I am getting the stated 9-10 hours. I don’t get that on any laptop or smartphone I own when stressed under heavy use.

4) Lack of Java and Flash is going to be a pain. I went to pre-test the links for the online presentations of the Summit and immediately got the “please install Java” message. I have hit the Flash one several times as well. Please Apple, work this out.

I’ll keep you posted and look forward to my posts on the latest in Social Media as I attend the Summit over the coming weeks.