Conventional thinking in regards to Charlie Darwin’s theory of evolution is that biological change is the cumulative result of slow, continual and incremental processes. Think of changes happening in several, barely-perceivable units.

Another change model, punctuated equilibrium, states that species exhibit little change for long periods of time (stasis) interrupted by sudden and radical clusters or bursts of change.

Punctuated equilibrium has been applied to explain how change occurs in economics, organizational behavior and politics. And while an esoteric thought, it certainly seems applicable to the advertising business right now. Technological advances are revolutionizing the way people consume information, and those tasked with creating content for consumption are having to figure out how to adapt. Profoundly and at lightning speed.

Just a thought.

Marketing and Nerdom collide in glorious fashion this week in Austin, Texas, site of the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) conference. And because Red Square lives at the center of both worlds, we’re there.

Digital wunderkinds, Karen Sullivan and Jeff Whitlock, are on hand to absorb as much knowledge as humanly possible. They’ll be tweeting, facebooking, blogging and flickr’ing the whole deal, so stay tuned. If you want to catch up with them in Austin, hit ‘em up.

Also, a small aside: We are quite humbled and excited to be on the list of finalists in the interactive awards show for our BCBS work. So we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.

Our digital work for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama has been selected as a finalist for the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Awards. Please excuse the serious tone with which that intro sentence was written, but this is some seriously awesome recognition. SXSW is the digital/media/tech equivalent of the Super Bowl. The awards “uncover the best new digital work, from websites to web applications and beyond, while celebrating those who are building tomorrow’s online trends.” Just to be considered a part of this movement is pretty amazing.

Our “Be You” social sharing site was selected as one of five finalists in the business category. Awards are given in an assortment of categories, and notable nominees include (watch your feet—we’re droppin’ names) Groupon, The Social Network, US Census, Unilever, Jay-Z, the Pepsi Refresh Project and Conan O’Brien.

We’ll be deploying to Austin in March to absorb as much knowledge and inspiration as our brains can handle, and hopefully we’ll bring back some well-deserved hardware for our great clients at BCBS.

Recently Damian Kulash, lead singer of OK Go, wrote a piece in the WSJ entitled The New Rock-Star Paradigm. The article is an astute summation of the present state of the music business, specifically how the business has changed in the face of maturing digital communications. The guy isn’t your typical rock group frontman.Kulash’s thoughts apply outside of the music industry. How’s your business model holding up? Are you prepared to alter how you self-promote? Can you change how you operate and still make the cash register ring? Something to think about as we begin 2011.

Note: if you haven’t heard of OK Go, see “YouTube.” If you haven’t heard of YouTube, see “the Internet.” If you haven’t heard of the Internet, see “Al Gore.” And so on.

Finally a reason I might buy an iPad: Flipboard. Billed as your own personalized, social magazine, it gathers all of the social web content you care about into a single, pretty slick-looking application. Here’s an overview video.

Kind of a creepy video, though. Particularly when the half-asleep hipster dude tells me that Flipboard knows who my friends are. Reminds me of this.

You can download the app here. (P.S. Thanks to the nice people at Flipboard for sending me some press pics.)

A friend emailed me about an article entitled “Closing the Digital Frontier” in The Atlantic and wanted to get my reaction. Here’s what I wrote back:

I still believe the web is the modern day Wild Wild West; in fact, I call it that around the agency. What we’re seeing now is the adolescence of the Information Age. An equally awkward time for those who create content and those who sell it.

Here’s my take, from a media standpoint: the media (newspapers, magazines and to a much lesser extent broadcast) didn’t take the web seriously enough in its infancy. It was something “they” didn’t understand, and it was thus cast off. To be nice they called it “added value” to their offerings. Content was free, because that was fair market value for online content. Now they are trying to move to charge advertisers more and creating paid content sections for visitors.

The real problem is: how do you shift from an environment in which the content is free to one in which you charge for it?

Meanwhile, companies like Apple and Google were visionary enough to understand the coming seismic shift in consumer behavior. Apple and Google have figured out how to monetize the web, and it isn’t magical–they each basically framed a conduit to corral and distribute the massive amounts of content in an orderly fashion. This creates value. If I want a song, I go to iTunes. If I want anything else, I go to Google.

The move from free to fee is going to be interesting to watch. I suppose you could call the last fifteen years or so “product sampling,” but that’s probably a stretch.

Our pals and sometimes partners-in-awesomeness, Struck/Axiom, recently helped Gatorade with its new social media command center.

The mission-control-like room features large screens with various social media visualizations, such that Gatorade marketing pros can monitor real time conversations not only related to the brand but its competition, sports nutrition, athletes and other popular culture topics its consumers care about. Here’s a YouTube clip overview.

Carla Hassan, Gatorade’s Sr. Marketing Director, says the goal of this project is to “take the largest sports brand in the world and turn it into the largest participatory brand in the world.”

What Hassan is really talking about is an unprecedented level of brand engagement. Brands by their very nature are participatory. After all, brands are merely the aggregate of consumer perceptions, and these perceptions are shaped by consumers’ interactions or participation with a given brand.

The difference today is that people have social media which acts as an amplifier. Anyone can be a media source and build an audience. Smart brands understand that and embrace engagement.

Congrats to Struck/Axiom and Gatorade.

I don’t have an iPad yet. Reason one: Apple develops product in market. So an improved iPad will be out in a few months and will cost less. Reason two: I can’t figure out where it fits into my digital life. I have a MacBook. I have an iPhone. Why do I need an iPad?

That being said, Apple sold about 700,000 units yesterday when the device made its debut. So a few people, who presumably have laptops and smartphones, felt the device serves some purpose.

From the half dozen reviews I’ve read, iPad isn’t any good at making stuff. But it could change the way we consume stuff: books, magazines, newspapers, music, TV, movies, photos, the web and email.

There’s something innately attractive about the tactile nature of the iPhone and now the iPad. That, along with incredible industrial design and user interface. WSJ technology guru, Walt Mossberg, points out:

It could even help, eventually, to propel the finger-driven, multitouch user interface ahead of the mouse-driven interface that has prevailed for decades.

No question, media consumption will continue to evolve. And people who make media content, including advertisers, had better pay attention.

Just a heads up.

UPDATE Monday 4/5: Adweek ponders the iPad this morning. As does AdAge. Both good reads.

A small crew of Red Square kids hit San Francisco this week, and among other business, we had the good fortune to attend and participate in the 4A’s Transformation 2010 Conference. No question communications is experiencing a renaissance, as Arianna Huffington stated on the first day of the conference, “we are living in the golden age of engagement.”

Nick Brien, soon to be head of McCann Worldgroup, gave a great presentation that I feel sums up where we stand as an industry. Bottom line: it’s still about the big marketing idea, but we’re going to have to become more adept at executing concepts across multiple emerging platforms.

I’ll share more thoughts and take-aways from our meetings soon. Oddly, no one from Rice-a-Roni spoke at the conference.

Today, I read about Square. In addition to the name, which I obviously like, I’m blown away by its ingenuity and simplicity. What is Square? TechCrunch writes:

The idea–let people quickly and easily accept physical credit card payments from their mobile phone. A small device attaches to the phone via the headset/microphone jack. The device gets the power it needs to send data to the phone from the swipe of the card, and sends the information over the microphone connection.

Think paypal, but anyone can now accept physical credit card payments, too. With no contracts or monthly fees. People are sent receipts by text and email.

This is a perfect example of how the iPhone (fine, Elena, all smartphones) is changing the game. The peripheral market created by these devices is huge. Rubber, meet road. In other words (and this is where brands need to pay attention), the technology is merely the means to an end. It is the conduit, the feature. The real gold is buried in its application. How does this stuff affect how I work, operate, live? Why do I care?

Square answers this question instantly. The first frame on the web site reads: Accept payments. Everywhere.

Good stuff–definitely one to watch. It also doesn’t hurt that its founder started another little venture you may have heard of, Twitter.

Shortformblog astutely points out, like Twitter, it’s dead simple. Unlike Twitter, it’s not a super-esoteric concept at the out set, begging people to figure out why it’s necessary. It just makes sense.

I’m just happy their logo is green. Otherwise, we would’ve had to throw down.