Revive the Old With the New
SOME THINGS capture the imagination better when repackaged. Ed Delia, president of marketing firm Delia Associates in Whitehouse, sees the fusion of existing products and brands with new technology as a way to kick up interest in a company’s offerings.
“Take a brand concept and technology–predominantly Internet technology–and fuse the two together to create a new experience,” he says. Delia draws parallels with innovations in cooking. “In the 1970s you had French and Asian, and now you have this whole new category called ‘fusion cuisine,’” he says. “It really blends the best of both cuisines.”
The creation of the social network myYearbook.com was a synthesis that garnered the attention of the youth market. Teenage Skillman siblings Catherine and David Cook co-founded myYearbook in 2005, combining the layout of a high school yearbook and with an easy-to-use Web site for recording high school memories. “They took the yearbook, the personal-nostalgia vehicle, fused it with Internet technology and delivered something totally new, which is exactly what the inventors of YouTube did as well,” Delia says.
MyYearbook in New Hope, Pa., has more that 1.7 million members and raised $4.1 million in venture funding in January.
“The strongest vehicle for deployment from a fusion standpoint is wireless technology,” says Delia. “With the mainstream usage of cell phones and PDAs…you are going to see some clever applications.”
