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Digital Company of the Decade
Google
Sergey Brin and Larry Page surely didn’t realize it when Google launched in 1998, but the two had founded the most powerful direct-response marketing vehicle ever created (people tell Google they want specific stuff and Google delivers ads offering that stuff).
Media Entrepreneurs of the Decade
Larry Page & Sergey Brin
Here’s what really changed about media in the past decade: The fastest growing, most dynamic, disruptive and arguably most important media company of the 2000s produced absolutely no content of its own. Not a single article. No hit series. Google, founded at the end of the prior decade by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, is an engineering endeavor through and through.
Magazine of the Decade
Wired
Wired survived the storm by capturing a broader readership with an editorial mix spanning technology, business, science, entertainment and culture—in essence becoming the chronicler of the technology surge that’s changed all our lives this decade.
Web Site of the Decade
YouTube
YouTube helped make it remarkably easy to post video online, and even easier to stream. Plus, clips could suddenly be embedded on any site across the Web. Super syndication—now a core digital media strategy for many content companies—was born.
Marketer of the Decade
Steve Jobs
Visionary, iconoclastic and fearless, Steve Jobs the marketer is inseparable from Steve Jobs the personality. His inimitable blend of competitive skill and design savvy hasn’t just saved a fading brand, it’s recast two businesses that used to have nothing to do with computers: music and mobile phones.
Marketing Innovation of the Decade
Viral Videos
For advertising, the watershed moment came in 2004, when the “Subservient Chicken” video for Burger King’s TenderCrisp chicken sandwich got hundreds of millions of visits. Here, for the first time, was an ad created for the Internet with a reach far beyond what TV could offer—and all at a fraction of broadcast’s high prices.
Brand of the Decade
Apple
In terms of politics and world events, this has been a wild decade, but on the marketing front, one thing has remained constant: Apple’s emotional connection to consumers, who reward it with an almost cult-like loyalty.
Product of the Decade
iPod
To date, more than 220 million iPods have been sold worldwide. The success is all the more amazing because Apple didn’t invent the MP3 player—it redefined it.
Digital Device/Platform of the Decade
Facebook
Just as Google wasn’t the first search engine, Facebook didn’t invent the social network, but rather improved upon it in such a way that it became the de facto standard. By decade’s end, Facebook was at the forefront of the evolution of online advertising.
