Coca-cola and Wieden & Kennedy are expanding their “happiness” branding with a new spot featuring a world filled with gamers and social networkers ignoring each other while they are jacked in to their virtual worlds.

One lone “reality-lover” wades through the avatars on the way to enjoy a soda pop. When he finally gets to enjoy his soft drink among the wifi-ers, he meets a fellow cola enthusiast who learns that maybe socializing is better face-to-face, over a Coke.

There’s another story here, however. Assuming the spot wants to sell to teens, it misses the mark. The world has changed but social networking and gaming is the norm to millenials. They don’t see faces buried in mobile devices as a societal failure. They would prefer to broadcast their thoughts entire lives to many others than to enjoy a double malt with a stranger at the drug store.

The target will be watching this spot and, yes, will be intrigued by the plethora of mingling avatars, but they’ll be wondering what game each player is enjoying, not what tonic can save them from their 24/7 wired addiction. Coke should be asking, ‘How can we make ourselves the drink of choice for social networking?’ And, ‘Does our agency really understand the new paradigms of the digital-driven world?’

(Perhaps appropriately, you can view the non-embeddable spot at Creativity.)

For years now, usability evangelists have been searching for a Perry Masonic closing remark that would secure a proper judgement from sceptics of the information architecture and user interface design process.

“Why spend time and money on prototyping and usability testing,” the stakeholders ask, “What is the ROI?”

There have been few, if any, strong cases to prove what experience designers have known and espoused since Louis Rosenfeld published his O’Reilly Polar Bear Book/IA Constitution in ‘98.

Now, Jared M. Spool has handed usability experts this elusive case study to tip the scales for any web building jury. He explains here: How Changing a Button Increased a Site’s Annual Revenues by $300 Million.

The main points? Visitors to a major e-com site didn’t want to sign in to buy, they just wanted to get in and out. Spool and his team changed the copy on the registration form (which most users wanted to skip anyway) and cashed in on an additional $300M over the next year.

Information Architecture is good. How good? $300 Million good. Now I hope you’ll get as excited as I do when you get to review wireframes and test multivariate interfaces.

1. Facebook tried to be Twitter, with a partnership with CNN. Will this happen more and more? Will Facebookers feel the need to Tweet?
2. CNN.com served 13 million+ streams… but fell behind, and offered lower quality than UStream and Joost.
3. Twitter stayed up, and so did the mobile networks!
4. Whitehouse.gov launched at 12:01pm including a blog, podcasts, video, RSS… but without comments? (Like Obama’s inauguration, it’s a good start)
5. The world watched, Together.

I can hear the client now: “We need to make our gift cards more engaging.”

I would have kept a straight face, while I laughed on the inside. I would have made a half-hearted attempt at a brainstorming session and then tried to gloss over the request among other goals and great ideas during the client presentation.

But, I now realize I should really push for the exceptional experience in every strategy and tactic. No matter how audacious, ridiculous or obnoxious, there’s always an opportunity to raise the bar on every product, channel, tactic and strategy, including even the now ubiquitous gift card.

I have the Home Depot to thank for this revelation. Seen above (in a photo at which my old photography professor would shudder), a gingerbread man gift card I received for the holidays. More than just a gift card, however, as it came with a set of static-cling plastic features with which to decorate my bare cookie. Check it out:

Bottom line, I’m engaged. I’m showing friends – before and after I decorate my drywalling yuletide biscuit friend. This brilliant idea works on many levels:

1. At the checkout, this has great potential as an impulse buy;
2. If the giftee unwraps or unstocks with friends and family, this is a conversation starter;
3. The giftee can play (!) with the normally 100% utilitarian gift before eventually cashing it in for cool lumber and copper tubing;
4. The design seamlessly meshes The Home Depot’s branding and holiday theming; and,
5. They got me blogging about it.

Cheers to the team that put this one together. And good, though belated, tidings to all.

Note: The client quote above is a completely fabricated Pilkingtonian situation that may not have occurred. It was created by me, only to serve my point in this post. If anyone knows of the actual people involved and process that occurred to invent and implement the gingerbread cookie gift card (I’m looking at you, @thehomedepot on Twitter), I’d be happy to update this entry.

You may not have known this was so important. But Goodie Bag TV demonstrates why progress bars are just one of many best practices of predictability in experience design. Embrace progress bars.

And make sure your interface is predictable!

Organic’s ThreeMinds blog has a couple of great posts that I think you’ll enjoy:

1. Social media micro case study: “X-Men” by Russ Hopkinson estimates the value of a brands’ friends on MySpace, and what they may have lost.
2. Turning Nothing Into Something by Michael Beavers examines a fantastic idea from ThisIsReality.org — Advertising in context on a 404 error page. And also;
3. A Look Back at Some Favorite iPhone Apps from 2008