Korean electronics giant Samsung has gone way beyond the ordinary with its ludicrously scaled battle to save the planet to promote its newest smartphone the Galaxy S5 - racking up half a million views in only a day. There’s a certain charm to the premise, plus its amazingly tenuous attempts to show the S5's key features and the 4 minute spot, ‘The Training’, certainly isn’t short on entertainment value. Also  it marks possibly the only time we’ll see Messi and Ronaldo working together, despite a relatively contemptuous glance afterwards.

Under its sci-fi skin it offers some not unlikely world cup scenarios – an English player (Rooney) fails to score a penalty, Casillas gets to play a cup game and Victor Moses appears, inexplicably, but with little impact- in fact the ball actively gets up and walks away from him. More unlikely though is the six armed robot goalkeeper and hopefully the prospect of alien invasion.

If you’re going for the full experience check out to the precursor trailer, setting the scene for ‘The Training’ – aptly named ‘The Beginning’, or even the comprehensive microsite. Personally, despite not having waited all my life for a weird cocktail of Tron, District 9, Portal and football, I’m interested to see where Samsung takes the campaign next. The blockbuster approach from agency, RGA, means it certainly won’t be lost amongst shallow, unadventurous World Cup cash-in ads.

Online retail giant Amazon is reported to be making a massive departure from the normal stats-hike of smartphone development, as its debut phone, arriving in June, will feature a 3D-capable screen.

This is in sharp contrast to the slowing evolution of established brands in the mobile phone space. Apple, Samsung, HTC and the many others are opting for slight improvements to existing models while the hardware makers are pushing more pixels into the screen at a depth that comes close to imperceptible.

While it’s not an obvious move from the Jeff Bezos led company, it has a precedent, with the Kindle going from curious technological move to (at one point) the second best selling tablet on the planet. 3D is fast becoming the next great step in consumer tech and all the major movers are pushing higher stakes into the game; Facebook have acquired VR start up Oculus Rift, while Microsoft are considering a 3D scanner for inclusion on their next phone. Alongside the software potential, the 3D printing revolution’s continued surge has prompted Fox’s Business division to ask whether it’s set to re-invigorate Amercia’s manufacturing industry.

As a company serving the digital space, the potential disruption and development that 3D proposes is a fascinating situation for us to ponder. As recruitment specialists though we know where there’s development, there’s opportunity and where there’s opportunity there’s jobs. So the stats prove – 3D rendering soared by 43.9% to 2,784 jobs, 3D animation rose by 35.7% to 3,183 jobs and 3D modelling increased 34.5% to 3,230 jobs.

The momentous shift to mobile from desktop continues unabated, with mobile phone jobs increasing by 35.3% to 13,340 positions. That’s only more good news for Amazon who have the chance to effectively own the 3D retail space as they did the online retail space. With a marriage of software, hardware and service in an ecosystem that even lock-in specialists Apple could envy, Amazon could prove to be a very significant dark horse in the race for digital domination.

Within digital jobs though, it hints at a future where certain skill-sets are about to take on another dimension.

With Apple and Samsung returning to the courtrooms to fight the second round of the ongoing patent case an interesting bi-product has been the public release of several internal correspondences from major Apple staff.

The ‘Holy War’

First up is the Apple vs Google battle that is seemingly dominating everything with a microchip. Steve Jobs, Apple’s former CEO who tragically died in 2011 wasn't shy about his dislike for the internet giant, having famously promised ‘thermonuclear war’ on them. In Jobs’ biography he stated ‘“I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product.” For the leaked e-mails Jobs settled for the equally dramatic ‘Holy War’ (scheduled for 2011). It’s an interesting thing to note with Apple frequently denying paying any attention to their competitor’s actions and with Google standing as an awkward but interested (and hugely related) 3^rd party in the latest court case. It was years removed from being the first time Jobs’ had threatened ‘war’ with Google, as in 2005 he’d let Sergey Brin of Google know that any poaching of staff between the companies would lead to that outcome. That behind-the-scenes agreement between major tech giants is currently the topic of another unrelated court case.

Samsung joined in for good measure, their own correspondence outlined their objective: “Beating Apple is #1 Priority (everything must be in context of beating Apple).”

The ‘Top 100’

That particular ‘Holy War’ was a prominent discussion point in a meeting of ‘The Top 100’, somewhere secret and far from the Cupertino company’s main campus. The Top 100, it is revealed, is a select bunch of Apple’s top employees that are invited to strategise the company’s plans for the years ahead.

The ‘Next Big Thing’

Apple’s competition and its relevance to the company at large comes into clearer focus in an exchange of e-mails with its ad agency, TBWA/The Media Arts Lab.  With Samsung debuting its Next Big Thing campaign, created by agency 72andSunny, to a hugely positive public response Apple’s marketing department faced an unusually imposing threat to its image. Apple’s SVP of Marketing Phil Schiller was prompted into a sharp response to the agency’s suggestion that Apple’s internal structure was blocking progress on “nailing a compelling brief for the iPhone”. 

The Here and now

However with Apple seeking a $2 billion dollar lawsuit and with the potential aftermath of massive blocks on developments integral to the Android OS this courtcase could leave a hugely different tech landscape. With Samsung making a handy Google stooge for Apple it seems that whether ‘Thermonuclear’, ‘Holy’ or just incredibly ‘Cold’ a true Apple vs Google clash may be on the horizon.

All that probably will end up meaning though is more and more court cases.

While Ellen DeGeneres was busy breaking Twitter with the singlemost retweeted picture in history, as a fortunate bi-product of Samsung product placement, most major brands were only partially engaging with an audience that found itself at a fever-pitch. Real time marketing is a hot topic for 2014 and while it remains inexorably linked to a biscuit, thanks to Oreo’s memorable Superbowl offering, that’s proof that it’s not quite blossomed out to its full potential.

Arby’s, the American food outlet, stole an early lead in the field for 2014 with its Grammys stealing comments on musician-of-the-moment Pharrell Williams’ unusual hat and its uncanny likeness to their logo. The brand moved on to cement their relationship by then purchasing the hat when it was sold for charity by Pharrell and even managed to insert themselves into the Oscars buzz thanks to Williams’ nomination for the Despicable Me 2 soundtrack.

With the spectacular space setting for Gravity generating a lot of the excitement around the visuals in cinema in the build up to the Oscars, NASA was presented with a comfortable opportunity to let its content do the talking. Sharing remarkable vistas of the cosmos, NASA was able to present one of the most coherent and inspiring brand experiences of the night.

NASA’s ability to share from their library of images and still create interest was an attribute sadly lacked by some of the stock-image posts from brands that fell flat. At least though they were on topic; as some brands had pre-bought social space, or in this case “#jennifer lawrence”, with no intention of mentioning the American Hustle star. Which is strange in itself, as their audience was mentioning just that.

At this stage in its development the practice of Real Time Marketing will see its fair share of missteps and also landmarks, so the need for inspiring leaders becomes crucial. At the moment most real time marketing efforts garner less than 100 shares and most marketers surveyed would describe themselves as ill-equipped or unsupported.

However with the likes of Urban Airship this period of uncertainty and nervousness may be set to end, as the Wall Street Journal explains:

Real Time Marketing certainly makes itself an outstanding argument as one of the richest frontiers for exploration for brands looking to engage with the first generation raised on Tumblr’s cross-media scavenging and unstoppable torrent of memes.  With major players already staking their interest and year that’s ripe with events, including an especially exciting Brazil-based World Cup, by this time next year there could be more in the hall of fame than a solitary Oreo.