While it's exciting to see the many ways marketers are putting digital platforms to work for their brands, it's just as thrilling to see how others in the MediaLab are rethinking technology itself. Here are three that are making the digital world more effective, more selective, and in the case of one hotel, simply more beautiful.

Consumers may be getting more skeptical about brands by the day, but their enthusiasm for causes is growing by leaps, texts and clicks. Whether through cause-related product purchases, rubber bracelets or just "liking" their favorite nonprofits on Facebook, people are increasingly excited about saving the honeybee, responding to natural disasters or supporting the arts. Two worth a closer look:

MetLife Foundation's "Remember Me" Web site is, among other things, a virtual gallery of family photos. A glance at the site's home page reveals many a family memory - from sisters smiling on a sunny day to men playing cards on a fishing trip. When visitors go to the site, saveamemory.org, they're greeted with a pop-up message telling of the millions of people who lose their memories to Alzheimer's disease every year. Hover over a photo and a prompt appears: "Click to save this memory." MetLife Foundation gives $1 to Alzheimer's charities every time someone clicks a photo in the …

Last May, 500 people met in the New York Public Library's main branch and stayed there all night. Gaming, not reading, was the agenda for the evening. The crowd had gathered to help launch "Find The Future: The Game," a social game and mobile app created in honor of the library's 100 years in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building in midtown Manhattan. Caro Llewellyn, producer of the Library's Centennial celebration, explains that the game was designed in part to highlight the library's substantial collection of historical artifacts, ranging from Jack Kerouac's glasses to a letter opener made from the paw …

Wonderbra's new Ultimate Plunge bra - its deepest cleavage bra to date - makes it possible for women to comfortably wear tops and dresses with plunging necklines. The look is popular on the red carpet these days among celebrities ranging from Jennifer Lopez to Jennifer Aniston. But, not surprisingly, many women are a little shy about showing so much skin. In fact, research shows that Wonderbra's target demo of fashion-conscious females ages 18 to 25 won't even bother to experiment with a new look when they don't feel confident enough to pull it off. So how do you empower these …

While other fashion brands clamor to sell more, Patagonia's full-page ad in The New York Times on Black Friday 2011 told readers to buy one of the company's most popular fleece jackets. A few days later, on Cyber Monday, the company launched The Common Threads Initiative, the first branded eBay store featuring user-generated listings of used Patagonia clothing. The company's message shocked many. "We're asking consumers to take a pledge and enter into a partnership with us," explains Bill Boland, creative director for patagonia.com. "If you pledge to only buy what you need, to reuse things and give them back …

It's strange to describe a brand as enormous as Lenovo as having a recognition problem. The world's fastest-growing PC company, it's also No. 2 in worldwide shipments. And in its native China, it isn't just a well-known entity, it dominates an impressive one-third of all personal computing sales. But despite extensive ad spending in the rest of the world, it is often the brand no one can recall, confesses Tracey Trachta, Lenovo's vice president of brand experience. "We are the brand no one has heard of," she says. "Businesses around the world choose us over the competition, but as of …

Size doesn't matter. Not when it comes to social media marketing at least. The tiny town - hamlet, really - of Obermutten, Switzerland, proved that with an unusual and extremely viral marketing effort in 2011 that generated tremendous Facebook and real-world interaction. Obermutten is a small town with a population of about 79. It's part of the canton of Graubnden, and the agency Jung von Matt/Limmat in Zurich handles the advertising and brand management for the region's tourism. As part of the overall brand promotion for the area last fall, Obermutten promised to print out every Facebook fan's profile picture …

Simultaneously creepy and cool, Intel's Museum of Me is the Facebook app that showed you how much you actually shared with the general public, but presented it in such a way that you couldn't help but think you were special. The Facebook application, which spread across the world virally during the summer of 2011, was born in Asia, the brainchild of Intel's Hong Kong marketing team and Projector, a boutique agency in Japan. The brief was to create an execution that brought the company's tagline for its second-generation Core processors, "Visually Smart," to life in an emotional way. "More and …

When King Arthur Flour sold its first bag of flour to its first baker customer, George Washington was president. But it's learned how to do business and grow globally, using digital tools. "Our approach is to listen, hear what people are saying about us and our brand, and respond," says Halley Silver, director of online services for King Arthur Flour. And when the brand does respond, no matter what the form, it gives what Silver quite accurately terms "an honest, personal answer." In short, the brand's digital personas act the way you would expect (or at least hope) a 220-year-old …