I had no idea this photo would follow me around

What are people saying about you? What kinds of pictures will your boss, employees or (gasp!) kids discover with a few short clicks? What does any of this mean to your personal brand?

This Thursday I’m co-presenting “The Brand of You in the Digital Age” with Tim Brunelle at an event hosted by the Minnesota Chapter of the American Marketing Association and Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA).

We’re going to talk about the changing face of personal brand, why your online identify matters and tips for monitoring, positioning and saving your digital reputation.

Event details:
The Brand of You in a Digital Age
July 9, 2009 | 5:00 p.m.
Grumpy’s Bar – Roseville, MN | REGISTER HERE

Be sure to check out Tim’s preview post at the MNAMA blog.

The South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Conference is this week in Austin, TX. It’s the annual sharing and learning event for interactive professionals around the world.

This morning I hit the “Emerging From a Recession with Emerging Media” panel, featuring Patrick Moorhead of Razorfish and David Polinchock of the Brand Experience Lab.

The premise: The economy has tanked. Slides showing an entire foreclosed block of houses for sale, charts of stock prices and crying children quickly made their point for attendees. However, panelists argue, a poor economy is not a reason for marketers and brands to sit on their tried-and-true laurels.

More than 50 widely-successful companies were started during the Great Depression and/or 1970s Recession, including CNN, QuickTrip and Buffalo Wild Wings.

Polinchock made frequent reference to Encyclopedia Britannica sticking to their business model of selling information a letter book at a time for decades, ignoring that consumers were changing their consuption habits. Wikipedia may not be as trustworthy, but it’s instant and intuitive.

This is why it’s imperative for companies to reevaluate their approach to ROI, instead focusing on Return On Innovation as they weigh marketing strategies and tactics for the short and long term.

Technology You Won’t Be Able to Live Without 10 Years From Now

• QR codes: tiny graphics that can be photographed/scanned to pull data or direct to a Web site
• Real-time video: Companies like Qik already allow consumers to stream to the Web live from their phones. Can you imagine the implications of going to a concert where people are streaming the show live? It’s coming. (NOTE: This is one of my big concepts I’ve been talking about for a few years, actually. I want to go to YouTube Live and see 2,000 live feeds from fans at a Radiohead concert in Madrid by 2012. We’ll see…)
• Ordering a Big Mac using RFID: The concept of ordering food by pointing your phone to the food you want, getting txt updates when it’s ready, billing it to your cell phone bill and your food knowing where you’re sitting in the restaurant. RFID has huge potential.
• Visual search: the concept of typing “lime green shoelaces” into Google and getting 18,000 text results will seem archaic. We process visual information faster (don’t have to read). Like.com already lets you shop visually for shoes and handbags.

Takeaways:

• Don’t take technology for granted
• Consumers get spoiled easily – expectations are high
• Innovation happens – what are you going to do?
• Evolve or die
• Suspend disbelief in order to get smart
• No “no risk”

Create customer engagements that are:

• As intuitive as play
• and are as emotional as film.

The panel ended with Polinchock showcasing this awesome interactive program for MSNBC NewsBreaker that allows cinema audiences to control the game. I took some video of the panel audience controlling the game:

Please leave comments over at Social Studies.

CC: toprankblog via Flickr

They had a nice office, although too few plug-ins and not enough coffee.

First off, congrats to Rick Mahn and the entire MSP community for growing SMB MSP into the monster that it is. I can still remember the first SMB at Key’s Cafe with like 10 of us ACTUALLY SITTING DOWN TO EAT BREAKFAST.

And now here we are eight months later with free books, Fortune 1000 companies opening their doors to us, nametags (!?!) and 100 attendees. Holy crap. This thing is a beast.

David Meerman Scott presented today. If you didn’t know already, this guy is one of the founding fathers of marketing 2.0. Here’s his Wikipedia bio:

Scott’s ideology “the new rules of marketing & PR” is that marketing and public relations is vastly different on the Web than in mainstream media. He says that the “old rules” of mainstream media (which he asserts do not work on the Web) are about “controlling a message” and the only ways to get the message into the public domain using mainstream media is to buy expensive advertising or beg the media to write about you. He says that the rules of marketing and PR on the Web are completely different. Instead of buying or begging your way in, Scott says anybody can “publish their way in” using the tools of social media such as, blogs, podcasts, online news releases, online video, viral marketing, and online media.

So yeah, he’s kind of a big deal. He speaks to 20,000 people a year, has multiple books and definitely knows his stuff.

CC: toprankblog via Flickr

His new book, World Wide Rave, talks about ways companies can create triggers to cause raves and engage their consumers.

David is a great speaker and while he evangelizes a lot of what I share with clients every day, he sure does say it better.

For example:”On the Web, you are what you publish…and what other people publish about you.”

David opened his presentation showing how one person in a stadium can cause a wave, which I think is a great meta example for clients.

CC: toprankblog via Flickr

He talked about his Word of Mouse theory, including Cadbury Gorilla YouTube and remixes:

He discussed some old rules and new rules, including Buy Your Way Into Advertising and Beg your way in with PR (old rules) compared to Publish your way in directly (new rule) and offered to sell sticker space on his laptop for $2k/year.

Another old rule is Measurement via sales leads and press clips. On the web, says David, these leads are silly and counterproductive because they cause you to do the wrong thing.

David Meerman Scott’s Rules of the Rave:
1.    Nobody cares about your problem (except you)
2.    No coercion required.
3.    Lose control
4.    Put down roots
5.    Creat triggers that encourage people to share
6.    Point the world to your (virtual) doorstep

David says he shares all of these theories and then clients say,  “Hang on, but we’re a ________________” so he shows them the case study of B2B toilet company CWS with their “Say No to Dirt” YouTube video boasting 2 million views:

Since I’m a music blogger, I quickly connected with his “Why was the Grateful Dead popular?” analogy. Because they let their audiences record their concerts and trade tapes, consumers were so interested and fascinated by the music they wanted to come and experience it themselves (well, that and the drugs but he didn’t really get into that). TGD became the most popular touring band in history because they lost control over their music.

Other examples worth highlighting:

• Who says dentists can only market the traditional, boring way? Local dentist campaign, Healthy Mouth, Healthy Sex, which was released as a free ebook and quickly spread like crazy. It gave consumers (and media) a unique angle to pass along to their influence groups.
• NY Islanders Hockey Team have the NYI Blog Box and treat bloggers the same as MSM. They had 12 bloggers accepted for last season; 20 for this season. They get  the best seats for every game in press section, access to interview coaches and players, media sheets and are enabled to break stories.
• Create Triggers that encourage people to share, for example, the “Cities I’ve Visited” Facebook Application from TripAdvisor, which more than 5 million people have installed. It took TA two days to make this application.
• “Everything I’ve been talking about is search engine marketing. If you have a crappy site and do SEO, it’s just a slightly less crappy site.”
• Point the world to your virtual doorstep — once you’ve engaged with our online advocates and created all of these social media programs, be sure they can point somewhere online where you can keep the discussion going and provide value.

Last night I spoke to Matt Wilson’s MCAD class about music/band marketing. They were a super smart group of students working on projects for STOOK!, The Invincible Kids, Dance Band, Military Special and Kristoff Krane.

My approach to marketing a band is akin to consumer product roll-out and positioning strategies, and I spent a lot of time listening and responding to their specific local band challenges and opportunities using insight from both my day job and music blog.

In honor of the class, I’m going to start a series of indy band tips over at PerfectPorridge.com.

Read the first post here.