I attended the first 2009 Conversations About the Future of Advertising event (CATFOA) put on by Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) and Minnesota College of Art and Design (MCAD) at the Fine Line Music Cafe (FLMC) last night.

Wow, that’s a damn lot of acronyms there (WTAHOALOAT).

If you’re not already familiar, “CATFOA seeks to improve the quality of interactive marketing and advertising developed in the Twin Cities through enlightening presentations and their resulting conversation.”

Last year’s events were both informative and popular, bringing in a good assortment of nationally recognized media and marketing folks, including Joseph Jaffe (sporting shiny white tennis shoes, mind you) and Adweek’s Brian Morrissey.

Last night’s speaker was Alan Wolk, a New York marketing consultant known for his marketing blog, The Toad Stool, and most recently for his blog series, “Your Brand is Not My Friend.”

Here are a few highlights (captured in <140 character succinct bites, of course):

• “99 percent of brands are NOT Prom Kings” (e.g., Whole Foods, Apple, Batman, Chicago Bears, Rolling Stones) -@awolk #catfoa
• “Ads are now all about getting people to Google. Once this happened, tv and print couldn’t close the deal anymore” -@awolk #catfoa
• “What consumers think is far more valuable than what the brand and ad agency have to say when driving purchase” -@awolk #catfoa

It has to be tough to come in from out of town and have to tackle a diverse crowd of consultants, agency veterans, designers, copywriters, social media gurus and/or recently laid-off folks who may or may not already know lots or very little about what you’re talking about. Hell, I’m still struggling with it. We’re a diverse group.

Unsurprisingly, the questions from the audience showed this diversity — from basic, “How do I know if my company should/should not be blogging?” to the more complex “How you monetize and prove ROI for social media tactics?”

Alan did a good job focusing on top-level concepts and citing a few real world case studies. And since some of us were ready for the 201 and 301-level discussion, his presentation helped kickstart post-lecture networking discussions among attendees, and you know me, I always love the opportunity to bring the interactive marketing community together and pool our intellectual capital (buzzword bingo, ftw!)

CATFOA provided that very opportunity last night (and free food, to boot). Thanks to MIMA, MCAD and Alan!

Check out the upcoming speakers and tell your coworkers they are missing out if they don’t show up (btw, it’s free):

I shared the developing case study of the Motrin Moms campaign crisis, the four-stage reputation recovery model (Rescue, Rewind, Restore, Recover) and an overview of how President-Elect Obama used social media to build a nation of advocates who helped shape his reputation (oh, and help get him elected).

It’s important to remember no reputation is bulletproof, each crisis and recovery has its own rhythm and you can’t just leave reputation up to the roll of the dice.

Also, if you aren’t out there participating in the social mediasphere, you have no ability to help shape your online persona or engage with people talking about your brand.

Here’s what you get if you Google “Greg Swan.” It still bugs me that these three folks are still crowding into my results.

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.