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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):
Monday, March 9
Kristina Halvorson
President
Monday, April 6
Bob Thacker
Senior Vice President, Marketing & Advertising
Monday, April 27
David Armano
Vice President, Experience Design – Critical Mass
Monday, May 11
Michael Lebowitz
Founder & CEO
photo by @tbrunelle
On Wednesday, I had the profound pleasure of moderating a Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) event on the topic Digital Reputation Management, a topic that is a core focus of my company (and me personally) in 2009.
A Weber Shandwick proprietary analysis revealed that over three-quarters (79 percent) of the world’s number-one most admired companies lost their crowns over the past five years in their respective industries.
Reputation loss is also on the rise. Nearly 9 out of 10 business executives participating in our Safeguarding Reputation™ survey agree that susceptibility to reputation damage is a growing threat.
Similarly, a sizable 84 percent of global senior executives surveyed by the Economist Intelligence Unit reported that reputation risk increased significantly over the past five years. When executives were asked to choose among 13 risk types, reputation risk emerged as the most significant threat to global corporate business.
As company, brand and product reputations fluctuate and/or deteriorate worldwide, communicators need to proactively engage reputation radar systems to identify, track and respond to approaching reputation threats, as well as find ways to locate and empower brand advocates.
This is definitely a topic which our interactive marketing community needs to be active (especially proactive) in discussing, exploring and collaborating. What a great panel topic!
Our star-studded panel constsited of Tammy Lee Stanoch, VP Corporate Communications for Delta/NWA, Lela Phommasouvanh, Senior Consultant, Search Marketing for FindLaw, a Thomson Reuters Business, and Steve Bendt, Social Technology Activist for Best Buy, Inc.
More than 250 attendees absorbed tips about tracking buzz, making the business case to leadership and the imperative “Set Up a Google Alert for your name and your clients’ names” mantras. If you missed the event, you can stream the archive here.
Gems from the discussion:
- Be authentic
- Be transparent
- Be cautious, but fearless
- Don’t be stupid
- Don’t be unethical
- Trust your employees and your customers
- Realize you don’t have control, but put forth measures to proactively inoculate detractors and engage advocates
The panel put together a list of suggested reading links on del.icio.us here, and also mentioned the following resources to research, check out, use or peruse:
- Best Buy Connect (BBY Employee Aggregator)
- Blue Shirt Nation (BBY’s Internal Social Network)
- Spy (can listen in on the social media conversations you’re interested in)
- Twitter Search (Twitter search tool that includes RSS feeds)
- RipOff Report (central place to enter complaints about companies and individuals who are ripping people off)
- Yelp (User Reviews and Recommendations of Top Restaurants, Shopping, Nightlife, Entertainment, Services and More)
- Radian6 (tools for real-time social media monitoring and analysis designed primarily for PR and Ad agencies)
- Trakur (online reputation monitoring tool designed to assist you in tracking what is said about you on the internet)
- FlyerTalk (the world’s most popular frequent flyer community)
- LinkedIn (a networking tool that helps you discover inside connections to recommended job candidates, industry experts and business partners.)
- ZoomInfo (a Web-based service that extracts information about people and companies from millions of published resources)
- Spock (the world’s leading people search engine)
- Cluetrain Manifesto (suggestion from audience that everyone should read it, and I concur)
- Addictomatic (suggestion from the audience)
I also recommend:
- OMGILI (research tool that finds consumer opinions, debates, discussions, personal experiences, answers and solutions)
- PopURLS (the aggregator of the aggregators, which you can set a bookmark for specific keyword/industry terms)
- And a whole host of other resources that can be found on this post from July’s Information Overload MIMA event.
If you have others to share, please include them in the comments.
UPDATE:
Steve Bendt has a recap post here.
I’m going tomorrow. Shoot me a DM if you’re there, and we haven’t met yet (@perfectporridge).
From the TC Daily Planet:
“Tools for Democracy, Strategies for Change” is the theme of the Twin Cities Media Alliance’s 4th Annual Fall Media Forum, tomorrow, Oct. 4, at the downtown Minneapolis Public Library.
Featured speakers include Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, on how citizens can use new media as tools for participation in electoral politics; Robyne Robinson on how to use mainstream media, and Amalia Anderson of the Main Street Project, on organizing for media reform and media justice.
Afternoon workshop topics will include media justice and media reform; digital skills training, and a talking circle for journalists, participants and bystanders who witnessed the RNC protests.
This event is open to the public and free of charge, but donations are welcome.
Online preregistration is now closed, but you may register onsite on the day of the forum.
I’m particularly interested to hear their perspective on the Steve Jobs/CNN iReport citizen journalism debacle from today and any lasting impact given the criticism coming from the MSM and SEC.
I was interviewed for this story in the Pioneer Press about three weeks ago and forwarded Julio the majority of these links. We were pleased to be included in the sidebar of local Web resources!
Here’s the info from the sidebar with hyperlinks…
Here are more local sites with in-depth information on food, drink,
music, literature, neighborhoods, family fun and more.
