Yesterday i made it to Marketing Now @ the Sofitel in Melbourne. The flavour of the event was “How to use Social Media and Online Marketing to reach customers directly, and keep them.” Here’s Dave and myself courtesy of David Armano, as are all these shots gratefully borrowed from his twitpic
Some spectacularly credible speakers sharing their wisdom yesterday were Gavin servant of chaos Heaton, Laurel silkcharm Papworth and Darren problogger Rowse.
As someone who is hungry for social business learnings i found Laurel and Darren (unfortunately i missed Gavin) both generous and inspiring. I came away enriched and wondered why every seat wasn’t filled. The entry price was a $100 donation, $50 of which went towards thankyou water so it was all very affordable and worthy. One of the concepts Laurel touched on was COI, the Cost of Inaction…worth bearing in mind.
I would say that the majority of marketing directors out there are tussling with the concept of infusing social media into their businesses and brands. With a few exceptions the results so far are indifferent and yet if they’d broken away from the slavery of emails and meetings their understanding could have been mightily accelerated. I wonder if in 12 months the same speakers are assembled there will be a queque to attend?
Moving on…i took the opportunity to promote Nuffnang by stickering the venue at strategic points as in the photo…nicely spotted by Mr A.
For those who missed the event here’s Darren talking about how to promote a blog. This is from his blog not yesterday’s session, but similar content. Laurel’s presentation is available here. Many of her slides are minimalist and need Laurel to do them justice but my favourite slides are 18-24 inc. Judging by the comments flying in on twitter David Armano’s session is along these lines.
The social business challenge as we see it here at FRANkVizeum is to take social to market pitched at a level that integrates a brand’s current investment in paid for media activity and does not leave marketers thinking “What are you talking about?” and “How is this possibly relevant to my brand(s)?” We have our social media infusion process, some case histories and we run our free FRANkademy session each month to introduce social thinking within a traditional media context. It’s working for us and our clients and i would encourage any brand with just their toes in the water to dive in and splash about.
Anybody who went to MarketingNow (or didn’t) want to add their thoughts?
I thought Armano was great, wish he had more examples of brands taking on “social business strategy” though. It’s so new here in Australia but my bet is that in the next two years “social business” will become the way organisations communicate internally and externally.
by tamir on September 24th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Do you think there will be a time of collective realisation followed by an avalanche of demand for social media practitioners in the next 12 months?
by martyn thomas on September 24th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
A great conference! One key learning for me was that social business strategy is about the people not the technology. Unlike ‘Interactive’ marketing which involves TECHNOLOGY < --> HUMAN interaction, Social Marketing is PEOPLE < --> PEOPLE with technology as just the enabler. Thanks to Armano for this insight.
by mudge on September 24th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
I think it’s interesting how MarketingNow were charging thousands of dollars entrance fee a couple of weeks ago then all of a sudden changed this. Was this because of Chris Bogan or bad RSVP response?
Regardless, there are some speakers there who I would have loved to see such as Darren, Laurel and Armano.
@Martyn I think that as more and more companies wise-up on how effective social media can be for businesses, yes, demand should increase in the next couple of months. I think FrankVizeum will be in a good place
by Arnold - Web Aces on September 27th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
I mentioned that we’d been to the conference to number of marketing clients none of which knew that it had taken place. Maybe the same people keep attending the same conferences just talking to each other…
by martyn thomas on September 28th, 2009 at 8:59 am
Thanks for the mention
I put my slides up online etc. for those that missed the conference. Some of the speakers recorded on video their presentation – check Stewart Media for example.
Cheerio
Laurel @SilkCharm
by Laurel Papworth on October 30th, 2009 at 6:37 pm