Actions Speak Louder than Clicks; or, The Prodigal Brand

My last ad:tech session of the week was Actions Speak Louder than Clicks: Exploring the Laws of Relationship Marketing.

Okay, relationship marketing. I hope you've got a pair of Chuck Taylors on hand.

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We Don't Have a Search Beast; We've Got an Ego Vacuum

On Wednesday morning at ad:tech in Chicago, I hit Managing the Search Beast, the first of the several SEM seminars I masochistically slated myself to take.

It was one of those seminars in which a speaker like David Doucette feebly tries pushing product (the Fairmont Hotel and Resorts) while the audience, every member of which thinks it's smarter than he, attacks with questions that, if you've ever worked in SEM, you know nobody knows the answers to.

And they're simple questions: "How did you track that social networking effort?" and "How do you prevent against click fraud?"

The crickets chirp in response. It's not that there aren't any answers; it's that marketing and sales guys rarely have a true sense of what's happening on the back-end when it comes to SEO. They pull the numbers from IT and that's the deepest it gets.

This is one reason why search engine marketing (poetically) highlights the growing tensions between marketing and tech.

You think Boyz n the Hood was scary? You've probably got similar tensions running between creatives and devvies - except without guns, and possibly more animosity.

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Defining the New Media Currency

I loved the cheek of this panel. This session was promoted under the assertion that our digital marketplace demands a new, "universal currency" to measure online effectiveness. Once the moderator, David Carrel - VP, Director Strategy & Analysis at Digitas introduced and set up the proposition, the panelists proceeded to vilify the idea of a universal currency of measurement. It was actually pretty entertaining as they made forceful, yet persuasive arguments for the "debate" to go away. Read more...

The Art of Conversation: Building Great Brands in the Digital Age

We heard a great collection of diverse talent describe how they build great brands in today's keynote session, moderated by Boyd Peterson, SVP Consumer Research, Yankee Group Research.

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Multi-Tasking Millenials - Distracted or Connected?

If you were not at this session, you really missed out on a great opportunity to listen to two of the sharpest minds in the business expound on how to actively engage and succeed in marketing to millenials.

The flow of information during the session came out as millenials tend to behave - fast and furious. Kris Oser, Director of Strategic Communications, at eMarketer was a great choice to moderate this small-numbered but incredibly knowledgeable panel of which was comprised:

Samantha Skey, Executive VP, Strategic Marketing, Alloy Marketing and
Erin Matts, Group Director, Strategy, OMD Digital.

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Building Relationships With Your Customers Through Mobile: Mobile's Inheritance

I am far from a mobile marketing expert, in reality I would say that I know very little about it beyond what anyone watching an emerging platform would know. I have always had a sense that for me, as a consumer, it was not something I was interested in. This panel, however, has changed my mind.

MODERATOR:
Jack Philbin, Co-Founder and President, Vibes Media

PANELISTS:
Bob Wesley, CEO, Modiv Media
Dean Macri, Founder and CEO, Cielo Group
Brook Pitts, Senior VP, Marketing Innovation, Bank of America

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Should Media and Creative Come Back Together?

In the 1986 horror classic remake "The Fly," Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) accidentally transforms into a tragic, man-insect creature that he calls "Brundlefly." It's difficult for me not to think of "the great re-bundling debate" without thinking about that movie, and how we're doomed to rehash the pros and cons of media/creative bundling until we die.

I think Noah Brier, a "strategist" with Naked Communications, was right when he said "just wait 5 years," because that's the cycle agencies seem to be on when they either bundle or unbundle media. We are currently experiencing a massive re-bundling, led by Interpublic Group, DraftFCB and Universal McCann to name a few. Noah gave us this history of unbundling: "Media agencies were getting tired of getting pushed around and decided to take their expertise (and money) elsewhere."

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Building Trust and Loyalty: Constructing a Brand Dialogue with your Consumers

This session actually lived up to the promotional description, as two clients and their agency counterparts talked about building digital strategies to better engage consumers. The panel was moderated by Kenneth Cassar, Chief Analyst and Senior Director, Industry Solutions, Nielsen/Netratings. Panelists included Mark Hillman, Chief Creative Officer, Resource Interactive, Chris Keith, Associate Marketing Director, Herbal Essence, Proctor & Gamble, Mark Renshaw, Senior VP, One-to-One Marketing Solutions, Arc Worldwide and Laurie Clithero, Interactive Brand Manager, Nestle Purina PetCare Company.

Though we got off to a weak start when Kenneth Cassar asked the question "Will the internet ever be as impactful as television"? Huh? The panelists responded intelligently with a unanimous "duh, yeah..." but without the sarcasm. Mark Renshaw from Arc Worldwide dutifully pointed out the fact that the internet is interactive and allows companies to create dialogues with their customers. Ten minutes into the session and I was very worried.

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Appointment Marketing, Consumers Check In

Led by the emergence of new media consumption habits, consumers and marketers alike have evolved past the interruptive media model and ushered in appointment aka engagement marketing. Consumers still seek to learn about new products and services but they are also interested in experiences worthy of their time.

Marketing professionals now look to create destinations, experiences and utility that will motivate an audience to engage with their brand. Moderated by Glen Sheehan, Group Creative Director of T3 (The Think Thank), this session exhibited a strong panel of experts including:

Glen Sheehan, Group Creative Director, T3 (The Think Tank)
Steve Calder, Executive VP, Executive Media Director, Mullen mediaHUB
Adrian Ho, Partner, Zeus Jones
Brian Morrissey, Senior Reporter, Interactive, Adweek
David Murphy, Co-President, Barrie, D'Rozario and Murphy

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Ratings Maelstrom

I love to listen to intelligent people really dig into a topic that they both understand and enjoy discussing, and this was panel was a joy.

MODERATOR:
Brad Berens, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief and Chief Content Officer, iMedia Communications, Inc.

PANELISTS:
Ali Mirian, Director of Product Management - Publisher Solutions, 24/7 Real Media
Carolyn Creekmore, Senior Director, Media Analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings
Alistair Sutcliffe, VP, ComScore
Tim Barnes, VP, Global Business Intelligence Group, Avenue A | Razorfish

In an evolving online marketplace, where new platforms are being developed every day, most marketers find themselves a bit lost. It often seems impossible to see even a hint of the horizon, because the here and now has completed surrounded you. Now imagine what that is like for the people who measure the effectiveness of all those new platforms.

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Aha! Igniting Your Creative Spark in the Digital Age

This presentation, by SubscriberMail's Jordon Ayan, was a classic example of how old speeches try to sound current by bolting on the words "...in the digital age." The only digital element I witnessed during Jordon Ayan's speech was a few people text messaging instead of paying attention to his presentation. Ayan acknowledged that his book "Aha! 10 ways to free your creative spirit and find your great ideas" was written 11 years ago, which made me wonder if anyone else in the audience was also feeling bamboozled. But let's set that aside a minute and consider what we learned.

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Video (Hasn't Quite) Killed the OG Network Star

This morning at ad:tech, big brands like YouTube and Yahoo debated the likelihood that the Holy Grail, sought after by everyone from Indiana Jones to Tom Hanks, is (and perhaps always has been) in the unlikely hands of advertisers.

With every new medium comes a wave of schizophrenic behavior in which old media titans express fear, reproach and otherwise bridle at a "threat" that has seen no equal in history.

The movie industry did this with the arrival of VHS, and we do it today with online video - not without merit. Around a narrow corner lives the thinly-veiled concern that we might be kissing our cash cow, network TV, good-bye (and good luck), in favor of a mutable and virtually immeasurable entity: the internet.

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Publishing in the Digital Age: Feast or Famine?

Digital technologies and platforms have turned the publishing world upside-down. New-breed publishers continue to enter the landscape and are helping to drive the evolution of what publishing offline and online is all about.

Doron Wesly, VP Media Practice, Millward Brown, set the stage right off, indicating that web pages have come to include more than just text, now including podcasts, video webcasts, interactive online forms, games and more. So clearly, their is a need to recognize that the online space has moved beyond the "add on / added value" mentality many publishers and marketers have had about it.

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Impact of Mobility Solutions on Consumer and Brand Experiences

This moderated panel discussion was designed to enable the panelists to discuss how leading brands and institutions are generating greater value from their customers through the mobile channel and how they build customer affinity and brand recognition at a deeper level to develop stronger customer relationships. It was interesting to see that mobile solutions is still very much in 'wild west' territory.

The panelists were:
Zaw Thet, CEO and Co-Founder, 4Info, Inc., a SMS content and advertising company.
Dan Miller, VP Mobile Solutions, Neighborhood America.
Kathy Volpi, Director, U.S. Cellular and is responsible for mass advertising and sponsorship for the carrier.
Frederick Ghahramani, Director and Co-Founder, AirG.

The moderator, Gene Keenan, VP of Mobile Services for Isobar Communications used his role well by kicking off the panel discussion with prepared questions that continued throughout the session. The first question was right at the top of almost all marketers and agencies which is "what would be a good response rate be for a SMS campaign?"

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eCommerce Marketing: The Art of Customer Acquisition

Moderated by Teresa Caro, Director of Strategy for Avenue A | Razorfish, this panel covered many aspects of ecommerce marketing specifically in regard to customer acquisition. The panelists included:

James Kim, VP, Strategy, Organic, Inc.
Steven Keller, Director of Marketing and E-Commerce, Assurant Health
Dan Perry, SEO Producer, Cars.com
Christopher Parkin, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Omniture

This session ended up being not so much about driving customers to web sites but using best practices and tracking visitors once they get to your web site so all of your customer acquisition efforts are best exploited.

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