By now, I am sure most people have heard the phrase “Think Globally, Act Locally.”

I am curious though as to how many people have taken that phrase to heart.

My guess? Not many.

Take Charlotte for example. It is known as one of the financial capitals in nation, and the largest financial center in the Southeast. Though that is the case right now, it has been reported that its board of directors may move the headquarters of Bank of America to New York.

Hmm.

With all the financial resources in Charlotte, NC, many small businesses here are still having trouble receiving the capital needed to grow.

Double Hmm.

But the rest of my angst is not with the bankers, loan “officers” and the like. I wonder where the communicators are in Charlotte that should be calling citizens to move to action?

I have been in very insightful conversations with the small business incubator Area 15 lately. How refreshing it is when you see businesspeople truly trying to make a difference. They’ve been missing one piece to the puzzle- attention.

Which brings me to the central point of the post today. Public relations, marketing and other communications have been evolving for hundreds of years. But the reason why this industry was created should not be lost: to spread a message that will improve the lives of a community.

In Ancient Greece there were those great orators, Sophists and philosophers. During the Middle Ages, Town Criers spread the news about new ideas and happenings. And today, we have a flourishing industry but we are deviating from the purpose.

In every community there will be Doers, Storytellers, and Naysayers. Unfortunately, the Doers never really get the attention they deserve. That’s why us storytellers need to assist with the cause.

Society can only progress when you improve home. Communicators, tell the world how local businesses are getting it done. Tell the people that without these hard-working folks, Corporate America would never exist.

We need to work better at promoting our neighbors. Let’s show the world what our communities are doing.

On Nov 10, 2009 I had both the opportunity and pleasure to present our business case to a crowd gathering some of the most advanced experts in Social Media in Atlanta. Per below is the slideshare presentation in Creative Commons format (download is made available to all).

Those who’d like a transcript of the presentation can find it here, courtesy of our good friends from the Social Media Business Council.

I forum - con +80 milioni di messaggi quest’anno - sono lo strumento preferito dagli italiani per confrontarsi sugli orientamenti di consumo ed altri argomenti che riguardano la sfera professionale e privata.

È quanto emerge dal Rapporto sulle comunità Web di Digital PR, ”Dove vanno gli italiani in rete – abitudini e nuovi fenomeni” giunto alla sesta edizione.

La blogosfera è sempre più il regno di chi ha qualcosa di interessante da dire. Sono quasi 3 milioni i blogger della penisola, ma “solo” il 35% di questi aggiorna il proprio diario con una certa frequenza (2 o più volte settimanalmente).

Facebook ha superato i 12 milioni di utenti (il 57% dei connessi) ed è la nuova piazza virtuale degli italiani. Una piazza sempre più rosa: secondo i dati dell’Osservatorio Facebook, infatti, nella fascia di utenti al di sotto dei 18 annile donne superano gli uomini nel social network più popolare del mondo.

I fenomeni emergenti di questo 2009 sono Twitter e Friendfeed. Il servizio di microblogging ha raggiunto 1 milione di utenti unici/mese nel nostro Paese (fonte: Google Trends Websites), mentre Friendfeed è ancora per early adopters, ma può rappresentare la naturale evoluzione dei forum.

Per approfondimenti rinvio alla presentazione di Vincenzo Cosenza (Digital PR) al seminario “Il nuovo potere dei consumatori sul web 2009

The new consumer journey

A while back, I attempted to create a model the way companies need to leverage new marketing to engage today’s consumers. I looked at a number of interesting approaches, but in the end opted to build around the idea of a marketing spiral.  I’m sure there are a number of other ways to illustrate the consumer journey other than using a spiral, but this is what I came up with. If anybody wants to take another stab at this, please do and let me know where you post it. Read on to discover how you can use this model to define your new marketing program.

Today’s consumers start with an Initial Considersation Set. Martin Lindstrom’s brain scan research in his groundbreaking book, “Buyology,” clearly shows that we all have an initial consideration set for every product category, many of which are completely unconscious. We choose a brand of shampoo simply because we are used to choosing it, or because on some unconscious level, our gut tells us that it’s better than the others for any number of reasons which we spend less than a few seconds consciously thinking about.

“It’s natural.” “It has a secret formula.” “It’s scientifically proven.” “I like the way it smells.” “It makes my hair feel nice.” “It’s cheap.” All these statements and a near infinite variety of others, which are completely personal to each individual, contribute to our initial consideration set.

Martin Lindstrom’s research also reveals that changing these ‘consideration sets’ is harder than it looks. In some cases, it even requires truly radical events. It took a global recession to turn affluent middle class shoppers into price savvy buyers. It took an end-of-the-world scenario involving climate change to get people to start considering carbon footprints when looking to buy a new car.

Advertisers historically have used creative disruption as a way to “open our minds” to another possible consideration set. For decades toothpaste that cleaned the teeth and kept them healthy was enough for us. Suddenly however, advertisers have effectively convinced us that we actually want toothpaste that doesn’t just clean, but makes them white, because we all know, white teeth are healthy teeth. The same consideration set has now been given a qualifier, healthy teeth = white teeth, so I need whitening toothpaste.

On the Internet, transparency means that marketers have to think and behave differently, because people can quite simply use Google to research a product to find out if it actually makes our teeth white, or even if white teeth are healthy teeth. Which is why where Affinity comes to play. Affinity is about building emotional connections between brand and consumer. To build affinity in today’s online world, marketers leverage social media strategies targeted around Influence and Advocacy.

Although common social media lore is that some people are better influencers than other, BzzAgents in the US has found that anybody can be an influencer. An influencer happens to be somebody you know or meet who says the right thing at the right time. You might happen across somebody on a train who is reading a book that looks interesting because a) they are laughing their head off and b) you are bored stiff reading the same old celebrity trash in the Metro. So you might think, “if I had that book, I wouldn’t have to read this lousy newspaper.” This is precisely the experience BzzAgent discovered when it sent out its agents to promote some of the latest reads. At the end of the day, building an emotional bond with consumers is all about trust. And that trust starts more often than not, through somebody else.

As we continue down the crazy funnel of consumerist choice, we move towards having Conversations. Back on our train, you’re likely start up a conversation with the book reader. “So is that a good book?” You might ask, though the roaring laughter would probably be a dead giveaway. In more structured mechanisms, brands can create opportunities for conversation using Presence & Participation, by participating in or even hosting conversations on their own blogs and in existing blogs, review sites and forums. These conversations can have a massive benefit. Your consumers get to talk to real people who speak like real people, not like an aggressive PR agent on a mission or a call centre in Bombay.

The next step in journey is to facilitate their Participation with your brand by creating Visibility & Distribution. This is achieved with seeding content and leveraging advertorial placements, content partnerships, relevant sponsorships and other forms of content generation around the brand. The key is to think like Coca-Cola. “Be everywhere the customer is thirsty.”

Use social listening to map out all of the places people are looking for content about your brand, and ensure your content is there. Going back to our toothpaste example, our toothplace marketer should find everyplace online where people might be looking for information on ‘clean and white teeth,’ then make sure they have positioned the right content to help consumers in their research.

The Engagement step is crucial. Even if the consumer walks away believing everything they heard about your brand and product, they will do more research and participate in further conversations or interactions with the brand. In fact, the higher the cost or level of complexity the product or service is, the more research consumers do.

So once you have seeded loads of content across the Internet, you need to make it easy for people to search and find it. Discovery & Search of content is so important that brands who get it spend disproportionate amounts of their budgets on search engine performance and optimization. Keyword optimization, social topic and taxonomy analysis, content submission to multiple social sharing sites, the use of rich metadata on content and content linking are all techniques that can be employed to make it easy for people to find and engage with your content.

To ensure that the content does what it needs to, i.e. convince the consumer that you have the best toothpaste for instance, it’s best to leverage the consumer’s voice as much as possible and target against consumer passions (fashion, music, film, whatever). The more relevant you can be, the more focused your message is to your audience, the more likely you will be included in their final consideration set.

In other words, if you can get a hundred ordinary people to test, record and talk about your toothpaste versus other brands, the more likely people will add it to their brand list. To ensure credibility, it’s best to foster conversations not just on your site, but on trusted forums and communities that editorially make sense for your brand.

After all of this interaction with you, your content, other customers, our buzz agents and the average guy or girl on the street, the consumer finally buys your product. Great! Job well done! On to the next one. Right? Wrong!

Winning a consumer is only the first round. Imagine what will happen if the consumer’s experience with your brand is completely not what he/she expected, or worse, is just plain awful. That disappointed consumer will write about those awful brand experiences. Other customers will jump on the brand-bashing bandwagon and the individual and collective experiences will get shared to every living person they can reach ensuring your brand is not on anybody else’s initial consideration set.

Sadly, bad reviews outnumber good reviews in just about every category. This is basic psychology really. People who feel cheated want justice. Because they are unlikely to get their money back, they will enact justice by trying to prevent others from making the same mistake. So they become detractors. Detractors can destroy a brand’s reputation online, which is why it’s important to make sure the product experience lives up to the hype. The good news however, is that detractors can be won over surprisingly easily. It often just takes a brand that is willing to listen honestly and is sincerely willing to try to do better.

Most agencies recommend social listening however as a way to find out want people are really saying about your brand, and observing as away to learn how they use your products; all with the goal of tackling negative word of mouth and to improve their marketing to consumers. The general problem with this advice is that the real reason to listen to word of mouth is not to rush into a PR campaign whenever you hear harsh criticisms, but to collect ongoing feedback and communicate these as insights to the product teams with the mandate of making better products and services. That’s the message you want to communicate. “Sorry, we listened. We are making it better.”

Naturally, if you have a great product, your toothpaste makes teeth brilliantly white, your book is a brilliant piece of literature, then social listening will give you the genuine testimonials of real consumers. Best of all, they’ll be testimonials delivered not necessarily by you, because let’s face it, how many people trust testimonials by marketers, but rather by consumers directly to consumers. All you had to do was make sure that a) you have a good product and service and b) you are in the right places having the right conversations and supplying the kind of content people need to understand and believe in your product.

Like the latest fad in fashion, Conversational and Community Marketing is all the rage in marketing today. So what’s so special about it? Do you really need to be bothered, or can you happily go about your business and ignore it?

None of us can escape the fact that the Internet has changed many things for businesses. In my earlier post, I talked about the growing importance for total transparency in everything from a company’s behavior to their pricing and profit margins. Guiding this need is the every growing Internet population of ‘Prosumers’, or rather ‘empowered shoppers.’ Although the size of the prosumer population has never been officially measured, we can figure it out by looking at people’s online behaviors.

For instance, if you look at the last years results from Forrester’s Technographics surveys, you see that:
•    10% of the UK online population read blogs
•    17% watch user generated videos
•    12% participate in discussion forums
•    and 20% read online reviews.
These are all behaviors of empowered shoppers. Let’s focus on the last point, the 20% who read reviews, which is the most common indicator of an empowered consumer.

Related US study by Forrester shows a similar breakdown of behaviors.

Nielson Netview estimates that there are 34,151,628 online Brits. So 20% of that figure is roughly 6.83 million Brits who we can classify as acting like prosumers. Granted, that still means there are still a good 27.3 million other online shoppers you could target. But consider this. If every one of the 6.83 million empowered shoppers talks to just 3 other people, your ‘informed shopper-base’ suddenly grows to 20.49 million shoppers! Suddenly, that 27.3 million has shrunk significantly. So it’s probably safest to treat everybody like a prosumer and get on with business.

Let’s look at it from another angle. What if 80% of your prosumer base doesn’t like your brand and trashes your products online? You have a serious problem on your hands, even if that 80% represents just 1% of your customer base. Because that 80% will promote their negative opinions to the rest of your customer base, encouraging them to flee in droves. On top of that, the percentage of the prosumer population is actually growing. So by next year, that 1% will increase to 2% and so on.

So what can you do about it? Well, first you can start by listening to your customers and take their pulse of how they feel about your brand. There are a number of buzz trackers and listening platforms out there, but the one I prefer, both for cost efficiency and for their ability to scan in multiple languages is that offered by Attentio. To get a quick idea of what the Attentio Brand Dashboard can do, check out their website at Attentio.com or give it a go at their public buzz monitoring site, Trendpedia.com. For some sample results, check out this review I made for Lexus a few years back while I was working at Lateral.

Excerpt from the Lexus Hybrid Debate

The Brand Dashboard continuously trawls a wide range of online sources, from blogs to forums, newsgroups and social networks, looking for certain keywords that you define, which act as flags of potentially relevant conversations. As there are literally millions of sources to scan, most listening tools work as a “present to forward” looking information source. In other words, to get the most accurate results, you need to set it up in advance and let it run for several months. Backward looking scans with Attentio are possible but are typically limited by the length of time articles and comments remain online, currently between 3-6 months on average. With Lexus, I scanned a number of keywords related to the brand, but also the names of competitor’s brands and common words used around hybrid technology. This allowed us to get a good feel for what people really thought of Lexus’ Hybrid cars.

Some companies I know, now utilize this type of data to complement their ongoing qualitative and quantitative research as it provides a higher level of reliability than what they get through focus groups and panels. After all, people are far more likely to tell what they really think in sites like TripAdvisor than in any focus group you run.

Listening however, is only the first step. You also need to be able to respond to opinions online. The most effective way of doing this is to empower and encourage every employee in your company to participate in social networks, forums and blogs where the conversations are happening (which you can also identify using your Brand Dashboard). The advantage here is that your employees are typically your best advocates. So let them talk and share their opinions and knowledge. There are examples of companies who have done this to remarkable advantage.

The first is Microsoft, where practically every employee blogs about something, most related to their specific profession. There are currently 262 officially tracked blogs in their directory across a mind-boggling array of subjects. These blogs are effectively are helping Microsoft to redefine their approach to be more “customer focus” through one on one interaction with customers. In many cases, this ability to have real conversations with customers is helping Microsoft to fix errors and improve products at a faster pace than ever before.

Another great example is Redfin, a US based estate agency. Redfin’s CEO, Glenn Kelman took the US real-estate market by storm last November when he decided to be completely transparent about the US real-estate industry. As such, he publicly exposed every dirty trick estate agencies use to sell you a property. His blog was almost a “how-to” in avoiding the cons that most British still face when trying to purchase property. With 300+% year-over-year growth in unique visitors, Redfin has been the fastest-growing major real estate website in the U.S Redfin has also increased its market-share significantly as a result of its game-changing approach.

Redfin and Microsoft are both examples of companies who have mastered Conversational Marketing.

Another surprising example was McDonald’s in New Zealand. Selling burgers is easy. Selling McDonald’s to a group of cynics and non-believers is a different proposition altogether. In 2006 this was the situation McDonald’s found itself in. No matter what it had been doing and saying over the previous years around its health, quality and nutrition initiatives, people were still viewing McDonald’s food with wariness and mistrust. Nothing seemed to stick, sink in or sway public opinion in favor of a company that was trying to break free of its past. This was hurting the organization, not only from an image standpoint, but also with regards to the bottom line. McDonald’s decided it was time to get on the front foot and set the record straight about its food and they way it behaves once and for all.

Peter Bush, the CEO of McDonald’s Australasia had the right idea. ‘If we could sit down for just five minutes and tell our story one to one with the consumer, McDonald’s wouldn’t have the brand issues we have today.’ His conversational approach become the seed to their Take a Closer Look campaign, in which people’s conversations and concerns were displayed in the ads against McDonald’s irrefutable facts. Essentially, McDonald’s leveraged conversations around its own myths as the basis to start conversations with its customers.  The result was that 70% of people who had seen the campaign believed what McDonald’s was saying. Ultimately, people reported that the ads made them feel better about eating at McDonald’s.

The New Zealand campaign was eventually followed by a larger, online initiative called Make Up Your Own Mind, in which consumers could literally ask any question to McDonald’s and they would answer it with facts. Unfortunately, when I challenged them on their continued decline of their food quality in many restaurants I visited, their answers were cut and pasted from other questions people asked, word for word, making it sound like the work of PR people. When further questioned about their support of aspartame in their Cola’s, their answer was literally right from the official apartame website: hardly a non-biased, credible source of information. The lesson here, always assume that your consumers already have done their online research. Brand sites like these are typically the last resort, not the first port of call.

Community and Conversation are often mixed in today’s marketing lingo, however they shouldn’t be. Although they are linked, they aren’t exactly the same. The McDonald’s campaign used Conversational Marketing, but it didn’t create a community. In contrast, Bugaboo strollers clearly has created a community of involved like-minded parents on its site, effectively leveraging people’s real conversations and stories within its communications to foster a sense of participation and brand ownership. When you link Conversation and Community to brand strategy, you get a robust brand platform from which you can engage today’s growing base of consumers who want to be involved in the shaping of the brand.

The resulting benefits of participation and ownership can add significant value to the brand, seeding it with real human experiences and emotion that reaches the long tail of your consumer base. Considering that 49 % of people made a purchase based on friends recommendations on social media property (Razorfish, 2008), social media can be viewed as an important channel and tool to interact, manage and enable these brand communities.

If this strategy appeals, does this mean you should run out and create a community? Not at all. What most digital agencies won’t tell you is that you actually don’t need to build your own community. In fact, unless there is a clearly unmet nascent consumer need for your community, you are much better off partnering with an existing community than building your own. Start by looking to see which fan created communities already exists around your brand. You may be surprised to find a few. Brands such as Apple, Nokia, Saab, Ford, Harley Davidson, Suzuki, Asus and many more all have dozens of fan created brand communities that you can interact and partner with. On top of this, there are thousands of niche, vertical communities around every passion you can imagine. Many of which could very well serve your existing customer’s interest and needs. And most of these verticals are heavily under-funded and some corporate partners could be very welcomed.

Mesh Marketing is @ Circa, October 22nd, 2009! Toronto, Canada.

On October 22nd, Toronto PR junkies, marketing minds, social media heads and community workers will come together at Circa to collaborate on a day that will be a ‘must not miss’…

Connecting people through interaction!

 

 

 What is Mesh Marketing and why is it important? Growth! In the past little while, we have seen a growth in the tech community. Whether or not the marketing/PR community accepts the fact that more and more individuals are finding it viable to link online is irrelevant – It is happening and this growth is happening fast! Mesh Marketing is a way to bring these tech communities together to discuss this growth and change with online marketing and PR tactics and how to use the forever changing tools available to us!

With great speakers like Ferg Devins from Molson PR to one of my favourite speakers Mitch Joel of Twist Image who is a blogger, podcaster, passionate entrepreneur and worldwide speaker by sharing his marketing insights on digital marketing and personal branding –  it’s these individuals who are leading the way and helping others in their online adventures! Word has it, Joel is also a past member/creator of Distort Music which is home to bands like Alexisonfire, Black Lungs and Moneen!

Inspiring speakers for inspiring minds is the key to Mesh Marketing. With a full day of interactive and engaging workshops, there is something available for everyone within the Toronto (or Canadian) tech community. Below is the list of workshops/sessions happening on the 22nd. Have a look and see what fits for you:

- Building Web Properties that Convert (Dan Martell)
- Advertising Networks 101 (Mladen Raickovic)
- Search Engine Marketing/Search Engine Optimization (Jeff Quip)
- Generating Customer-Driven Creative (Andrew Sutherland, Dino Demopoulos)
- The Keys to Mobile Marketing (Amielle Lake)
- Facebook 101 for Marketing (Elmer Sotto)
- Social Media Analytics (Katie Delahaye Paine)
- Inbound Marketing Campaigns (Dharmesh Shah)

Through my adventures in the Toronto tech community, I have come across some great people who are working hard behind the scenes at Mesh to make sure this event is successful! Sheri Moore and Mark Evans are truly inspiring people and having given me a great opportunity to help out, support and volunteer my services to the Mesh team on October 22nd. Both are passionate individuals who inspire, engage and interact which are keys words to live by!

Once again, it’s ‘growth’ that really catches my mind with online marketing and initiatives. As Social Media and the Toronto tech community grows – I choose to grow with it. We are at the begin stages of the transition and being a part of something special and unique is always a great inspiration – Not only personally but professionally too. With the changes in the onine marketing and PR world, Mesh Marketing will definitely be a day ’NOT’ to miss! 

To register for Mesh Marketing 2009 click here!

I’ll see you at Circa on the 22nd!

Jared Golberg, Community Marketing Manager – 5th Element Events

Twitter: @JaredGolberg   or   @5ElementEvents   or    Facebook: www.facebook.com/jaredgolberg

I was on jury duty last week. I won’t go into all the details, but suffice it to say it was a criminal case and we ended up finding the defendant guilty. He will probably go to prison and it’s sobering to realize that you may have had something to do with sealing his fate. Choice does matter, though sometimes more than others.

So what do juries have to do with marketing and what is the connection between jury trials and social media? Well there’s the obvious, that a jury is just like any other audience and the lawyers are like competing brand marketers trying to spin their narrative so that you will choose one side over the other. But I think it goes a little deeper than that. Being a juror, I was not only a member of the target audience, but also a key influencer on the decision of the rest of the audience; the jury.

The attorneys did their best to convince us, from their opening statements where they each painted vastly different scenarios, through the presentation of evidence and down to their closing arguments where they tried to make the sale. But, back in the jury room, we saw right through the manipulations of “facts” and in the end pretty much discounted everything the lawyers said and relied on our own judgments and the perceptions and persuasiveness of our fellow jurors. We believed each other because we knew we had no vested interest in the outcome, except for making the right choice.

Again, what does this have to do with social media? Well, to my mind, the lawyers were like traditional advertising. They sure looked sharp when they were presenting, but after you got out of the room, their pitches went right out the door. What prevailed was the common sense and back and forth examination of the evidence and intelligent choices made by consensus. To me, this is a perfect embodiment of what social media is all about. Social media gives us the opportunity to reach out to our fellow consumers (jurors), listen to each other’s arguments and through discussion and interaction, reach a conclusion that results in a choice being made. In this case, the choice was guilty or not. For consumers it may one brand over another.

I left the jury room feeling I had made the best choice I could have and I was supported in that decision by my fellow jurors. I only hope I will feel that way next month when I start looking for a new wireless carrier.

There was a full article in the Seattle Times this morning about social media. It’s amazing that a major media outlet either just discovered social media as a topic or there wasn’t enough new news to fill the dwindling number of printed pages. But let’s not get on the subject of newspapers and why most journalists seem to be more afraid of social media than taking steps to become the leaders of it.

What I want to talk about is not newspapers and not about what social media is, isn’t or what its good for. I don’t know and I’m supposedly an expert on the subject for my agency Ascentium. What I do know is that I don’t want to see, hear, blog, tweet or otherwise spew about the definition of social media and how it’s going to change the world, or at least our way of thinking about the world. Been there, done that.

It’s time to focus on the reality, not the potential of social media. Look at what Twitter is being used for politically around the globe. See how the Huffington Post has already redefined journalism. And as marketers, let’s start talking about the work we’re at our companies or for our clients. Let’s see what is working and what isn’t. And let’s define success, not at the nebulous level of “building brand awareness” or “increasing reach”. Let’s apply real metrics to determine the ROI of a very broad array of activities, campaigns and applications that we lump under the category of social media.

As president of the SDMA, we created an editorial calendar of the coming year’s series of monthly events. The kickoff event, to be held on 09/09/09 at the Bellevue Hyatt was listed in our working calendar as social media. From there, we went about selecting a speaker(s). It was easy to find some really smart people who could pontificate on social media. In fact, last week the Seattle Social Media Club had a great presentation on “What the f**k is Social Media?”
But we’ve tried to set the bar higher. Our moderator, Blake Cahill, of Visible Technologies, a social media expert in his own right, reached out to his considerable network and looked for marketers who were actually using various social media techniques and asked them for examples of what is and isn’t working in the very real world of corporate marketing.

The result is a great panel representing brands including Alaska Airlines, Comcast, REI and PCC Natural Markets who are willing and able to talk about what they have learned about social media.

So if you’re interested in going beyond the hype and seeing what social media can really do when applied by top marketers, come join us on Sept. 9, 2009 at 5:30p at the Bellevue Hyatt for the kick off event of the season of the SDMA.

I just looked at a very good short video making the case for the importance of Social Media in today’s world. it’s done ala the Shift Happens videos of a couple of years ago and you have to dig into the blog to find the sources of the some of the statements, not all of which appear to be as documented as I’d like to see. However it still is a good way to spend 4 minutes of your day and puts social media into a context most people haven’t grasped yet. check it out at http://socialnomics.net/2009/08/11/statistics-show-social-media-is-bigger-than-you-think/

First off, I’d like to welcome you to the 5th Element Events blog!

We have been around since 2003 in the Canadian event landscape and have built fantastic relationships with our fellow peers, vendors and venues. By this blog, I hope to achieve something new in the evolution of the eventworld – Not just connect our brand to people in the land of interweb, but connect and build knowledge, awareness and ideas within our network that continues to grow.

Yes, there are portals like Twitter (Which has Tipped in the past week or so), Facebook and others, but the habit most get into is to add as many people as possible to show your worth. Common mistake, but still apparent. I want to take this time to extend the conversation away from our social network (Twitter does only give us 140 characters, ha!) and really connect with the people our team has met this past year.

I am the Marketing Manager from 5th Element Events and have spent most of my life in music and entertainment. I started my career at Ryerson University in the Radio & Television Arts program, graduating in 2002. I worked in surround sound music development after graduation before securing a job at Wind-up Records Canada at Warner Music as the Marketing Coordinator. I had the pleasure of working with such artsists as Finger Eleven, Evanescence and Seether while helping build awareness for them in the online world (I really did a lot of the online marketing initiatives working closely with the Director of Marketing). Great job, great fun and a huge amount of knowledge and expertise was taken away from this experience!

Touring logistics and events really caught my eye through out my adventures at Wind-up and last year I took the job here at 5th Element Events. Here we executive large corprate events, galas, fashions shows and product launches (not limited to) and really dive deep into concept design and experiential exeperience. Whether it be decor, lighting, staging or even entertaiment, our goal is to ignite our clients dreams into reality by engaging their guests in unique experiences, sights and sounds. A VERY creative world using VERY creative professional minds.

As the industry grows and we connect with more and more people, I want to provide something other then just our services. I want to provide ‘US’. We have connected well with many online portals and organizations this past year and by this we have created community and city awareness programs like our ‘We Give Back’ campaign which helps children in need go to camp and war veterans experience a life long wish. It is truly important to provide more as a responsible company and as the spring time progresses into summer, I look forward to expanding our network to you. It’s important to stay connected with our peers and planners and open a dialogue on trends and happenings!

I hope this finds you well. Keep in touch, stay creative and contact us with any questions you may have. We are always here to chat!

Jared Golberg
Marketing manager
5th Element Events
416.241.4440
www.5thelementevents.com
jared@5thelementevents.com

Find us on Twitter: 5ElementEvents

Slowly but surely and gaining momentum all the time. Community marketing is real good fun to do and you are able to dress your site howsoever you want as long as its family friendly. I am busy looking for some new content to post and have added another review which is my review of Raj’s article blog at http://bit.ly/nkXv0 – have a look you never know you may want to join me in my Cagora community. You would be most welcome.

I guess most of you reading this post by now have come to assume that the influencer model of word of mouth (made ubiquitous knowledge thanks to Gladwell’s tipping point) is pretty much the infallible truth. That said, here’s a recent study on Facebook pages that may question that.

No single person is accountable for the popularity of a Page; instead, we consistently see that roughly 15% of all fans arrived independently and started their own chains (which merge together as the rest of the fan base takes shape). These patterns hold for Pages with a few thousand fans and for those with more than 50,000.

I know what you’re thinking. Of course, it’s got nothing to do with one individual but rather the few (Law of the Few): the connectors, the mavens and the salesmen. Do “15% of all fans” comprise “the few” then? Or…

Pages grow if people are easily engaged by the content, not because of the actions of a couple trendsetters.

Do influencers really matter then or are they most effective only when sharing great content? hmm… I also can’t help but wonder if this holds true with Twitter’s asymmetric model as well. I always believed Twitter’s phenomenal success has hinged on the Influencer model; specifically thanks to obsessive celebrities and twitterstruck journalists.

What do you think?

Read the Facebook blog post here and check out the entire analysis here.

(Artículo de Bárbara Gallotta de Lastinfoo)

Cuando hablamos de marketing participativo nos estamos refiriendo a una estrategia de marketing que recurre a multiplicadores de información, encarnados en líderes de opinión, difusores de tendencias, especialistas con peso mediático o, simplemente, consumidores satisfechos.

La divulgación del producto o servicio o recurre a la campaña de marketing participativo se realiza de forma voluntaria por los difusores, surge de un interés genuino por su parte en propagar, en recomendar, en promocionar algo en lo que realmente creen. Viejo conocido, el boca-oreja, de boca en boca, el word-of-mouth, el buzz buzz.

La virtud principal del marketing participativo, según muchos expertos, es la credibilidad: el que recomienda lo hace desde su propia satisfacción o experticia. ¿Por qué no íbamos a creerle si no está trabajando para la marca?

“En la actualidad, y frente a la pérdida de credibilidad que sufren los medios convencionales, está demostrado que la alternativa más fiable para una buena estrategia de marketing es la generación de recomendaciones entre consumidores, canalizándola y estructurándola a través de estrategias de Marketing Participativo.”, de esta manera explica PuroMarketing.com la creciente importancia del marketing participativo.

Las posibilidades del boca-oreja son varias:

Buzz marketing: el rumor crece por medio del intercambio de persona a persona.
Viral marketing: los mensajes se difunden en la red.
Community marketing: supone la existencia de un grupo un grupo o comunidad de fansde una marca.
Influencer marketing: las opiniones que se buscan para influenciar son las de líderes, expertos.
Brand blogging: a través de un blog, la empresa o marca genera una relación espontánea y directa con el cliente , en la cual prima la confiana y el intercambio de iguales.

En épocas de crisis, la estrategia de marketing de las marcas debe estar orientada a conectarse con el consumidor, a conversar con él o ella, a pedirle su opinión, a obtener información de primera mano sobre sus demandas, sus gustos y necesidades.

La dinámica de una red social, para ser exitosa, tiene que propiciar un intercambio entre clientes y clientes potenciales, no debe ser intrusivo sino participativo y hacer que los miembros de su comunidad o red divulgen de forma natural el producto o servicio.

Ya sea que el marketing participativo sea su único medio de promoción y publicidad o que inetgre un mix compuesto por estrategias tradicionales y participativas, nunca olvide que el boca-oreja se puede (y debe) generar. Los tiempos que corren no pueden esperar a un marketing de generación espontánea.

Fuente: Marketing y Empresa

Altijd doen wat je moet doen en nooit voorspelbaar zijn. Het is een filosofie waar wij dames van houden! Vanaf de eerste minuut dat de KANEpromoladies online mayhem gingen verkopen deden ze lekker eigenwijs hun ding; love us or hate us darlings… We gingen voor meer (community marketing weet je wel), stijlvol (natuurlijk) en de in your face mentaliteit (de dames zitten overal). En omdat we zo lekker onvoorspelbaar zijn… tijd voor verandering. Om het fris en spannend te houden. Of anders gezegd: Innovate never imitate!
Zoals geweten houden de KANEpromoladies van en maken ze intensief gebruik van social media sites en New media. En dus verhuizen we naar WordPress. Omdat de WordPress filosofie perfect aansluit bij die van de dames.
Check het allerlaatste KANEnieuws, kicken wedstrijden (vanaf Maandag weer een nieuwe kicken wedstrijd!) en mayhem vanaf nu hier!
Hope you like… or at least have a gossip about it

New hangout

Always do your own thing and never ever be predictable. We ladies love this philosophy! From day one the KANEpromoladies got online and started making trouble they were known for their mayhem; love us or hate us darlings… It had to be more (community marketing as it’s called), stylish (as it is) and we use the in your face mentality (the ladies are everywhere). And just because we’re delish’ unpredictable… time for a change. To keep things fresh and exciting. Or in other words: innovate never imitate!
It’s a known fact the KANEpromoladies love and use social media sites and New media on a daily base. Ad so we’re moving to WordPress. Because the WordPress philosophy connects with that of the ladies.
Check the latest KANEnews, awesome competitions (on Monday we launch a New competition!) and mayhem right here!
Hope you like… or at least have a gossip about it

Marketing is funny at Mozilla. Whenever, I’m asked what do I do, I’ll very often say “marketing” — and that always feels strange when it tumbles out of my mouth. The next question is usually “… so what is marketing at Mozilla then?” … and further questions about “If you do all that, how big is the team?”

Let me try to answer…

What is marketing at Mozilla?
Well, this would be a very long answer if I went into even half the detail. But let me say in short – our job is all about…
- Sharing and advocating for a more open and better Web
- Spreading Firefox, and having people enjoy a modern browsing experience
- Help build and work together with Mozilla communities, and other open source communities to make great software

and we do this in so many ways which are not typical to marketing. We …

- Work together in the open to craft, build and run campaigns
- Empower and encourage communities to hold their own events and campaigns
- Share results in public, and talk about both our achievements and findings to take on board in future

- and much, much more…

How big is the Team in Europe?
In Europe there are 4 people including myself who help do the above. But actually, our team is much bigger than this. In each country there are scores of Firefox and Mozilla fans, and community members who each day advocate and share the importance of the open Web. Our wider team reaches in the hundreds, and that’s the way we like it!  Anyone can join, and anyone can get involved regardless of skill. The only requirement is a passion for open source and a desire to make the Web better.

** New Open Community Marketing position **
So if you got this far in my post — I’d say you are interested in marketing and community at Mozilla. And we are very lucky to have an open full time job opportunity available for a European Community Marketing Manager. The position is based in Paris. Here’s a quick round up of the job spec:

European Community Marketing Manager
Primary responsibilities include development of new programs to engage community and activism, as well as promote Firefox mindshare throughout Europe. Defining and implementing regional community campaigns and activities, market research, and day-to-day efforts in order to support community marketing, growth and effectiveness.

The ideal candidate will be highly organized and self-motivated, a strong communicator with experience managing marketing programs and campaigns.

** Primary Responsibilities:
* Lead, develop and implement new community grassroots  initiatives and marketing campaigns
* Support and initiate activities for Mozilla Campus reps program in Europe
* Contribute to overall community marketing programs with “real-world” components (eg. Meetups, Campus events, launch parties, etc)
* Conduct and assist with regular community surveys
* Review, share, participate and provide information on Spreadfirefox, forums, marketing mailing lists, IRC and blogs
* Communicate across a diverse community of project contributors and volunteers
* Assist with other marketing related activities and where needed, participate at key trade shows and events
* Provide support for Mozilla Mission-focused community initiatives

So, if you want to be a part of this amazing movement. Read more about the job and apply here.

** Photo courtesy of homardpayette on Saturday February 7th 2009 at FOSDEM ‘09