Returning to LA to co-host the Digital Family Summit ended an abbreviated Advertising Week on a high note. It was an honor to interview Gerry Philpott of E-Poll and Karen North from USC, who graciously helped us implement the first-ever Managing Online Communities Survey. It was also fun meeting our speakers Mike Jones and Peter Hirschberg, and getting to introduce Jason Calacanis who interviewed them during a live broadcast of his show “This Week In Startups.” 

The best part of the evening was seeing old friends, including Brian McCarthy, Craig Moody, Liz Heller, Jim Jonassen, Joey Tamer, Darren Chuckry, Tony Greenberg, Mark Jeffrey, Tracy Bagatelle, Olivier Chaine and the list goes on. I was also pleased with the high caliber of attendees — at one point I found myself having just had six conversations in a row with CEOs.  

Here are some photos, blog posts and tweets if you’re interested in seeing what others are saying about the event. Also, please visit our sponsors, without whom great events like this would not be possible. Thanks too to all who attended and helped us promote the event.

When the crowed of 250 or so thinned out around 11 p.m., I enjoyed a yummy sushi roll and fried rice from Wokano, along with the company of my old friend DJ Loomer whose musical influence added just the right ambience and downbeat funky tempo to our affair.

Heard around Advertising Week: “You still call it behavioral targeting?” “Thank god congress is preoccupied with healthcare.” “Don’t order business cards, we’re going green.” “Part of the charm of Advertising Week is that events are NOT all in one place.”

 OMMA Keynote - The State of the Agency Business – An Analyst’s View

Jordan Rohan, Founder and Managing Partner, Clearmeadow Partners

It was refreshing to hear Jordan Rohan focused on anything other than lead generation, and his analysis of the agency business seemed on point. He says a confluence of events has created the current state of declining agency profitability. A complex media environment, characterized by “social distraction” and “mobile distraction,” will only help to accelerate this trend because it increases the complexity as people multi-task on top of multiple media usage. In today’s environment, agencies need to act less like a steward of the brand and more like an intermediary to all brands.

Case in point, social media usage is on the rise, but pricing is low:

Facebook $.60 CPM

MySpace $1.36 CPM

…and portal traffic is flat and prices are falling:

Yahoo! $8.44. CPM

Microsoft $9.68 CPM

AOL $13.58 CPM

Innovation in agencies – Risks taken, when successful are considered innovation, yet the economic incentives are not in place for agencies to take risks. Cited RGA work for Nokia and CPB work for Microsoft, Burger King as examples of risks taken and work done across platform that is working well.

Venture capitalists are reluctant to invest in people businesses where assets walk out the door every day. When a people business turns into something that can exist on its own, suddenly the money appears.

OMMA Keynote – How Dunkin Does Social

Frances Allen, Brand Marketing Officer, Dunkin’ Brands, Inc.

“Winning every trip, every day.” Not taking customers for granted.

Social values must reflect brand values. Fostering a relationship with passionate customers, a group defined as much by a sense of common brand values as a love of the products. Relationships take time, effort and commitment. Brands that make investment in relationship over time will win. There will be hard days, yes, but in the end it will be worth it.

Social strategy:

1) Hearts & minds – Facebook “Fan of the Week” and “Coolata”

2) Motivations and behaviors – “Dunkin’ Run” application to order for groups

3) Place and context – Create Dunkin’s Next Donut – (TV, radio, outdoor, online and in-store)

4) Communication

Set realistic expectations.

Perception becomes reality.

Be true to yourself.

OMMA Keynote – Nick Brien, President & CEO, Mediabrands

A marketing revolution: a new art, a new science

We’ve always lived in a social world, but now we have more control, the ability to customize, the ability to create new channels and to connect.

62.5% of people using the Internet globally say they are actively involved in social media.

Social means business transformation:

Social media / awareness

Social marketing / advocacy (sell something, utility)

Social business / reinvention

Agencies continuing to conduct business under reach/frequency models do a disservice to the medium:

1) Kill the hierarchy

2) Engage community power

3) Master the art of response

4) Create content

5) Embrace ingenuity

MIXX Keynote – The End of “Digital” Marketing?

Nikesh Arora, President Global Sales Operations and Business Development, Google

Before it was called a “car,” it was the “horseless carriage.” Before it was just a “teevision,” it was the “color television.” Similarly, during our careers we will just call it “marketing.” Sometimes you don’t realize you are going through a revolution until you step out of it.

1.7B Internet users, 2B mobile users worldwide.

In any new technology, advertising comes later in the cycle:

Technology –> Content –> Users –> Advertising

We’re still in the early part of the cycle in advertising and marketing.

Mattel Barbie television ad in 1959 – 10 years after – cut and paste from radio jingles vs. Audi ad dramatically showing car driving up ski ramp created exclusively for television

1981 – story for newspapers delivered electronically vs. TwitPic of USAirways plane in Hudson

Everything is localized down to you – Android video app combining camera phone to data

New generations of information created by you

Marketing is the new finance, with a sample size of {all}

All advertising is engaging – bidirectional media

After introducing my new pal Kurt Daradics to my old friend Brad Nye one evening last summer, our after-dinner conversation led to an idea to host the first Digital Family Reunion, something that would not have been as relevant just a few years ago. What kind of opportunities could we stimulate by introducing the web1.0 community Brad and I were a part of, having hosted VIC parties in LA throughout the late 1990s, to LA’s new generation of digirati whose post-dot-com-era networking groups include the likes of Mixergy, Twiistup and DigitalLA? 

Held on December 11, 2008, the Reunion struck a chord with the digital media community in LA, attracting 800 energized professionals to the Skirball Cultural Center for a special evening of education, networking and entertainment.

Since then, we’ve had many conversations about how to harness the positive energy created that night. Beyond just networking parties for technology, media and entertainment professionals, what type of organization could the Digital Family become that would provide value far beyond anything else out there today? I’ll keep you posted on the outcome of that debate. In the meantime, we’ve planned an educational event to rally the community around a topic of common interest and importance later this month.

Digital Family Summit ’09 will be held Wednesday, September 23, 2009 at the Wokano Restaurant in Santa Monica. With a theme of “Managing Online Communities,” the program will feature a live broadcast of This Week In Startups, during which Jason Calacanis will interview MySpace COO Mike Jones and Peter Hirshberg, CEO of The Conversation Group. Use the code DFR30 when registering and save $20

In tandem with the theme of the event, we’ve partnered with E-Poll Market Research and the Charles Annenberg Weingarten Program on Online Communities at USC to launch a research study to uncover best practices for managing online communities. If you an online community builder please take our survey. If not, please forward it to somone who is!

I hope to see everyone on Sept. 23rd!

When Max Gladwell posted his third “10Ways to Change the World Through Social Media” I was only able to send a Tweet about it, since my blog wasn’t up yet. As I rev up my own social media channel, it’s a pleasure to be able to call attention to this post and the unique position Max Gladwell has taken at the nexus of social media and green living. As a perpetual student of online guerrilla marketing, equally impressive to me was the idea of a coordinated, simultaneous multi-blog post and its relationship to the changing media landscape.

Fourteen years into my interactive media career, and nine years since the rise in popularity of blogging, here I am. Embarrassing as it is to say, I have no regrets. Things happen in their due time and now I’m ready and excited to have staked claim to this corner of Cyberspace. Here I intend to share my online marketing expertise, along with a few opinions and general musings about media, marketing and life.

Throughout my career I’ve been fortunate to meet thousands of people working in digital media, entertainment, technology and marketing, many of whose business cards now sit in shoeboxes and whose faces and names are part of a collective sea of faces and conversations from years of networking events, trade shows and parties. I’ve met hundreds more with whom I’ve transacted business and built my professional network. There are dozens who I consider respected colleagues, peers and industry friends whose guidance and feedback I rely upon regularly. And then there are a handful who I’m fortunate to consider among my dearest friends (you know who you are). My hope is to reconnect with all of my media, entertainment and technology friends of years gone by, communicate en masse with those who care to follow what I have to say and highlight the expertise of those whose views and opinions I respect, admire and would like to share with you.

In addition to working in the Southern California digital media community and the broader U.S. online advertising industry, I also identify with several other communities from my past, which collectively comprise my network. By Malcolm Gladwell’s terminology, and by most accounts of those who know me, I am a “Connector,” or someone Gladwell  says has an ” ability to span many different worlds as a function of something intrinsic to their personality, some combination of curiosity, self-confidence, sociability, and energy.” I enjoy this distinction and especially appreciate when I’m able to connect two people who should know one another or be doing business together.

Like you, my business and social network is primarily a function of the groups with whom I associate. Everyone we meet has a story and our interaction with them contributes to our own. I am passionate about people, and in the absence of being able to spend quality time with everyone I’ve met or care about, I am grateful for the ability of the Internet to empower us to keep connected. It is my hope this blog will contribute to doing that in a meaningful, interesting and scalable way and I hope you will come along on the journey with me.