You get some amazing presenters at iMedia. Tonight our dinner time presenter was Bod Mason of National Geographic. Over the course of an hour he shared stories, photos, and video of his many adventures. To say, that he’s been just about everywhere would be an understatement. In the last year alone he traveled to all 7 continents. Not bad, huh?
During a critical point in the presentation he paused and shared the secret of why National Geographic continues to be a leader in the industry. After all – anyone can travel to Africa with great photography gear and a guide. Other magazine employ top notch photographers to places like Antartica, but they just don’t rival National Geographic. So, why is it that National Geographic remains at the top of heap?
Simple – they focus on telling great stories that have great content. You need BOTH. Having a great photo, with no story is only half of the equation. To me that’s the key to making a great ad. When the visuals are impactful and the story compelling; people want to watch. They want to spend some time with you. Hell, they’ll pay to spend time with you.
If I’ve taken anything away from this summit, it’s that as marketers we need to tell great stories and offer great content if we want our audience to actively participate and engage with our brands and products.
I’m thrilled to be attending another iMedia summit. Kevin Doohan first introduced me to iMedia roughly 4 years ago. Since attending my first summit, I’ve been a fixture at these summits; generally trying to attend at least 1 summit a year.
iMedia is probably the premier event for interactive marketers. The events are invite only, attendance is limited, the locations are amazing, and the content top notch. It blows away other conferences like AdTech.
The thing I like the most about iMedia is that it’s a truly humbling experience. I always find myself leaving the summits thinking, “damn, I still have so much more to learn and so much further to go.” It’s the humility that keeps me hungry and wanting to be better. As I’ve mentioned; I’m work in progress.
Spending 3 days away from the office is rather complex. You’re employer and senior leadership have to recognize the value in you attending. Equally as important is the trust you have to have in your team to over achieve while you’re out of the office. It’s a delicate balance – because to get the most out of the summit, you really need to be immersed 24/7 in the summit’s content (that includes the people).
I’m really excited about getting to meet some new people; I always find a handful of people that become long time colleagues, friends, and sounding boards. One of things you quickly realize after attending a summit is that we’re ALL in this together. We all have the same challenges. And, we all need some help. The number of outstanding interactive marketers is small. It’s a tiny, small knit community. I’m looking forward to meeting new and old members of that fraternity at the iMedia Agency Summit in Austin, TX.
I’ll be live tweeting many of the sessions. If you weren’t able to attend the summit, but want to get a flavor for what’s being discussed, follow my tweets.
Texas, here I come.
Once again, great advice from Michael Leis. In this blog post for iMedia Connection, Michael riffs on the 4 key questions you need to ask before deciding if social media is a viable option for your brand/project. I don’t want to steal the thunder, so I’ll only give you the four questions and not the brilliant commentary.
- Do you have inventory? Is it valuable to your audience?
- What ways does your audience use technology?
- Are you ready for help to be its own reward?
- Are you willing to apply people to the solution?
I’ve been compeletely swamped the past few days and I know I’m completely guilty of not offering enough meat in these posts. With that in mind, I’m opting for a quantity approach in this post. Here are 10 great links that I’ve stumbled on and are worth sharing:
- SEMPO Study on the impact search has on sales. This is a PDF white paper.
- Wii Fit Viral. Offers proof that viral is sometimes indeed pure luck.
- Competitive Intelligence. Avinash waxes on what competitive information is important for site metrics.
- Why Agencies Are Failing. Great article from Joseph Dumont.
- The Marketing Spiral. David Armano reminds us all that the concept of a linear path to purchase does not exist in today’s world.
- WuChess. Members of the rap group, WuTang Clan, created a PAID site that brings together their two passions: Chess and Music.
- Human Centered Design. David Kelley of IDEO explains the future of design.
- Chart of the Week. From Marketing Sherpa. Using heat maps to show what’s happening on a web page.
- Ning. This site/platform lets you create your OWN social network.
- FWA. Great aggregator of top sites on the web. Will inspire you.
Enjoy.
Last year I attended the iMedia Breakthrough Summit in San Diego. Great show, and if you haven’t attended a summit you really should. Anyhow, I participated in a round table discussion about how Web 2.0 (which is total BS and I’ll address this pharce in another post) is screwing up our ability to track/measure impressions and clicks for online ad units. For those not in the know, the industry has been selling online adspace via an impressions based model an we’ve been reporting success on a clicks based model for years.
There have been some slight nuances. For example, rich Media service providers like PointRoll will give you an interaction rate metric in addition to the traditional impressions and clicks metrics. The idea being that while a consumer might not actually click thru they are still engaging (another silly word) with your brand.
For the last year or so you’ve probably seen alot about engaging consumers or measuring engagement. The industry has made it seem like engagement is some brand new concept that will revolutionize the world. Not surprisingly, I’m taking an alternate view point.
Engagement is simply a fancy word for time. What we really care about as advertisers is how much time consumers/targets are spending with our brands. There’s only 24 hours in a day; that constraint is fixed and it’s been that way since the dawn of time. We buy TV in 15 second increments; so in essence we are buying on time. If I can buy “time” for TV shouldn’t I be able to buy my online media in time based increments. For example, instead of buying 1,000,000 impressions shouldn’t I be able to buy 1,000,000 minutes of brand exposure?
Hopefully, that’s given you something to think about the next time you’re thinking about how to measure your media.
Head of Social Media at Walgreens. Interactive marketer, innovator, boat rocker, continuous learner, movie lover, risk taker, dad and all around good guy.
