Master brander Robert Stephens of Geek Squad and past-MIMA President Kristina Halvorson, among others, will be speaking at the VISION 2008 Technology Conference in St. Paul, MN.

The focus will be more tech-heavy than many MIMA events and will include trends important to Interactive Marketing.

MIMA members are invited to register for the conference with an additional $25 discount ($75 off the regular price) by using this link.

More about the conference is here, but if you decide to register, use the MIMA-specific link above to claim your discount.

“VISION Speakers Will Present on Virtualization, Green Computing, Disaster Recovery, Network Security, Collaboration Software and Emerging Technology Trends.”

“Note to agencies: you are competing with publishers now.”
—Rebecca Lieb, The Decline of Advertising and the Creative Renaissance

“There’s too much competition between women. We need more collaboration.”
— Nancy Lyons and Meghan Wilker, Wired Women

“Digital is a mindset, not a medium.”
—Andrian Ho and Christian Erickson, Creativity: Bridging Traditional to Digital

“The challenge has always been getting signoff on an artifact you can’t deliver.”
—Jill Hewitt and Chris Bernard, Schematic and Microsoft: All Access Olympics

“Web properties today: 1) stagnant content 2) no interaction 3) about the company, not the customer”
—Valeria Maltoni, Corporate Blogger: Angel or Demon?

“The future is already here. It’s just unevenly distributed.”
—William Gibson, quoted by Chris Bernard, Schematic and Microsoft: All Access Olympics

“This is the best market for interactive in the country today.”
—Matt Wilson, MIMA President, Welcome Remarks

“Dance like an idiot and don’t sell anything.”
— Ze Frank, What Conversation?

What did you hear? Please share.

The theme of this year’s Summit is the Feed.   When we think about the Feed as consumers, we think about what we want to hear about.  Companies, on the other hand, think about making a profit, finding customers and building their brand.  Corporate blogs, if approached correctly, connect companies with their consumers by providing content that speaks to consumer needs while indirectly fulfilling on company objectives.

It seems obvious that a company’s online content should speak to their target audience’s needs, but think about most corporate websites.  They have stagnant content and are about the company, not the consumer.  A blog is a great way for companies to start responding to what their audience really wants to hear.

There is an increasing demand for businesses to start leveraging social media.  According to Maltoni, 85% of people believe that companies should have a social media presence online and 53% of people say they would interact with companies with that presence.  A corporate blog is a way for companies to turn the tables on the traditional one-way marketing model by providing refreshed content and creating interaction.

Corporate blogging is a good opportunity to listen and become more in tune with the ongoing needs of customers.  The result is the creation of an online brand identity for your company that puts you in control of the conversation.  As consumers start to recognize your company’s persona/voice (reputation building), there’s also an increase in trust.  The more people feel they know you, the more affinity they will feel for your brand.

Creating a corporate blog is not an easy task though.  Corporate bloggers need to possess very specific qualities and characteristics because they are, in essence, the face of your brand.  They need to be communicators (editors), facilitators (community builders) and negotiators (marketers), as well as being active listeners, advocates and ambassadors.  These qualities all promote trust between company and consumer.

There is, of course, a great sense of responsibility associated with becoming a corporate blogger, especially within heavily regulated companies.  Everything you say is associated with the company.  There’s no such thing as being “just an employee”.  Corporate bloggers are the company.  Maltoni’s advice is to be open, truthful and sure of what you want to communicate because “once you open the door, there is no turning back.”

One of the biggest business challenges we face when launching a new product is how to go to market with it?  How and where do you spend your marketing budget?  This was the focus of the “Marketing Mix Challenge” session at today’s MIMA Summit.

The following panelists were asked to share their thoughts on an appropriate marketing mix for launching a new yoghurt-based sports drink (Edgy-Y) in one market over a three month period.

• Luba Smulka, General Mills
• Eric Boyles, Medtronic
• Ron Corbisier, Cadria
• Patty Henderson, Colle+McVoy

The panelists agreed that point of purchase is key, that is, reaching the target audience at the moment of most relevance.  So what are those key moments? 

• First thing in the morning while eating breakfast.  Smulka suggested leveraging newspaper wraps and print coupons. 
• In the grocery store. Boyle and Henderson recommended offering free trials of the product to shoppers.
• Online.  Contextual placements and paid search can all be leveraged to reach consumers that are performing relevant searches.

Couponing was a recurring suggestion from the panelists because of the importance of trial.  You have to prove the viability of the product and trial is the best way to do it.  In addition to in-store promotion, the panelists suggested providing e-coupons on the product’s micro site for consumers to print and take into the store.  Linked to couponing is providing other incentives.  You have to find a way to engage consumers and provide them with a real reason to try the product.

With product viability and transparency being key to this product launch, there has to be a PR element to the marketing mix.  What is the value proposition?  Why is this yoghurt sports drink different?

Many of the panelists recommended leveraging social media, which in essence ties together the tactics listed above.  There are many opportunities for exposure via social media sites which, coupled with e-couponing and links to the product micro site, can be very effective from a viral marketing standpoint.  Henderson had a long list of ways to use social media for this product launch: Twitter, blog posts with details of how to obtain the e-coupon, collecting testimonials on the micro site and asking consumers to vote for their favorite flavor.  The opportunities are endless.�

On behalf of MIMA, welcome to the Feed!  We kicked off the 2008 MIMA Summit this morning with a keynote presentation from Rebecca Lieb, former Editor-in-Chief for ClickZ, who promised to tell us a story about consumer adoption of digital media and the subsequent decline of traditional media consumption.

“Once upon a time, advertising was an exchange of content for time spent and exposure to advertiser messages.”  This is no longer the case.  Today, consumers create content and advertisers can too.  Advertising agencies are now switching to a more marketing-focused model that depends upon viral content.

Lieb provided an excellent example of an advertiser creating content.  The Great Schlep is an advetisement for Barack Obama presented as an extremely entertaining and viral video.  The creator of this content knows how to reach her target audience; she presents her content in her audience’s voice.  This example fits all three of the content criteria that Lieb focused on during her presentation:

• Educates and informs audience
• Amuses, engages, entertains
• Creates a story that consumers can spread (viral marketing)

Another example of content being used for advertising purposes is Pet Charts, a consumer-focused website that aggregates pet-focused content from other sources and invites consumers to vote for their favorite content (stories, photos, videos, etc).  The beauty about content driven sites, such as this one, is that they also support organic search engine ranking.  Search engines look favorably upon websites that constantly add fresh relevant content and raise rankings accordingly.  

Lieb dubs this approach (advertising with little-to-no significant media buying) as the ”Jerry Seinfeld” school of advertising.  The recent Seinfeld and Gates commercials are successful in humanizing products to create viral momentum.  Consumers are so engaged by these commercials that they voluntarily go online to subscribe to subsequent commercials.  Note that the mention of the product in these ads is minimal.  Instead, the ads focus on entertaining and engaging the audience rather than hitting them over the head with product mentions.

Brands are now dedicating their budget not to media buying, but to creative and spokespeople.  Advertising is no longer about buying media placements that overtly promote products, but about finding a way to engage consumers via compelling content that gets consumers talking and only subtedly promotes a product.  As Lieb concludes, advertisers are becoming “storytellers”.  If you want to sell a product, you need a story.  What’s your story?