Archive for the ‘Conferences’ Category
October 28th, 2009
I attended the MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer last week here in Chicago and learned a lot that will eventually translate into the creative work we do for our clients.
But this conference illuminated a change in the learning process, altogether. It showed me why agencies like Critical Mass must be involved in these conversations as well as the changing ways we can use these events to inform our work moving forward.
The Snowball Starts Rolling
This was a different kind of conference. From the start, a strong symphony of tweets and a streaming video feed allowed everyone in the world to feel as though they were there. There were no firewalls – everyone was encouraged to share.
To distill and salvage the best ideas, attendees were asked to submit and vote on the best insights from the conference – in a sense, crowdsourcing reference material.
These small bits of data – tweets, quick insights, even over-heard conversation – were collected and documented. Blog posts tallied quick insights (by @damphoux) or categorized learnings (by @anetah) or took more time to provide longer, more detailed lists (by @JayBaer).
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October 27th, 2009
It’s Forrester time again! Critical Mass is a Gold Sponsor at this year’s Forrester Consumer Forum being held at the Fairmont Hotel in Chicago today, October 27 and October 28. If you’re attending the conference, we’re at Booth #107 so stop by and say hi. We’ll be tweeting from the event (@criticalmass) and Forrester has set up a hash tag (#FCF09) so you can follow all the conference happenings.
The theme of the conference this year is “creating breakthrough multichannel relationships with the three-dimensional consumer.” It’s certainly a challenge that our clients—across every vertical and horizontal—are wrestling with, and it’s the core problem that our Experience Distribution team is focused on solving: With the multitude of channels available to marketers today, where should you place your bets?
In keeping with the theme, our own CEO Dianne Wilkins, along with Billy Vassiliadis, CEO of R&R Partners, will be presenting a case study at Forrester today on how our agencies activated a 360° Customer Experience framework to drive tourism to the city of Las Vegas during these troubled economic times. Below are the details so you can check it out:
“Viva Las Vegas!” by Critical Mass and R&R Partners @ 2:45-3:15pm TODAY!
When the stakes are high, it pays to listen. The current economic trials have caused unprecedented adversity for the tourism industry: high gas prices, low consumer confidence, and the economy in decline have created a perfect storm of reasons not to travel. Yet, through it all, Las Vegas has persevered. Learn how the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, Critical Mass, and R&R Partners have kept Las Vegas on the map as the No. 1 tourist destination by bringing Vegas to life — through the eyes of real people who experienced it.
• See how an integrated 360-degree marketing strategy kept Las Vegas rolling despite the odds.
• Discover how social channels, from word of mouth to viral campaigns, can create a groundswell of passionate advocates for your brand.
• Understand how to listen, learn, and continually adapt your strategy to stay on top.
We’ll be posting more from the event as it happens. Rumor has it there will be a “surprise guest” visiting our booth during the cocktail hour tonight! Stay tuned…
October 15th, 2009
The marketing premise behind luxury brands used to be mystique. If you want the brand to be aspirational then create an aura that is, in fact, difficult to obtain. Tag lines like ‘The Crowning Achievement”, “Unlike Any Other” and of course “Don’t Dream It, Drive It” all ooze with the idea that ‘this brand is not for everyone’. Well, that decision is not up to the marketer anymore. If it used to be mystique, today it is transparency.
Last week I spoke at a breakfast put together by Milton Pedraza and his Luxury Institute. I expected a novice audience and while a few did fit that bill, most were already down the road of embracing today’s digital luxury consumer.
The point of my discussion was that in order to blend high touch, a key element to luxury, and high tech, a key element of today’s digital consumer, brands have to understand that time is the new luxury. If I’m buying a Jaguar I am spending just as much time learning about the brand and the product as the person who is buying a Chevy. Where I do that learning is, for the most part, based on my time.
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June 30th, 2009
As in 2008, this year’s Luxury Interactive Conference was mostly enlightening, often fun, and at times a bit “out-there.” But then, that’s the nature of industry confabs.
Last June I was a speaker here, alongside my then-client in front of a pretty big breakout room filled to capacity with 200+ of the glossily groomed. It was one of two simultaneous presentations, and from all reports the other room was much bigger than ours, but just as full. This time around it was a pretty different story.
We’re all familiar with the economy’s effect on our and every other business on the planet. At the Luxury Interactive Conference, this reality took shape in lower attendance (to be expected), fewer speakers, a smaller venue, and only one main ballroom for all presentations on the docket.
This is not to say, however, that the conference wasn’t a success. How could that be? Well for starters, a completely new ambiance filled the air — everyone, whether on stage or in the audience, genuinely looked to help each other through this trying time. The standard feeling of competition, even among agency personnel looking to fatten up their new-biz pipelines and appointment books, was relatively absent. No thinly veiled corporate espionage could be detected. No goofy adult version of the high school clique; just a bunch of people looking to each other for help on how to get through this.
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