We attended the Gravity Summit event at Harvard this week and I have to give both @rumford and @beverlymacy credit for putting together such a nice event. It was much smaller and more intimate than most social media/Web 2.0 events and thus very easy for everyone to interact. I even got to hang out with @MCHammer for a while at the afterparty. Pretty cool!
The speakers offered good analysis and thorough case studies taken from the social media marketing world. I took notes to share with those who couldn’t make it. Here they are (in all their random glory):
Troy Kelly – Ad Exec., Arnold Worldwide
Troy presented good case studies from his work on the Truth, McDonalds Filet of Fish & Ocean Spray campaigns.
- For Truth, Arnold built off-site web apps that could be passed around. Results: 50% of the online traffic for this campaign was on the Truth site, 50% was off the site. Lesson: Find the audience where they are and go after them.
- For Filet of Fish, they build a Facebook page that reached over 50k fans very quickly. They released early special Filet of Fish content to this group and allowed them to comment/give feedback on the campaign.
- For Ocean Spray, they used a community of “Cran Fans” to give feedback on trial products.
He also talked about the evolution of Advertising 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0. Advertising 3.0 defined not by a “Dialogue between the brand and its customer, but a Tri-alogue between the brand, it’s customer, and everyone that customer interacts with.” He is a big proponent of “listening before engaging” with online influencers. We actually think Traackr could help him a lot with this listening stage of their campaign development.
Wendy Harman – Head of Social Media for Red Cross
Great woman, Wendy. She came into Red Cross during Katrina. They brought her in to “get the bloggers to stop” b/c the blogs were generating so much negative press. Wendy did the opposite — she embraced them and built an enormous community of bloggers/social media mavens who support and evangelize the Red Cross. She has developped out a large network of hyper-local Twitter accounts for the Red Cross which have proven to be very popular and effective. The big challenge for Wendy generating relevant content at the national level with this network of local “chapters.”
Todd Defron – Shift
Todd is always good to hear. He spoke about this new world from a PR-agent’s perspective. Some nice take-aways:
- Public Relations has never been about Public Relations. It’s been about Media Relations. Now it is really becoming Public Relations. PR must work to generate and nurture the relationship between the brand and it’s public.
- Everybody counts! Google records and indexes everything online. A brand’s interaction with the public is now being recorded. Everyone counts. Every interaction counts. Be good and be consistent!
- How often should a brand be present online? Everyday! Via blogs, comments, Twitter, etc…Everyday. Don’t miss one.
- Great case study with H&R Block — Got them involved engaging on Yahoo Answers and Amazon. Held offline meet-ups around tax time. Got very nice responses and created tremendous SEO. 60% increase in sales of their tax software on Amazon.
- Some tips on engagement: (1) Don’t spam; (2) Don’t bore your audience; (3) Don’t only talk about yourself; (4) Don’t ask your lawyers for guidance on online engagement…if you do, you’ll never do it.
- Mass media is dead…real soon.
Andy Mitchell – CNN
This talk wasn’t that informative, but it was cool to hear the story behind the development of the CNN/Facebook platform that was used during President Obama’s inauguration (they tried to get it done for the election coverage, but couldn’t get the coding done in time!). I think CNN, as a mass-media organization, is being very pro-active and aggressive in their use of social media. It’s good to see…
MC Hammer
Yup, that MC Hammer. Well, he’s just Hammer now. He was inspiring and very excited about social media. It was key to him remaking himself. Look out for new album in the near future?!?
Gary Vaynerchuk
I’ve been a fan of Gary since episode #37 of Wine Library TV. Good to hear that that he just picked up a 10-book deal with Harper Collins. Smart on HC’s part. He’s got huge built in audience (1MM+ Twitter followers), so the risk of publishing is greatly lowered. Here are some of Gary’s gem from Monday (quotes from my memory):
- “I’m sick of listening to arguments about whether or not social media works and if it’s here to stay. Guys…knock it off. That isn’t the argument you should be having. It’s here, it’s big and it works. Now figure out how to use it and play with it effectively.”
- “Find your passion and create content around it. Start a site about ketchup, for Christ sake. I guarantee if you become the top ketchup review site, Heinz is going to have $75k for your ass.”
- “People won’t start making real money in this social media thing for a while. In fact, I’m going to be like Willie Mays. In 10 years some young punk is going to start a wine show online and make millions doing it. He won’t be nearly as good as me, but he’ll have better timing. Sucks.”
- “True entrepreneurs aren’t afraid to go to zero. We’ll bounce right back. In fact getting to zero is an exciting proposition. I’ll sell anything. I’ll sell rocks!”
So that’s about it for my notes. Be happy to hear from anyone else who would like to share their notes and thoughts (or argue my memory!).
Derek
