iStrategy Conference Chicago – Recap/thoughts

So I just got back from iStrategy in Chicago… and decided to dust my blog off (who has the time to blog these days?) after a busy summer of new business pitches, travel, family drama, parenthood and a few long weekends in between the non-weekends.

iStrategy was originally billed as a “CMO centric, high level social media conference” by the uber-persistent sales people from the conference organizers (and yet, everyone there commented on the aggressive sales techniques… but HEY, they bought in) . It was 2 days of keynotes and breakout sessions with networking lunches and dinners as an added bonus. It turned out to be a lot different than the original pitch… but I had a nice time nonetheless.

The conference was well attended: 200 folks in all… a mix of big and small brands with about 1/2 of the folks being agency types or offering services. As with all SM conferences, there was a vast array of experience levels and speakers. Can I say I learned anything besides some new anecdotes? Not really. Can I say I met a lot of great people and learned about their products, challenges and little tricks? Surely.

I flew in on Tuesday evening and stayed at the Hilton at ORD. My expectations were low for the first night, but was happy that a pre-event happy hour was organized. The hotel bar, The Gas Light,  at the Hilton at O’Hare is a MUST SEE.  Something straight out of downtown Vegas. Totally unexpected and fun. I ran into a few Silicon Alley vets then retired early to rest up for the conference.

The next morning we took what appeared to be a Hummer limo to the Hotel Allegro. I met Christine Carey, a well-spoken woman from Rand Corporation in D.C. who is a HUGE proponent of Vanguard (yay, client love!). She was looking for ideas and approaches on how to get her healthcare organization/think tank more visable via social media. Of course I gave her an earful of ideas.

I won’t go into great depth here, but you can see some of the top quotes by searching for #iStrategy2010 on Twitter, since all that work is already done by the Tweeps at the festival (including moi).

The keynote speaker, John Hayes from American Express started his speech with “I am not a digital person… go easy on me”. His speech was great and he smoothly answered some of the questions from the audience (he never mentioned the OPEN program, which surprised me due to its huge social hooks). As an avid AmEx card evangelist, I was charmed.

Next up was a panel lead by the funny/smart Chris Heuer from Social Media Club featuring a few execs from PepsiCo, Edelman PR and the Chicago Bulls. I had a chance to catch up with Heuer later at the festival… looking forward to staying in touch with him for sure.

I chose a break-out session after lunch with the Travel Channel’s Jonathon Sichel along with his agency sidekick James Clark (Room 214… and btw, his biz card made me lock myself out of my hotel room!). Interesting thoughts on “VIRAL vs SPREADABLE” (something @faris here at work preaches). It was nothing revolutionary, but very well stated and something all social marketers need to understand and have at the ready when the bossman asks “Why didn’t the commercial we placed on Daily Motion go VIRAL?”

VIRAL = Magic. Rapidly spreading quickly. Good luck.

SPREADABLE = Word of mouth. Usually gets passed on one or two levels then dissipates/decays. Many times SPREADABLE things go viral by chance. Most of your campaigns should aim at this unless you include celebrity, sensation or tap into a raw human emotion.

Then we watched Anthony Bourdain burn six tons of cocaine. This sorta went viral (that’s the point). VBS eat your heart out on this one 😉

More coming soon. Don’t want these posts to turn into a novel.

Social Media Monitoring: 1997 all over again.

I am in charge of social media marketing at a mid-sized ad agency in NYC. Very cool job, actually. I am tasked with learning the ins-and-outs of  all the tools, apps, platforms, aggregators and snake oils in the realm of utilizing social media/networking to spread the word about our clients’ products (or simply find innovative ways to better service clients’ consumers for them using social media).

One of the most frequently asked questions I get: “What do you use for monitoring and tracking social media?”

I am not going to give you that answer just yet… but I will shed a little light on some of my findings in meeting with 90% of the sales reps from the available social monitoring services out there (no easy task!).

1. There are are a couple all-inclusive, totally kick-ass providers. They will cost you min. $3K per month for simple reports.

2. There is a heap of clones with basic functionality that make up the rest of the pack: Some paid and some free.

3. Without shelling out for a company who can provide humans (aka “analysts”) to pour over our data: You are in for a hell of a lot of work if you want to provide truly accurate results on the most basic of reports.

4. Without proper set-up and filtering on day one… you will create a lot of extra work for yourself (and skew data as you figure out how to pare back/filter the data correctly).

5. If your brand or a competitor you are attemping to analyze is a common word or proper noun (“Barbie” or “Ross” or “Target”)… you are in deep doo-doo. Be prepared for an afternoon of fun.

6. Very few can actually accurately scrape Facebook data.

I am having flashbacks to the late 90s: Start-ups clamoring for market share in murky waters with companies of all shapes and sizes dipping their toes in. Experts are RARE. Warm bodies with experience in the field are rare or non-existent. Standards are evolving. Rules are sort of happening. Companies are wildily adjusting rates/fees a demand/budgets are materializing. There a many, many conferences full of scared sheep and “gurus” alike. Guys with funny glasses and sneakers leading the charge (or at least not seen as slackers).

If you lived through the dot-com bubble/burst with me. You know what I mean.

On the positive side: Technology, which is making the social monitoring revolution move quickly, is eons ahead of 1997. Everyone is on broadband now. There are no CD-ROMs involved. Web-based demos are saving us all time. Online research into these tools is much more readily available.

On that note… I am working on a report card of the industry… should be out in June. Soup-to-nuts analysis of the top 20-or-so tools with grades and pricing. Stay tuned.