EBlog

Interact 2008

October 1, 2008 | Posted by: Christine

This week Washington hosted the first Annual Interact conference - billed as the interactive media event of the year.  Breaking it down into simpler terms, the goal of the event was to educate, inspire and perhaps entertain marketers, both agency and corporate side, in our quest to become strategic marketers in what is now a four dimensional world.  I say bravo.  W­ith the exception of one exceptionally long twitter panel which was neither entertaining or insightful, the conference was superb and featured many highly informative and engaging speakers from significant agencies such as Organic, RTCRM, Saatchi & Saatchi, AKQA, Olgivy and others.   

Here are two nuggets that I picked up and wanted to share - both are hopefully insightful and one is just darn funny.

First, Heath Rudduck of Digats said this:  Stop thinking of marketing as an intrusion and start thinking of it as a service.  Ok, I know none of us like to think we are "intruding" so I'll leave that alone.  But think of ourselves as a service provider...now that's thought provoking.  I challenge us all the next time we think about "gating" our content or are not fully transparent in our efforts to stop for a minute and think about the buyer and how they would change their perception of our brand if we approached our job as a service provider, an educator.  Not a seller.  Aweome thought Heath.

Second, Rob Feakins of Publicis said this:  Stop thinking of the web as a place, think of it as a platform where you can spark contagious ideas and ingnite conversation.  He gave this example from a Cadbuary campaign Publicis did which generated millions of viewers and inspired many spoofs with  yet more viewers (something a print ad with the same message that every Cadbury bar delivers one and a half glasses of milk could not generate.  Watch and enjoy...and I'll bet you pass it along!