Greg Verdino

Depicting the digital now

I'm grooving on this photostream by Flickr user LynetteR.  She mashes photos that have been shared (by other people) on Flickr with new media factoids, platititudes and notable quotes in ways that are pretty darn compelling.  Created over the course of the past year and a half or so, the images riff on a general theme of change in media, marketing and digital culture.  Lynette touches upon social media, consumer empowerment, technology, gaming, mass media and more.

Good for a bit of quick inspiration or (if you have more time on your hands - there are hundreds of images) as a sprawling survey of many of the key happenings in the world of digital media, I also think that these images prove that creativity often comes from combining two things that already exist, but in new and interesting ways.  Enjoy.

NOTE: If the widget below comes up empty (doesn't display the images), refresh the page and it should work properly.

Hat tip to the Publicis Digital blog for pointing to LynetteR's work. 

[If you are reading this post in email or an RSS reader and don't see the embedded slideshow, please click through.]

Innovation is...

How do you define innovation? 

As Jon Burg -- a colleague from my Digitas days and an all-around wicked smart guy (pictured here wearing a top hat -- yes, a top hat) -- posits on his new blog, Future Visions, we all use the word but probably have very different things in mind when we say it.

Is it simply about being first?  About pushing the envelope?  About sparking a revolution or maybe just a bit of an evolution? Or maybe it's about combining two known things in a way that is totally new and unexpected.  I could go on...

Given the constant drive to innovate in media and marketing -- so much so that some clients bnus their agencies based on the magnitude of the innovations they introduce into the marketing mix -- coming to a shared understanding seems like a pretty good idea.

With that in mind, Jon has issued an open call for input -- check out his post and weigh in. 

He'd love to hear from lots and lots of marketing folks like you - and plans to bubble up everyone's input into some kind of graphical representation (watch your back Armano) that highlights the common threads, most commonly used phrases and the collective wisdom of the crowd.

I'll be sure to give Jon my thoughts - and to help spark the conversation, I'd like to put a call out to a baker's dozen of my blogfriends -- CC, CK, Cam, Darren, David, Drew, Gavin, Matt, Karl, Paul, Ryan,  Scott and Valeria.  I hope all of you (and anyone else reading this post) can help Jon out on this one.  He's a good guy -- really -- top hat aside...

Is this thing on?

With the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing e-conference coming up next Wednesday, I figured now might be a good time to preview my presentation (so yes, this is a shameless attempt to entice you to attend the event.)  In my session, I talk about what social media means for business-to-business marketers and provide some high level guiding principles for b2b conversational marketing.  Here are my slides (feed and email readers click through here.)

Rather than provide the talking points here, I'd like to suggest that you tune into the webcast at 2pm on Wednesday (or grab the on-demand version or transcript afterwards.)  Although the event doesn't run until next week, we actually recorded the session a few weeks ago.  I'll confess that I'm not entirely happy with how I presented my content but even so I think the key ideas come through -- and the recorded session will be followed immediately by a live Q&A during which I'd be more than happy to clarify my points and answer any questions you may have.

In the meantime, feel free to let me know your thoughts about the slideset.  (A special thanks to Matt Dickman, from whom I cribbed the idea of using a picture of stacked rocks to illustrate the concept of balance.)

I'm talking to you

The "Greg Verdino Talk Tour" rolls into New York City next week. 

Dialed In: Mobile Marketing.  On Monday June 11th (@6pm), I'll be participating in the latest Dialed In event presented by 212NYC Interactive Advertising Club.  In addition to me, this panel discussion will feature mobile experts from enPocket, Free 411, Millward Brown and Hachette Filipacchi.  I believe you need to be a 212NYC member to attend.

Explore Second Life.  On Wednesday June 13th (@7pm), I will be presenting my Second Life for Marketers virtual world deep-dive for the ThirdWay Brand Trainers speaker series.  This even is open to the public and advance tickets are available at a discount, so I hope my fellow New Yawkas can make it.

I'll be announcing more summer speaking engagements in the coming week.  Also, don't forget about MarketingProfs' free virtual conference on B2B marketing (June 13th) and you can always see where I'll be presenting by checking my speaking schedule in the righthand sidebar.

Look, listen and learn

Just a quick post to point you to the podcasts -- one video, one audio -- recorded at a couple of my recent speaking engagements.  Combined, they're loaded with great insights about digital and virtual marketing from key executives at Avenue A/Razorfish, Microsoft, Operative, Tacoda, American Cancer Society, Disney, Harvard Business Review and The Electric Sheep Company.  Click through and check them out.

Watch here. First up, you can see the video highlights from last week's NextNY "community conversation" on the future of advertising, courtesy of the gang at video and podcast production house For Your Imagination.

Listen here. Second, I somehow just came across the audio podcast from my Virtual Worlds 2007 panel on integrating real world and metaverse marketing activities, courtesy of the RezNation/SecondCast crew.

It's Rupert's space

The other 177 million of us just hang out there.  As MySpace faces off with widget makers, this is the message Fox Interactive Media is delivering not only to the partners/competitors/acquisition targets that make widgets and rely on established community sites for distribution, but to the advertisers and consumers that count on consumer-driven viral distribution for social media success.  Last week I spoke with Advertising Age's Abbey Klaassen about this very topic.  Our conversation is peppered throughout Abbey's piece in this week's issue.

For me, the bottom line is this:

It's bad for advertisers.  The holy grail of social network marketing is getting people to voluntarily pull our brands into their personal site experiences (e.g., their profiles) and help us spread our messages throughout the community.  But we're not simply looking at your community -- we want to create bite-sized brand experiences that can be distributed, without prejudice, throughout any community in which our customers participate.

It's bad for consumers.  Personal pages and profiles are all about self-expression. Anything that flies in the face of consumers' ability to create and distribute as they see fit will by definition claw back some of the control that consumers have seized since the start of the social media revolution.  It's all well and good to offer your members a suite of content tools (for video, photos, etc.) but as long as your members are creating and sharing content through other services, they'll want to express themselves by pulling that content into their profiles.

And at the end of the day, it's bad for MySpace -- but somehow the folks at Fox Interactive Media don't see it this way.  When you restrict advertisers' ability to connect with consumers as they see fit, the smart advertisers take their checkbooks elsewhere.  When you restrict consumer choice in an age of consumer control and virtually unlimited choice, at least some of them will go elsewhere too.  This allows tier two competitors like Facebook, Bebo and Orkut to gain some much-needed traction, and opens the door for savvy upstarts like Freewebs to steal both members and revenue.

So congratulations MySpace, by locking down your network and attempting to assert corporate control over your partners, advertisers and members you have officially become "old media."  Ironic, given that Mr. Murdoch has been getting kudos lately for his enlightened view on the shifting media landscape.  Time to put your money (erm, actually our money) where your mouth is...

This blog turned (top) 25 this week

I'm happy to report that I've cracked the Viral Garden list of Top 25 Marketing Blogs, coming in right at #25.  I'll wait to see if I can hold my spot on the list before I add the Top 25 badge to my sidebar, but in the meantime it's a nice milestone in my relatively short and checkered blogging career.  Thanks to my readers for helping me make it to the list. 

I'm brewing a "real" post and that'll be coming soon, but if you're looking for more smart marketing stuff in the meantime, the Top 25 is a great place to start (maybe there's someone on there that you're not yet reading), as is the Feedburner Marketing and Advertising group feed -- organized by Eric Friedman of Marketing.fm fame, the feed aggregates content from a few dozen blogs, including (as of this morning) mine.

GV Sighting: BusinessWeek points here

Nice pick-up by Bruce Nussbaum at BusinessWeek.  Cool.

GV Sighting: in MediaPost about Second Life

Nice bit of press in today's MediaPost Online Media Daily, holding forth on Second Life and the recently released comScore numbers about global SL usage. 

Speaking at Brand ManageCamp 2007

What are you doing on September 25 and 26?  I know where I'll be -- in Chicago, speaking at Brand ManageCamp 2007.  I'm really excited about this event.  No stale keynotes, no inexpert "expert panels," no BS, just the best and brightest minds in branding delivering the actionable insights and tools you need to do more with less, find your brand’s next big idea, enhance the customer experience, and tap your brand’s true potential. 

The agenda features fourteen visionaries and leading marketing minds (well, thirteen plus me) including Dan Heath, Barry Schwartz, Fred Senn, Dr. Peter Sealey and Carl Nichols and others.  You've gotta check out the complete speaker list and full agenda -- and of course you need to register now.

Here's what I'll be talking about.

Give The People What They Want: Empowered Consumers, Emerging Media & Marketing's New Rules

Most marketers acknowledge that the consumer is in control, pointing to rampant technological change, the rise of new media platforms and the proliferation of choice as key drivers.But few have taken the dramatic steps necessary to respond to the realities of this new marketplace. After all, the tried and true methods that have worked for us over the years still offer the best way to get the job done. Right? Wrong.

Attention to traditional brand-building outlets is on the wane, as the people we aim to reach turn to emergent media – mobile, gaming, virtual worlds, niche-oriented websites and, perhaps most of all, social media – where they (not we) write the rules of engagement. Brand marketers that don’t shift their focus to these new platforms run the risk of being left behind, but simply employing old approaches in the new media is a recipe for failure. What’s a marketer to do?

Greg Verdino will talk about what marketing means in the age of consumer control, how emerging media channels provide new ways for consumers to engage brands (and for brands to engage consumers), and why the old rules simply aren’t relevant anymore. You will learn:

• Which changes in the media landscape signal ‘must watch’ trends that are changing the rules of marketing; and which are likely to be passing fads that will distract you rather than benefit you.
• How to tap into those trends to engage the consumers who have opted out of your interruption advertising campaigns.
• How to make smart, strategic marketing decisions in a world where there are few best practices and no clear cut paths to success.
• How you can succeed by marketing for your customers rather than just marketing at them.

Hope you can be there.  This will be a good one.