I’m at lunch the Boston Ad Club meeting where I gave a talk on blogging a few minutes ago. Josh McCall is the CEO of Jack Morton, the leader in “experiential marketing.” He’s giving the lunchtime address.

He takes Cristo’s Gates in NYC Central Park as his model. They created an experience, bringing to NYC millions of people and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Example: Pontiac Solstice launched with a surprise concert by Jet. 75% of people say that participating in an event would make them more receptive to advertising. (All figures come from Jack Morton surveys.)

Word of mouth can reach resistant “consumers.” E.g., Nokia made a “lifestyle connection” with “hipsters” by holding a party at a hip museum.

Experiential marketing can put products in the hands of “consumers,” setting off “cascading waves” of word of mouth. Example: Levis set up the dressing room of the future that automatically measures you and presents you with a custom shopping list. “Over 80% of those touched by the experience actually tried on jeans” and in many stores, sales exceeded projections by over 100%.

Events can also turn employees into a word of mouth army. Example: Glaxo marketed through employees.,

“Word of mouth is more desirable than ever and experiential marketing is one of its most potent causes.” 80% of word of mouth occurs in face-to-face settings. Online accounts for 7-10% of word of mouth.

Imagine if customs at Heathrow immersed visitors in an compelling experience instead of the endless hallway and bad lighting? [In Boston, you get endless lines for visitors and quick lines for citizens, plus CNN complete with Administration propaganda as ads. Delightful.]

[Tags: marketing advertising jack+morton]

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[ipdi] Over the horizon

This session is about looking ahead.

Micah Sifry starts with advice for organizers: Find the connectors among all those speaking. Go to the watering holes where people already are rather than expecting them to come to you. Online social networks that are tuned to work on politics may be the next big thing.

Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org warns that darkness may be over the horizon. There is a threat to our medium: We need to preserve Net neutrality, the lack of gatekeepers and the low barrier to entry. The threat is that cable companies and ISPs are trying to change the fundamental rules of the Internet. This should be an issue of personal concern to everyone at this conference. “Intellligence at the edge rather than control in the center is the fundamental design principle of the Internet,” said Vint Cerf, Eli says. There are two reasons for hope, he says: 1. Google and Amazon et al. are in a clash of the titans against AOL/Time-Warner, etc., so intervention can be effective. 2. This is an issue that people across partisan lines can agree on. He recommends NetFreedomNow.com

Valdis Krebs asks how you build networks. Not as part of a campaign effort once every two or four years, he answers. People make real connections by working together on some project. Influence is local; that’s where decisions are made.

Q: What about “GoodMail” from AOL
A: MoveOn has been concerned about this for the same reasons we worry about Net neutrality. “As soon as you move email into a tiered system in which there is commercially certified mail and then everyone else…” When MoveOn first started, it wouldn’t have the funds to deliver the mail. AOL’s white list stops all bulk mailers, so either AOL will continue to invest large amounts of money on its white list or they can say that it’s GoodMail’s problem. We think they’ll do the latter, which will mean if you’re a small or mid-sized entity that sends email, you’re going to have to pay that fee. Tiered email poses all the same problems as a tiered Internet would.

Micah talks about some tech for building genuinely local networks. All the panelists agree that the strong networks aren’t formed for politics but have other interests and centers. Micah, however, thinks that America is a relatively non-political culture. But laterally-connected online groups are changing this because people believe their ideas and contributions matter; by being connected to others, people don’t feel so powerless.

[Tags: micah+sifry eli+pariser valdis+krebs politics moveon]

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The opening panel of the Online Politics conference features Gerald Rafshoon, who was Carter’s media guy, Doug Bailey, who is the publisher of the insider’s Hotline newsletter, and Jacki Schechner, who is CNN’s Internet reporter. The moderator is Chuck Todd, editor in chief of the Hotline.

Doug Bailey says that initially, TV ran roughshod over politics. “No one envisioned it as a tool for democracy.” [NOTE: All quotes are in fact probably paraphrases. And I’m doing my usually spotty, unreliable reporting.] The question should be not just how we can use the Internet to win, but how we can broaden democracy.

Gerald Rafshoon points to the gigantic increase in how much campaigns spend on media: from $30M each in ($78M in 2006 dollars) the 1978 campaign. In the 2006 campaign, the combined total was $2.2B. “It isn’t effective,” and it’s “generated because of greed on the part of the handlers.” “You young people have to take the Internet and make it a force for reforming how people campaign.” He talks about the ability of shooting spots for under $10K and posting them to the Internet. “There are so many ways the Internet could aid the political process.”

Jacki Schechner says the rules are changing. “Television you watch passively…But on the Internet you have the opportunity to talk back.”

Doug: New Internet ads will just be more spam.

Chuck: If you use humor, it will be spread around.

Doug: Video on demand is a powerful tool. You could hear your candidate on the issues any time you want. If you add some humor…

Chuck: What about podcasts?

Jacki: Podcast is a buzzword. We’re listening to more entertainment podcasts than political ones. But viral video is great. And that site that told you which candidate suited you was great. That’s interactive. That’s engaging.

Doug: “In the age of TV, interactivity meant being able to turn you off…Think of the power now available to campaigns to engage you, and you to engage them.” TV took the people’s participation out of the process. Campaigns stopped spending money on door to door organization. The Internet can put the people back in.

Doug: The public has never been as uncertain about the future of the country as they are right now.

Q: I run a project called Video Voter. How important is entertainment when it comes to blogging?
A: (Jacki) I don’t think political blogs are out to entertain. I think there is a market for honest information, but as with any medium, you have to keep it engaging.

Q: The Net’s distribution isn’t even, so how can it help democracy?
A: (Jacki) The Net isn’t as inclusive as we hoped, but it’s a start.

A: (Doug) The digital divide is serious.
A: (Gerald) It surfaced in the Dean campaign. Many participants in the Iowa caucuses weren’t on line.

Q: What about polls?
A: (The Mystery Pollster) People talk about the commodization of information [I was about to post on that topic!], but commentary still counts.

Q: How do we attract minorities and women to actively participate? And how do we get the media to focus on issues that matter?
A: (Jacki) It’s a challenge. I was hired in part to try to get some diversity into the stories. It’s a testament to CNN that it’s trying to get blog voices that need to be heard. I think CNN is very sincere about it.

[Tags: politics+online politics]

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You want your insightful TED coverage? Ethan’s got it. Getcha your insightful TED coverage heah.

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David isenberg, my friend, asks for bloggage to announce the following:

I’d like offer a special deal to readers of your blog that does
not appear on the official F2C website. It is about 50% off the
standard early bird pricing, $295 (vs. regular early bird at $595).
They need to use code FOBDL when they register at
http://www.pulver.com/f2c/ Unfortunately, this deal expires on
February 28.

F2C: Freedom to Connect, will happen April 3 & 4 in Washington DC.

I am going. I am speaking there. See you there?

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Until recently, if you wanted Shel Israel’s you-are-there (well, more like you-weren’t-there) reports on conferences, you had to pay Conferenza. Now Conferenza is a blog, and Shel is liveblogging Demo. [Tags: demo shel_israel conferenza conferences]

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Steve is in Davos and describes describes well an experience I often have at conferences: Wandering alone, having failed to hook into anyone’s dinner plans. But his has a little twist at the end. [Tags: steve johnson davos conferences]

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Having chided the O’Reilly Emerging Tech conference for its gender imbalance, it’s only fair to praise it for working on the issue. This year’s list of twenty-two speakers includes five women, up from last year‘s one out of twenty featured on the home page. And the agenda is better for it. Gender aside, it looks like a great line-up.

E-Tech is one of my favorite conferences because it combines community-building (hence the extra special need to get more gender balance) and sessions that are over my head enough that I learn lots. See you there, March 6-9 in San Diego.. [Tags: EmergingTech oreilly MakeMagazine technology gender]

The PR department at O’Reilly sent me a copy of Make magazine’s coffee table book Makers by Bob Parks. The stuff is just so cool, from the voice-activated Cuisinart to Bathsheba Grossman’s 3d sculptures to the steam engine made entirely out of paper, to a shirt with 38 fans which is worth it just for the photo of Mikey Sklar on the beach embodying the word “geek.” This is technology so smart and original that it’s funny.

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Chris Nolan moderates a panel with Zephyr Teachout and Andrew Rasiej.

Andrew says most politicians are technologic idiots. He says that in 2001 Sen. Diane Feinstein said that she didn’t think the Senate should not be on the Internet until the pornography and pedophilia is gone. Sen. Chuck Schumer then asked Andrew: I get 10,000 emails a day. How can I make them stop.

Zephyr talks about a college course she’s teaching on politics and the Internet. She says she has her students studying Estonia, which is highly wired and has integrated governance and the Net.

Z: Even if FEMA had messed up in every way they did, if they had made their data transparent…

Andrew: I went to DC and suggested the creation of the equivalent of a National Guard of techies. Deploy wifi transmitters, etc. It passed 97 to 0 as part of the Homeland Security Office. But no one has done anything about it.

Andrew: During the campaign, I met Michael Bloomberg. He said to me, “Oh, you’re the wifi guy!” [Andrew ran for NYC ombudsman in part on a muniwifi platform.” Bloomberg then asked, “Would we have to dig up the streets?” People in that operating system believe that networks consist of people who have touched one another’s skin. [HE demos a politicians arm grip.] People in the power structure have no threat of risk from these new networks. It’ll take a change in generation.

Q: Much as we may scoff at Bloomberg, et al., we should put ourselves in their mindset. [Discussion ensues.]

Z: In the UK, they have started having limited term engagements with politicians. E.g., a month of chat with an MP. A good way to introduce them.

Chris: The Telcom Act of 1996 is being rewritten. She hopes that wifi will become a consumer issue because then the politicians won’t be able to cut off access. [I wish I agreed.]

Q: Does this start with the cities? With the technorati?

Chris: Yes.

Z: Other campaigns don’t want to hear about any lesson from the Dean campaign beyond building the email list because the rest of it was about losing control…no, that’s the wrong phrase (Z says). It’s about trust.

Andrew: I’ve suggested to MoveOn.org that they introduce their members to one another. But they’re afraid that some group will do something embarrassing, e.g., equate W with Hitler.

[Tags: corante SocialSoftware CoranteSSA]

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JD Lasica leads a panel on what the media will look like. On it are public radio guy Tony Kahn, RocketBoom‘s Amanda Congdon, and Lisa Stone the law blogger.

Amanda: “We think our viewers are smart. That sets us apart from traditional media.” About 20% of RB’s stories come from user suggestions.

Tony: “After 35 years in the media, I finally found this new medium [podcasting Morning Stories] that allows me to have fun.” It began as a broadcdast. It still is: Once a week to 20,000 listeners. The podcdast is downloaded 300,000 times a month. Then it became a videocast, another barrier knocked down. He says that the traditional public radio infrastructure is both fascinated and terrified by the new media.

(JD puts up on the screen NowPublic. Looks interesting.)
Lisa spends time with mainstream news media, evangelizing the new way of thinking. They are aware that the growth in news is online.

Mary Hodder: Please put media into reusable formats. Of the 72 places I’ve found for uploading video, half translate into Flash, which is not reusable.

Amanda: Yes. We’re Creative Commons and Quicktime.

David Cooperstein: Will traditional media insist on owning their communities?

Lisa: Their incentive is to find a way to capitalize on the Web. (She recommends Lisa William’s excellent piece on PressThink.)

Q: Do you align yourself more with newspapers, public radio…?

Amanda: We’re looking for our own model. We have 100,000 downloads a day. In March we could have been bought out by a huge company, but we won’t do it.

Tony: The established markets and ways of doing business won’t be the solution. Something new will be invented. What’s fueling this are individual voices, inspired and passionate…

[Tags: corante SocialSoftware CoranteSSA]

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