Advercation = Advertising + Education

This week 275 authors submitted their individual chapters for Why Don’t They Get It, a follow up to The Age of Conversation. (All proceeds go to Variety, The Children’s Charity.)

Last year I wrote a chapter on how brand marketers should approach using social media for marketing purposes.

Since that time, I launched my own agency, iStrategyLabs, which focuses on providing clients with interactive strategy (the “iStrategy part”) and digital/physical productions (the “Labs” part).

So, in keeping with iStrategyLabs focus, I contributed a chapter called “Four Principles for Fusing Experiential Marketing and Social Media”. It is my firm belief that interactive channels are rapidly burning out. Think about it this way: how many websites can you visit? How many banners can you click? How many RSS feeds can you follow? Here is a small piece of one of the principles:

The Creation Principle: Experiential marketing is employed by brands to drive deep engagement with an audience in a physical place. However, event producers must think beyond how the offline audience will interact with the brand so that they can build experiences for the online audience as well.

• Structure your talent agreements so the audience is allowed to capture content.
• Allow all cameras onsite. Video and photos shot by your audience will be uploaded to social networks and used in blog posts.

In this increasingly cluttered digital environment marketers need to marry the online and offline worlds to have authentic and lasting conversations with their audiences - this is how marketing is done today. It’s not the future. It’s imperative to market this way NOW.

The book is currently being editing and will be published soon. When it is released I hope you will pick up a copy because, a) my chapter may provide some value to you, b) if not, one of the other 274 could and c) in the worst case you will have contributed to a good cause as all profits are donated.

I look forward to reading the chapters of my fellow authors, especially those by friends:

C.C. Chapman, Ernie Mosteller, Joe Talbott, Jonathan Trenn, Laura Fitton, and Sam Huleatt

You can find out more about the other wonderful authors after the break: Read the rest of this entry »

In May ‘07 I posted here about how Washington DC is waking up to interactive.

The scene here has been pretty intense lately and last week’s event was a highlight of recently happenings:

Facebook Developer Garage DC was brought to town by Jesse Thomas, Nick O’Neill and Robert Neel.

Sponsors included EdelmanPR, and freewebs. iStrategyLabs threw in a live stream session which can be found here:

DC Startup Weekend is the next big thing coming up and I’ll be providing the live stream, some interactive marketing and interactive strategy components.

Will Kern posted on his blog recently about how he feels a groundswell of activity in the DC interactive scene. I’ve felt this for sometime too, and I feel we’ve reach a tipping point. There are plans underway to create an overarching organization that can help facilitate the growth of the broader DC tech community by helping solidify event sponsorships, simplify meeting logistics and create cross pollination among affinity groups.

Some folks might feel we’re ‘trying to replicate silicon valley’ here in DC - that’s not the mission, nor do we wish we were in the valley. We love DC and are working hard to support all the talented technologists in the area, enabling them to achieve what they seek. We’re currently brainstorming a brand name that we all can be proud to support and one that would serve as an appropriate umbrella organization. The naming thread is in The DC Technology ning socnet and can be found here. Special thanks to Justin Thorp for putting up the ning community.

Look out for WidgetDevCamp coming to DC on 11/15.

It’s been a very busy six weeks, and I’ve neglected posting to Advercation as my focus has shifted to my startup iStrategyLabs.  Here’s what’s going on:

1) iStrategyLabs speaking engagements

2) DC Technology Network is Growing 

3) Interactive Strategists featured @ iStrategyLabs