Word of Mouth Marketing firm, BzzAgent Inc., has announce the launch of the "Hispanic BzzChannel," a new destination within BzzAgent dedicated to the US-based Hispanic Community. This channel will provide members with the opportunity to generate buzz about specially-selected products and services while providing marketers the ability to build brand evangelism within the Hispanic community. This site will be bilingual, with all content available in both English and Spanish. It can be viewed at http://hispanic.bzzagent.com.
Word of Mouth Marketing Association CEO Andy Sernovitz opened the session, "Word of Mouth Marketing: Create a WOM campaign in five easy steps," by suggesting five steps needed to make a word of mouth campaign successful:
- Find the right people
- Give them something to talk about
- Create tools to make it easy to talk about
- Participate in the conversation
- Track and measure
Sernovitz also clarified that word of mouth marketing can involve other advertising tactics (other than true word of mouth) such as buzz marketing, viral marketing, product placement, grassroots marketing, referrla programs and brand blogging.
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Led by Jupiter Media's Gary Stein, the ad:tech Chicago 2005 panel entitled "Blogevertising, RSS and Podcasting Opportunities for Marketers," provided session attendees with an overview of how blogs can be used as an advertising medium. Weblogs Inc. President Shawn Gold began with a bit of blogging 101 explaining that blogs are an empowering and efficient means through which marketers cab deliver advertising. Along with blog publishers, blog advertisers benefit from weblog's propensity to climb high in search results for topics covered on a given blog thereby helping to insure increased, targeted eyeballs for blog advertisers.
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Led by Intelliseek CMO Pete Blackshaw, the Chicago ad:tech panel, held Tuesday, called "What Blogs Are Teaching Us About The New Rules of Marketing," provided the audience with a broad over view of the issues companies need to consider when debating the launch of a corporate weblog or marketing-related weblog. The recurring theme throughout the session centered on the need to stay true to the brand and to live within the company guidelines both legal and otherwise.
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The Chicago ad:tech party scene Monday night was much more subdued than San Francisco and New York shows. The evening kicked off with the traditional Tribal Fusion post-exhibit cocktail and munchies party held at the back of the the Sheraton exhibit hall. Great tasting Tribal Fusion branded beer was served along with fried finger food. We spent some time speaking with United Virtualities' Director of Channel Partnerships Natalia Scalia who made the trip to ad:tech from Argentina and Miami-based Nearly Natural Business Development Manager Stephen Wechsler who, apparently, has had to make it habit, when handing out his business card, to clarify his company deals with flowers, not breast implants. After discussions regarding ooqa ooqa, shoshkeles and silk flowers, we headed upstairs to the ad:tech speakers reception held in one of the hotel's bars.
At the speakers reception, we spent some time chatting with ad:tech Chair Susan Bratton, BlogAds Founder Henry Copeland, ad:tech Director of Marketing and Conferences Cindi Gallucci, DoubleClick Director of Research Rick Bruner and TechVenue.com Founder David Flint. The company was great, the river view pleasing and the libations relaxing.
After the speaker party, we headed to dinner with comScore Marketing Solutions Manager Graham Mudd and Rick Bruner. The name of the restaurant escapes the mind right now but the food was excellent. (It was Shaw's Restaurant) We discussed some weblog related research the two are working on which will be released in the hear future.
Finishing dinner, our group walked around the corner to the Chicago Interactive Marketing Association party held at the Rock Bottom Brewery which turned out the be the night's biggest party. We ran into United Virtualities' Scalia again who seemed to have attracted the attention of a guy dressed Hawaiian style. We left that one alone. Held on the rooftop, it was crowded, hot and humid but amusing enough to stick around for a bit if only to observe the length grown men and women will go to gain entry into what they, apparently, perceived to be the hippest spot in town.
Slithering out from between sweaty bodies, we cabbed it over to Chicago's First Lady, a river boat docked at Michigan and Wacker for the Tribal Fusion party. Sadly, there weren't too many people there so our stay was brief. Compared to the New York and San Francisco Bluelithium blowouts, Monday night's events were, for sure, quite subdued in comparison.
UPDATE: According Sean in comments, we didn't stay long enough at the Tribal Fusion party to experience the unplanned, two hour cruise the boat took late at night.
In a move that ackowledges the shift in news consumption from TV to the web, CBS News has announced plans for the launch of a 24-hour, broadband news network which will become the centerpiece of the network's news delivery platform. The new CBSNews.com site will include broadband video, a weblog, called "Public Eye," written by Vaughn Ververs and on-air reporters will produce online segments throughout the day.
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The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), the official organization for the word of mouth marketing industry has released the first set of standards for tracking and quantifying word of mouth (WOM) marketing. The standards will be be called "Measuring Word of Mouth, Volume 1."
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Close to Mid-Chest
On the gaspedal
weblog, there's a few tips for ad:tech conference attendees to take to heart to improve the conference going experience. While the obvious tips like show your badge to how to meet people to travel tips are there, some less obvious but more helpful tips are listed as well. While we might not agree with this one because it takes the fun out of crowded exhibit hall floors, gaspedal suggests booth babes are for idiots calling the practice one which would appeal to 14 year old morons living in the un-PC 70's. Other gems include the "boob alert" which states a mid-chest placed conference name tag on a woman isn't an invitation for a full body visual exam and the "rude alert" which claims answering a cell phone in the middle of a conversation is very bad form.
