The Unlikely Brand Ambassador – My Presentation at the Inbound Marketing Summit

From: Verge New Media

Speaking at IMS09 – Photo courtesy Steve Garfield

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to speak at the Inbound Marketing Summit in Foxborough, Massachusetts.  (video of the presentation at the end of this post)   It was back in August, in a cramped, dimly lit Jimmy Seas restaurant on Martha’s Vineyard where Justin Levy and Nick Saber first approached me about presenting at #IMS09.  Over generous pans of of pasta, we shared stories and ideas about social media, traditional media, marketing and where all of those things intersect.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been asked to speak publicly about my perch at the intersection of old and new media, but each time forces me out of my comfort zone.  As a network news cameraman, I’m far more accustomed to leaving the public speaking to the folks in my viewfinder.  Telling cocktail party stories about my life as a news camerman – flying in Chinooks over Afghanistan,  rocket attacks in Baghdad, or traveling on Air Force One – is great among friends.  But  my challenge was to create value for the few hundred marketing professionals who would be listening to the story of a news cameraman cum early adopter of social media.  It’s flattering to be asked to speak, but unless you deliver valuable, useful information to business professionals, you’re wasting their time.   So here’s the condensed version.

OVERVIEW

Organizations often cringe at the notion of employees speaking openly about the company on social networks. Many regulate, or downright ban the practice. The risks have been well established, and there are plenty of horror stories about workers going off-reservation online. But the rewards are abundant if companies provide guidelines and encourage those passionate about social media. Who are your best brand ambassadors? Believe it or not, empowering rank and file staff to engage the social web can often result in more promise than peril.  Conversely there are scant rewards for ham-fisted, clumsy, corporate social media efforts.  As Comcast’s Frank Eliason aptly put it at the Blog World Expo this past week

“Don’t force people into this social space if it’s not a natural fit for them.”

@comcastcares

I’m reminded of a story told to me by a PR person I had worked with on a shoot.  A reporter from a major national daily newspaper was told to produce a pre-determined number of Tweets per day and those Twitter posts would be “graded”.  Really???  Wow, talk about sucking the oxygen out of the experience.  We’ve got to do better than that.

DATA

A  Russell Herder and Ethos Business Law study, entitled “Social Media: Embracing the Opportunities, Averting the Risks”, surveyed over 400 marketing, HR, and management executives on their attitudes toward social media.  Some key data points:

• 73% increase in US use of social media (Neilsen)
• just over half of those surveyed believe social media is bad for productivity
• nearly half believe social media use can damage brand reputation
• 8 out of 10 believe social media, as corporate communications, can build relationships with customers and build brand reputation

OBJECTIVE

By sharing my story with the marketing professionals in attendance,  I hoped to demonstrate that empowering rank and file employees of an organization can be a useful, organic extension of a firm’s marketing and PR efforts. I wanted to show that it isn’t necessarily or SOLELY – the communications or marketing director, or the CEO who might be your best brand ambassador. 

Interestingly,  two presentations that preceded me helped frame and define my journey into social media.  Paul Gillin outlined some dismal trends in traditional media consumption in his talk entitled “World Without Media: What Will Fill the Void?”.  

He was followed by new media video visionary Steve Garfield who held a APEC sized photo-op, empowering the audience  with thier video cameras to become legions of content creators.    

It’s clear that the world of mainstream media will never be the same.  Also clear, is that I’m still figuring out how my skills mesh with that emerging landscape.  Legacy media needs to meet people where they are and engage them in the way they consume and produce media.

Below is the video of my presentation in it’s entirety. So assembled readers, did I deliver what I set out to achieve? And if you were at IMS09, did I meet your expectations? (Audio is thin, so you’ll have to strain a bit to hear it)