This morning’s keynote was given by Gary Vaynerchuk. Admittedly, I had never heard of this guy prior to this conference. I’m not sure that’s saying much, but I believe I do a reasonably good job of keeping up with great minds in marketing as it relates to the development side of things. People like Seth Godin and Tim Ferris come to mind immediately when I think of marketers who effectively analyze and profile their audience. I can honestly say Gary V will now move to the very top of my list.
I’m sitting in the conference hall this morning, coffee in hand, expecting some CEO of blah blah company to drone on about “the convergence of ecosystems as it correlates to inverse of the ROI relative to the”….ZZZZZZZ…you get the idea. In stead, we get a guy yelling things like “Say you sorry!”, “Don’t do stupid sh*t!”, “The Hugh Grant Rule: do some shady sh*t and say your sorry. People respect that!”, “Don’t add noise!”, “Create a dialogue and stop doing all the talking”. The overall conference extended the view of actually having a conversation with customers rather than forcing them to drink from the marketing fire hose.
The take aways for me resulted in a pre-order of Gary’s book “The Thank You Economy” and some interesting thoughts regarding the technology needed to effectively implement and scale the dialogue model. The reality is, I’m in the business of providing technical services, it’s what I’m good at. I can build great things with my technical knowledge, but I often sell short the art and personal touch needed to more effectively market my talents to prospective customers. While I know I’m not guilty of shoving my services down irrelevant channels, I know I can do more to automate where relevant and humanize where appropriate.
All in all, EEC 2011 was a fantastic experience.
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