Posts Tagged ‘SCVNGR’
Lessons Learned For Today and the FutureM
Last week, I had a great opportunity to mix and mingle with marketers as we navigated through the world of technology. Digital media will always be about bridging the gap between the real world and the virtual world, while contributing to the overall ROI, and making a true connection with the audience.
The forces came together to kick off the FutureM week of events at the Harvard Faculty Club with the Gravity Summit. It was located at the Harvard campus where the social media platform Facebook was born. The event broke new ground bringing a great group of speakers and attendees from across the country. People showcased their marketing stories using social media showing how big brands have made a few “Friends” and “Followers” along the way. Executives that contributed were from Bing, Mr. Youth, former CNN reporter Rick Sanchez, Audi, CFO of Hootsuite and others. I listened and tweeted away with new tips to share. Here is a link to a list of presentations that might be useful for you.
Respect, Recognition and Reward!
At the Gravity Summit, speaker Doug Clark, GM of Social Media and Customer Engagement for Audi, provided some solid advice to marketers. He shared a story of a woman that was a fan of the Audi TT Quattro sports car. Women are a great demographic for the brand. They made one woman’s wish come true with a car! Doug and his team followed the story of one special lady and listened to her interests and desire to drive the car. The company decided to drive to her door with the Quattro for her to take it for a spin! This is one great example using social media. Audi listened to its influencers and took the right action to create the right opportunity. As Greg Shove, CEO of Halogen Media shared also at the Summit, “Find the most interesting person, or activity that can take on a life of its own on your behalf and watch it grow.”
Stop. Collaborate. Listen to Your Audience.
Matt Britton, CEO of Mr. Youth said, “Friends want to connect with other friends, collaborate and have control of their privacy.” Why is that concept so hard for some companies to understand that same notion online? It’s how we want to connect and relate to each other in the real world so why should communicating online be any different?
As Audi’s Doug Clark presented his approach and I provided my comments:
- Offer a seat at the table - Welcome your audience
- Open doors – Make it easy for one to engage without barriers
- Create a win/win – Make it something rewarding for both parties
- Recognize a need – Determine your customers needs or wants
- Be quick to respond – Learn to take action and be agile
- Learn from audience – Take action based on new insights
- Listen and engage – Keep your ears/eyes alert searching for comments
- See yourself through the eyes of the customer – Put yourself in their shoes
- Be honest and authentic – Say it from the heart, and always be true to yourself and your brand
The Theme at FutureM was MOBILE
“Hi, I’m Human. Remember That?”
"App-tizers" to Choose and Make Real Connections with Customers
It’s not just about calling a friend, but rather a connection to “reaching out and touch someone” with new tools and social media tactics. Yet, so often I keep seeing marketing professionals trying to fit in with the wrong approach. Good examples include QR codes and checking in with Foursquare to check-out. Some disruptive technologies and changes are good, but remember to listen and learn from the natural daily actions, behaviors and what people want.
Chris Mahl, Chief Brand Alchemist of Levelup and SCVNGR, spoke at FutureM’s event and suggested for marketers to recognize, “What are the noticeable behaviors, what does your audience respond to, and make sure to treat your customer as an individual.” People need people, convenience and value – not a quirky gimmick or a link that just drives you to a website with no proper direction. You need to make it personalized to drive impulse and purpose.
John Caron, SVP of Marketing for Modiv Media, noted when marketing mobile, or for marketing anything for that matter, you must remember, “Reach, relevance and recognition.” When creating or defining the attributes of you product and/or service, be sure to consider those three aspects as part of putting together the message. Listen to what your audience seeks and the unique connection to you or your business. Regardless of the new toys we have available to play with today and into tomorrow, we all have strong emotions and there is a difference in how we all want to be treated, recognized and valued as human beings.
What’s Your Six Degrees of Separation to Start-Ups?
My Personal Six Degrees of Separation From The Social Networks
I started singing at 13 and was working with local producers in Massachusetts that later went on with their career to discover many of the boy bands and teen artists of the late 1990′s and early 2000′s. At the time NSYNC was popular, I had interviewed Justin Timberlake at the Billboard Music Awards while I worked for an internet start-up called Teen.com. Little did I know Justin would later portray Sean Parker in the movie, The Social Network, who developed Napster, Plaxo, and partnered with Facebook making millions at early age. However, it was Mark Zuckerberg that was lured by Sean to move to Silicon Valley after he was crafting something down the street close to my home on the Harvard campus that impacted people across the world.
Keri Singer's Six Degrees of Separation to Social Networks
A couple years go by where I had an opportunity to meet Ben Mezrich at a Boston bar and I had overheard from others his success writing Bringing Down the House. Last year, I came to find out about his follow up book called the Accidental Billionaires. This book is what The Social Network was used to create the screenplay for the movie. A few weeks ago on the Friday after the film’s premiere, I just happen to sit next to Ben and his friends at the Loews theatre in Boston to share the experience with him in the same aisle as my friends!
There were many parallels in the movie The Social Network that hit home between my personal experiences working at an internet start-up in my early twenties to my ability to grow the popularity of the site that was later sold to Alloy Media + Marketing. In the past, I’ve been fortunate to meet and interview many celebrities, as well as be the leader to help develop new creative ways to attract audiences and promote some of the top artists in the music business at that time. It was through my hard efforts socializing with entertainment and consumer good companies to creatively partner with Teen.com that helped the site to stand out to eventually be sold.
In 2006, I had reached out personally to Facebook in hopes to learn of a future position that fit my background. I received a personal response via email below from their early product developer Matt Cohler, who had been instrumental at LinkedIN. Sounds familiar 
Keri,
Thanks for your note. Your experience is great but unfortunately we don’t have any openings for anyone with your background. But we’ll definitely keep your information on file for the future.
Best wishes and happy new year,
Matt
SCVNGR: The Rise of Social Location Base Services
About a year ago in 2009, I met Seth Priebatsch, the founder of SCVNGR and his partner Michael Hagan when I learned about their new business in Boston. Seth had just participated in an organization where my friend is one of the managing partners at DreamIt Ventures. Seth had impressed them with a new concept in mobile gaming and later received funding from another local venture capitalist firm at Highland Capital. Shortly thereafter, I was invited to pitch some of my marketing ideas (ironically which included Justin Timberlake in my marketing proposal with his involvement producing the MTV scavenger hunt series The Phone and working with college campuses) in a cattle call interview session in their South End offices. It was a mixture of marketing professionals and students to “audition” with our proposals in hopes to earn the position. I knew the idea to create-your-own and/or participate in a scavenger hunt using your mobile phone would gain popularity as more people adopted the technology. Needless to say this past summer, SCVNGR was proud to partner with Facebook Places and is growing with their collaboration.
The New American Idols
I’ve been fortunate to come into contact with others early on in their careers to have a chance to meet, greet, and interview. Early on, I’ve learned of new technology, a new entertainer, or business idea on the horizon that coincidently becomes a success story. I’ve also blogged about things a year or two ago that are coming to fruition today. It’s been happening quite a bit in my life to discover talent, notice trends and make connections with those that I’ve crossed paths. Some others that I’ve met before they were STARS include Jessica Simpson, Beyonce, Mark Wahlberg, NKOTB, Christina Aguilera and numerous others in show business. Whether it was the teen musical artists of ‘NSYNC, the people involved with Facebook early on, to now the days of SCVNGR making the headlines. I feel fortunate to have had those encounters and build quite a network of my own over the years. Hopefully, they will continue to be favorable when putting my own talents and innovation into action.
The new American idols aren’t just the celebrities as we’ve come to known, but as with the story of The Social Network, the new rock stars are the young people down the street with their talented programming skills, the neighbor developing an app, the social maven who is gaining a following, or the software developer that sells his/her ideas to become a success.
The “New Dorks” are today’s rocks stars of tomorrow. Check out this great video and presentation to have a good laugh. Today, I’m more interested to learn about the celebrities in our own backyard. The entrepreneurs and others at start-ups leading the path to making changes in their community and hopefully across the country, as the new stars are changing how we do business in the future.
