Attendance is up this year at the upcoming WOMMA Summit. I attribute that to a great agenda and teh coming of age of social media in major brands. I serve on the board as past president and you would expect me to be bullish about the organization and its events. I am. No apologies there. But I could not endorse something that had a good chance of disappointing people. That would be bad.
You can see the full agenda here (IBM, Harrah’s, Motorola, HP, Ben & Jerry’s, Unilever and more).
There are two conversatiuons that will happen at the Summit that I am looking forward to sparking and participating in…
Which Marcom Disciplines Do What In Social Media?
Where is a brand manager to turn? If they want an authetically “social” solution to drive sales, lead generation, improve brand performance, should they turn to their advertising or media experts, their communication professionals, their word of mouth specialists? All the happy talk about “who owns social media? No one. The CEO. The customer,” is really just a sound bite. When it comes to applying social media to move enterprise or brand business, it is ridiculous to think that media agencies, ad agencies, PR firms, social media consultants, internal marketing and communications teams are all offering the same solutions. They aren’t. It’s time to unpack what “social media” truly is at least in the marcom space and start to recognize the differences, benefits and drawbacks of each disciplines’ approach.
There will be all types of groups representing different discipliens presenting at the WOMMA Summit. I am particularly intrigued by this session:
Redefining the Role of the Media Agency
Media agencies are struggling to find their footing in the social world of earned media. Erin Matts, Chief Digital Officer at OMD US, believes adaptability is the key to survival. In this session, Matts will explain how media agencies need to adapt to the new consumer engagement paradigm, and stretch beyond the concept of buying ad time towards a new mandate of developing and placing entertainment content
What Are True Best Practices Today?
Once you master the fundamentals of strong ethics, some reality-based measurement model, you are left with a rather subjective discussion around ‘best practices.’ Set aside the platitude manifestos that wax poetic about “transparent dialogue,” two-way conversation, listening, engagement vs. messaging - that stuff is a given and not all that helpful once you “get it.”
We’re talking about “best practices” to achieve a business result. Case stories are the best way to talk about best practices. This is where true experience gets documented, not theory. The WOMMA team has lined up a steady stream of case studies as the primary sessions.They have applied discipline to how these stories are told to ensure that they start with business objective and end with evaluation. These cases will reveal each group’s true best practices.
On top of that, there is a qualitative slice of the “best.” in the form of the WOMMY Awards. The board re-invented this award with ‘tooth’ and discipline last year. You really must reflect impact and a “best” execution to win. I give loads of credit to board member David Rabjohns, CEO of Motivequest, for this reinvention. It is largely due to his seriousness and marketing discipline that I place so much value on the WOMMY’s as a choice forum for best practices.
As many of us grow and scale our businesses around social media, we need a forum of like-minded inventors who are writing the rules of these new disciplines: word of mouth marketing and social media marketing and communications.
I am going to be part of that forum and hope to learn and share a lot.
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