Reflections from the iMedia Brand Summit

I just came back from the iMedia Brand Summit in San Diego, where I sat on a panel, moderated by Real Branding's Susan MacDermid, with IMC^2's Alan Schulman, Colgate-Palmolive's Jack Haber and Mediasmith's, Dave Smith.

The full write-up is here

On a personal note, it was so great to be back at an iMedia after about 2 years in the wilderness. When I left TBWA\Chiat\Day in June of 2002, iMedia's Rick Parkhill quickly approached me to be a part of his quarterly executive summits and over the next 3+ years, I performed a host of functions at these summits, including M.C.'ing, singing to the crowd, presenting creative showcases, delivering custom research and moderating various panels. It was also through iMedia that I began writing a weekly column, called none other than...Jaffe Juice!

Many old friends with new name tags (i.e. new companies) were there. Most have turned over 2-3 times...but all in an upward direction.

I also witnessed the dawning of a new era, where my once-colleagues i.e. fellow Media Directors are now Keynoting at iMedia. When I met Sean Finnegan, he was Interactive Media Director at OMD Chicago and now he runs all of OMD Digital...in fact he oversees a totally new unit called OMG Digital.

All in all, it was an inspiring trip and I thought I'd share a few reflections and learning with you:

• The community (both dedicated interactive and "traditional" or "integrated" folk) is largely focused on online as a core/media channel, as opposed to a larger, more inclusive umbrella covering the full spectrum of emerging and non-traditional approaches. Whilst the entire crowd cheered at Second Life being the most "overhyped" component of marketing today, when pressed (by me), it become apparent that almost all of these folk have never actually been in SL, let alone piloted any programs in-world
• Interactive is still looked at by many as a full blown "acquisition" medium. That's positive insofar that it is ROI driven, but negative insofar that this is still the tip of the iceberg in terms of representing the medium's full value. I think there's been progress  on the whole branding versus DR debate, however I'm still not convinced that we're looking at the new marketing spectrum through a "new marketing" lens i.e. marketing versus communication versus media versus advertising. We need to be factoring in relationship marketing, data, analytics, customer service, research, partnership...the list goes on
• On a different front, the whole concept of "failure" still holds us back from venturing too far from our comfort zones. We move one step forward...with such low tolerance for "failure", such that when we don't hit it out the park, we end up radically recoiling and taking 2 steps backwards for every forward step. Pursuant to my post about Vince Lombardi, when failure is looked at as an end unto itself, then perhaps it is failure...but when it is a means to an end, then it becomes a journey or path towards learnings/insight
  • As Tim Mapes, CMO of Delta, said, "Innovation = bold ideas that work; Mistakes = bold ideas that fail" - I guess we need to decide whether we're in the bold ideas business or not...irrespective of the outcome.
• I don't have the research yet, but apparently Yahoo! and Comscore issued some research recently that stated something to the effect that 90% of all comments are in fact good. On the surface, this is reassuring that only 1 in 10 comments are in fact, bad or negative. However, the more I think about this, the more it concerns me. It's always been true that the active minority of critics drown out the silent majority of satisfied customers/consumers. Today however, there's a complete this ratio might be 90:10 in favor of positive:negative, but it feels like 10:90. We absolutely need some kind of "levelator" to smooth out the full spectrum of noise.

That's about it for now...more soon.