eROI Days Email Agency

 Renny Gleeson, global digital evangelist for Wieden + Kennedy, led off the Inverge Conference, with a personal, philosophical discussion on how fast and far our lives have changed due to digital devices, mobile, and online social media.  It was an epiphany for Renny at 4am in a London hotel to realize he’d been screwing around on different social sites for over 12 straight hours. Talk about some high engagement metrics for those sites.  This speech was a month ago, but I feel it was still uber-relevant to get perspective on what has led up to this precipitous change.  Here are my notes from his speech:

With each tech advance, it takes a little while to connect emotionally with it and through it.
• 1876 – Telephone (killed body language), but made it easier to meet up
• 1844 – Telegraph – Morse tapped “What Hath God Wrought” “Crap, what have we done?”
• 1906 – Radio – > Broadcast

Use Technology to meet up, see one another

1971 @ Email (Ray Tomlinson: @ indicated a user was at some other host) -> Email medium can be the most misinterpreted (lose body language, voice inflection, most range to explain enough to get misinterpreted)

Email vs. Social Media
• Email – Very focused (1 to 1)
• Social Media – Distracted by so many other toys involved in it

– Crib Sheet – Visual cues for displaying emotion
– Dinosaurs in inappropriate places – Flickr Group
– Blip.fm: jam or music

Brand Managers of “you” online – you are everywhere all the time

Yelp
Last.fm
Blip.fm
Dopplr (Travel)
Flock

More ways to connect = Illusion of proximity how do you use the media
• How does your brand live?
• How do you create value for improving you user’s lives?

9 Inch Nails – www.opensourceresistance.net
• Create an entire game out of seeing a secret concert, smoke grenades, SWAT team, etc…
o Nokia Forums
o Salesforce Idea Exchange
o My Starbucks Identity
o Spore
o Twitter.zappos.com (Twitter Rank Employees)
o Comcast Cares

Emotional Weight
Quality vs. Quantity
Bring your brand to life beyond campaigns
Build brand experiences that create true values

Can’t just make things viral, you can amplify what is already there.