Provocation from @mitchjoel, excitation from @garyvee at #TAOM

Posted on June 19, 2010

This week started with a bang for me — I got to spend Monday listening to marketing brainiacs at The Art of Marketing conference in Calgary, including two social media rock stars, Mitch Joel and Gary Vaynerchuk.

Joel is the president of Montreal-based Twist Image, a digital marketing agency, as well as author of the bestselling book Six Pixels of Separation. Vaynerchuk is a much sought-after speaker, co-founder of social media consultancy Vayner Media and author of the bestselling book Crush it.

The day was a phenomenal opportunity to “get out of the weeds” and really think about the macro trends that are happening in marketing, specifically digital media.

Joel spoke with humor and grace about the pervasiveness of connectivity; the “un-tethering” of society. The more we trot about with smart phones and iPads in hand, the more social media gets woven into our everyday routines. Joel emphasized the quality of interactions versus the quantity – noting how we all have unprecedented access to influential figures we never could have reached a few short years ago. He calls that “intrinsically connected” – a small world theory, hence the title of the “Six Pixels” book.

Saskatonian Harley Rivet was at the Calgary event, here’s part of what he had to say on harleyrivet.com about Joel’s presentation:

“In a nutshell, his message was about quality over quantity and that digital marketing should be considered as ‘with’ and not ‘instead of’ traditional methods. Digital marketing is not what it once was – Since 2007 banner clicks have declined 50%! Those that click on banners only account for 8% of web users.”

In a podcast interview I conducted with Joel last week (posted on communicatto.com), he expanded upon the above, delving into the difference between the “what” and the “why” of social media. Too often business people focus on the “what” (“we need a blog”) without first having answered the “why”. A lack of strategy will surely doom the project to failure, or at least ignominy.

Gary Vaynerchuk brought energy to the room like no other. Replete with f-bombs and other expletives, Vaynerchuk epitomizes the Popeye philosophy (“I yam what I yam”) and the crowd was lapping it up. By way of background, Vaynerchuk’s story is really the classic American success, rags to riches story. Born in Belarus, @GaryVee as he’s known on Twitter, immigrated to America at the age of three, and proceeded to absorb the lessons of capitalism at a furious pace. The short version, which barely does it justice, is @GaryVee cranked his parents wine business through the roof using digital media and broke entirely new ground in an industry known for being stodgy and snobby.

Ernest Barbaric, a Calgary social media consultant, summarized Vaynerchuk’s main points on ErnestBarbaric.com:

In between F-bombs, A-Holes and select other curse words…

You can NOT buy your way into relationships and friendships. It takes time, honesty and open communication.

There are significant culture shifts happening now in the way we communicate, live and make decisions.

Facebook Credits are coming, and Gary believes they will be a major game changer

Transparency is key. And you don’t have a choice about being transparent.

My major “aha” moment in Vaynerchuk’s speech was a little bit of self-discovery. @GaryVee talked about not rejecting technologies or platforms you don’t like, essentially because you are a sample of one and you are likely wrong. If you read this column even semi-regularly, you know I am down on location-based services like Foursquare. Inadvertently I have become the “get off my lawn” old man of social media, at least on this one topic. Heck, if the kids are doing it, can it be all that bad?

We’ll see. Harrumph.

As usual, send me your feedback on Twitter at @dblacombe or via e-mail doug@communicatto.com.

Doug Lacombe is president of communicatto.com, a social media marketing agency.

Be Sociable, Share!