Soda - Keeping Curious

I had the chance yesterday to trot out a new presentation I’d been working on and put my thinking (and recent reading) to the test with a live audience of just three. I’ve recognised that, in my case, Thinking Takes Time (3T’s) and, although I’ve been absorbing the arguments from the likes of Seth Godin and John Grant, there’s nothing quite like the passage of time, and other people’s opinion of the material, to see if my take on things appears valid, and that any insights pass muster. If you were to ask me how it went, a modest rely would be that it seemed to go OK, perhaps having also convinced myself that it was more of a ‘launch and learn’ exercise than anything else.

I’m giving the presentation again on Friday morning to a much larger group - in this instance the annual gathering of UK Conference Buyers - and trust that I can guage the material and their expectations by giving them a cracking speech on the Future of Web Marketing.

I’ve been struck by what my newest, bestest, reading buddy John Grant says about New Marketing, which I have to say evokes a sort of ‘lump in the throat’ moment for an emotive marketer such as myself. I quote, New Marketing is about the “creative renaissance in brand building…the feeling of wanting to change things, social and ethical values, community, a fascination with the future, a belief in the power of the individual and in adhocracy(I think I know what he means), advocacy and people power”. Well, amen to all that.

For my money, New Marketing thinking isn’t about pressing the default button and using the established online tools of email, search, banners, virals, etc, but should be concerned with coming up with new ideas, preferably Big Ideas, the sort that occur in the gaps between the established and the mainstream. That’s the energising bit for me, seeing as I view myself as being in the ideas business.

I really enjoy that part of the job when I get to stand in front of a conference audience and go off on a future of digital marketing riff. Never one to build their presentations in PowerPoint, I work closely with my designer collaborator of 5 years Jason Hawksworth to produce impactful screens built in flash. If you’re going to talk about a bright new future you might as well build it in Technicolor and populate it with bold statements. In this regard I’m deeply indebted to that gurumeister Tom Peters, who never shy of a bold statement also showed me that the presentation should be as exciting as the words that support it.

Here’s a deck I produced for a recent BACD conference for your perusal.
BACD Presentation - 526KB