Mesh Marketing (MM10): Games, Social Pizza and Humanizing the brand

I was school-girl giddy arriving at the Mesh Marketing conference yesterday in Toronto. Lots of great topics:  Transmedia storytelling, Gamification, Social TV - oh my! 

So What’s Up with Marketing?

• B2C trends like gamification, immersive worlds and transmedia storytelling are already in full swing and making its way to B2B. 
• Facebook as a media/marketing/mobile/messaging platform has become ridiculously advanced - super cool opportunities for new apps, plug-ins, widgets that combines gaming, fans, communities, sites, campaigns, polls, social commerce, etc, etc - all from a single source. 
• Let's not forget generating followers - and creating advocates, in 140 characters or less. 

Here’s a few highlights from Mesh today that illustrate this transformation:

• Janice Diner (@janicediner) knocked it out of the park with her Facebook beyond the Wall presentation. I was overwhelmed with the implications as she illustrated that the medium shift from the corporate website to Facebook:
• Delta Airlines has a flight reservation system on Facebook: Check it out!
• Starbucks lets you gift a Starbucks Coffee card : this was a personal favorite and apparently over 17million people agree (number of ‘Likes’ on their page) Check it out
• eBay uses Facebook with PayPal integration for Social commerce
• Ford launched the new Explorer on Facebook BEFORE the Detroit Automotive show. (wow). Check it out
• Blackberry has several localized Facebook pages for their audiences in Indonesia to Ireland. Check it out

Take-away: sure you need a corporate website. Let's be honest: just because you build it does not mean they will come. You need to go to them! This is why your Facebook presence is equally important as your primary www site... and will become even more important (I’d argue the same for your YouTube site). 

Former pizza delivery driver and now Operating manager of 6 Domino locations, Ramon De Leon (@Ramon_DeLeon ) captivated the room with his “You need Social Media Water for a Social media fire” comments during the  Top Brands in Social Media and the Lessons They’ve Learned Panel. He's got over 7000 followers on twitter and is known as the “The Pizza Guy to know in Downtown Chicago”.  RightSleeve did a great write-up - link to it here

Nathania Dashner from Pepsi walked through the ‘Refresh Campaign’ Here’s are my notes deciphered from the chicken scratch I wrote down:

• Have to humanize the brand: through unexpected and meaningful engagement/interactions with customers.
• People don’t trust websites. The internet is full of garbage.
• This is a whole new way of doing business.
• Don’t acquire; earn their trust.
• Pepsi – NO SUPERBOWL?? (that was a ‘note to self’ to ensure I got that right).
• Yes, I got that right, the $1million was reallocated to the Pepsi Refresh Campaign. Pepsi decided NOT to advertise in the Superbowel; rather to allocate funds to creating a movement that engaged people and involved participation. The goal was to humanize the brand.
• It’s not about the picture of a person holding the Pepsi can; it’s about how they feel about Pepsi.
• The next search engine will be Twitter to find relevant information
• The goal was not moving cases (reference to generating Pepsi cola revenue), it was about creating a movement. 
• Results: 900 entries, 1,000,000 impressions, 60 million page views and Forbes awardeding Pepsi with the top 5 ‘Best Ever Social Media Campaign” title.(wow)

It was a great day that wiggled my brain and gave me way too much to think about. Full props to Mesh Marketing especially for the uber cool swag bag. It’s now on my top 10 conference swag list.