IMG_2975 It seems that there is not a conference nowadays that does not include a social media track or session. And that's great - many marketers are realizing that social media is just as important as TV, radio, web or other forms of media. This year the organizers of 4A Transformation 2010 brought a great speaker, Jeff Hayzlett, CMO and VP, Eastman Kodak Company to speak about how his company transformed through the power of social media.

In cowboy boots and with a Southern accent, Jeff emotionally captivated the audience (which could be a hard thing to do for an afternoon session!). He spoke about 4 e's of social media - engage, educate, excite, evangelize - that Kodak has accepted throughout the organization and that were paramount to their recent brand success. I wonder how much of this success is attributed to Jeff / Kodak and how much to their agencies, one of which is Deutch. Let me know if you know the answer!

 

IMG_2981 Another interesting session was a panel discussion between Pete Blackshaw of Nielsen, Ian Schafer of Deep Focus and Bryan Wiener of 360i moderated by Jennifer Preston of The New York Times. The backdrop slide was a TweetDeck with real-time tweets - the audience was staying active on tweeting, retweeting and asking questions, but for some reason the 4A's Twitter account stayed quiet. Oh well, they are warming up :).

The panelists agreed that social and digital will never scale or bring the same margins for agencies as traditional media. It requires a re-engineering of agencies and the client engagement process. Their advice was to make the technology invention / creation a part of the agencies' internal DNA and to synthesize the data as much as possible (naturally with privacy concerns in mind). And last, but not least - make sure that those driving client strategy fully understand digital and social media strategy.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for Day 2 of 4A's Transformation 2010 coverage.

Rimma

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