January Travelogue

Dear DBE Blog –

Been on the road a lot but thinking of you all the while. Time to recap some January highlights:

January 21, New York City: Judging for the 2009 Effie Awards for the New York American Marketing Association. I like the Effies because they put emphasis on results over creative; marketing integration over a single execution. Reviewed many name brands that integrated their campaigns with a dedicated website (good), some had social media marketing aspects (better) but none of them integrated SEO/SEA keyword tactics (bad – especially as these campaigns were not lacking for budget). The closest anyone came to search was the presentation of a Google Trends chart showing increased searches on the product name as evidence of results of other marketing efforts. Bottom line, search marketing is still not part of the mainstream integration mix. This means there is still tremendous opportunity for smart marketers to not only win on the Web, but to beat the pants off their better known brand competition.

January 26, Philadelphia: Marketing Executive Networking Groug (MENG) Chapter Event with Tierney presenting how to handle media interviews. Good line about how you control interactions with the press because you control what comes out of your mouth. Think it also applies to reputation management on the Web as you control your Facebook and other digital outpost profile content.

January 27, Basking Ridge NJ: Perfect segue to presenting to the New Jersey AMA on how to leverage your personal brand online via search marketing tactics. (Visit our Facebook Page to check out some pics and video from the event.) Most attendees are on LinkedIn, but are not using it fully. Some are on Facebook, but aren’t sure how to use it for professional advantage and/or how not to use it for professional disadvantage. We ended the presentation with the announcement of DBE’s new consulting service for executives, Jump Start Social Media.

I just realized that I completed an AMA trifecta in less than a week – NY, NJ and PA (seeing as the President-Elect of the Philadelphia Chapter attended the MENG event at my invitation and has since joined the network).

Enough for now. I need to gather my thoughts on my trip to the 2009 Casual Connect CGA show in Hamburg, Germany. The casual gaming and search industries have more in common than you might think.