Don’t miss the fourth Conversational Marketing Summit, in New York on June 1 and 2. A killer line up of speakers is coming together, including (so far): Facebook’s Mike Hoefflinger, Microsoft’s Scott Howe, HuffPo’s Arianna Huffington, GE’s Jen Walsh, Google’s Eileen Naughton, and MTV’s Richard Kang.
What: CM Summit New York: What Works? The Case Studies
When: June 1-2, 2009
Where: Millennium Broadway Hotel, New York, NY
Registration: Early bird pricing ends soon!

If you’ve never been, check out the highlight reel below. This gives you a taste of what the CM Summit is all about…

I’ve been at the IAB Annual Meeting for the last couple of days listening to the best in the biz talk about the great issues facing all of us in the digital media and marketing ecosystem. Despite the slowing growth in our sector and the abysmal economic climate, there is still a sense of energy, passion and immediacy in the room that I wasn’t expecting.
In part, I think this is due to some great leadership on the part of the IAB. Randall and Wenda have outlined in a very clear way the core challenges and opportunities for our space. They’re thinking big and it seems to me that publishers and marketers are beginning to agree on the challenges, at least, if not how to overcome them.
Wenda opened the conference with a plea for creativity in online advertising saying we must all move beyond the chokehold that metrics, clicks and DR mentality have had on online advertising (riffing on her now-famous “pork-belly” analogy). Via ClickZ:

Millard also took publishers to task for surrendering their inventory to third-party ad sellers and performance-obsessed agencies that don’t have their best interests at heart. She blamed ad networks in particular for driving down prices and diminishing the potential of the fledgling online ad sector, and she argued the primacy of “science and math” have put a damper on the creative potential of the still-young medium. Measurement “should be the sizzle, not the steak” when it comes to the value online media can generate for advertisers, she said.

And a few weeks ago, Randall quite literally penned a manifesto: “A Bigger Idea”: A Manifesto on Interactive Advertising Creativity. He outlines the four enemies of online advertising as he sees them, explores at length his call-to-arms, then ends the piece with this simple, but impassioned plea:

Let’s return to a time when advertising and media conversation was owned by the creatives, the editors, and the impresarios — when it was dominated by debates about the craft of persuasion, about what moves people. After all, isn’t that the reason we’re in this business?

We love to think big here at FM and we pride ourselves on identifying the next great idea and then making it happen. The bigger the better. It’s great to have industry leadership that does the same. Cheers to the IAB for putting on a great conference and, more importantly, for facilitating a genuine and productive conversation among peers.

FM and partner Next New Networks in conjunction with Verizon launched $99 Music Videos yesterday. What is $99 Music Videos you might ask?

$99 Music Videos is an independent music channel of music videos, all made for $99 or less.
Most musicians and filmmakers are unable to spend thousands of dollars on a music video. But in the age of digital filmmaking, you no longer need those kinds of budgets. If fact, amazing original music videos are being made for the web every day for next to nothing. It was in this spirit that $99 Music Videos was born.
We wanted to get back to the basics about what it is to make a music video. It should be collaborative, creative, and immediate. Cost should not be an obstacle.
The best part is that anybody can make a $99 music video.
Hook up with a band, follow the rules below, make the video you want to make, and submit it to us. It may just end up as a featured video on our site.

There is a ton of excitement around the site launch and the press picked up on it. Here is some of the best coverage:
- Reuters: Music Site Aims to Spotlight Creativity, Thrift
- Advertising Age: MTV Pioneer Launches $99 Music Videos on the Web
- The Wall Street Journal: A Music Video Site For Producers on a Budget
- NewTeeVee: Next New Networks, Revision3 Get Into Indie Music

B.L. Ochman, of Whats Next Online, penned a great piece for BusinessWeek entitled, Debunking Six Social Media Myths. These are all right on. See below for the myths as outlined by Ochman with my own riff on each.
1. Social media is cheap.

Social media is not cheap – particularly if you are a brand with a large Web presence creating a social media marketing program that requires media support, design services, integration, custom UGC components, custom content and etc. This is complicated, time intensive work that can’t be done on the cheap.

2. Anyone can do it.

Not everyone can do this stuff. There are a few media companies, ad agencies and brands out there who really get it. But we’re all learning here.

3. You can make a big splash in a short time.

Marketers should think of their brands as conversations. Conversations don’t recognize the boundaries of campaign dates. Good conversations build over time.

4. You can do it all in-house.

You might be able to get away with doing social media in-house if you’re a small business. But this is certainly not true of large brands. If large brands have any social media presence at all (which they should by now) they need to be talking to experts about how to navigate the space.

5. If you do something great, people will find it.

Well, sometimes, things happen serendipitously. But for the most part, social media marketing programs need to be launched with a full array of media support. Without it you may end up friendless and without engagement.

6. You can’t measure social media marketing results.

It’s tough, but it can be done. Decide on your goals and track from the beginning. FM created the Conversational Marketing Toolbox for just this purpose.

FM is all over Time Magazine’s 25 Best Blogs of 2009. Congrats to everyone on this list (I’m a personal fan of the two NY Times blogs represented), but especially to FMers including:
- Metafilter
- Boing Boing
- Mashable
- Dooce
- The Pioneer Woman

Congrats to Harry McCracken over at Technologizer on the launch of the Digital Media Central section of his site. Dedicated to all things digital media, the section was launched in conjunction with HP who has kindly offered up a free MediaSmart Server to a lucky media uploader. Get over there and upload your favorite photos, music and videos for a chance to win.
From Technologizer:

I’m tickled to announce a new Technologizer section: Digital Media Central. It’s entirely devoted to a topic that’s near and dear to my heart and utterly core to our beat: the crossroads of the digital world and entertainment and other forms of content, from iPods and other media players to satellite radio to Internet TV to DV camcorders to media-savvy smartphones. The section will include news, reviews, and commentary by me and my Technologizer posse, plus guest posts by some big-name bloggers you know from elsewhere.
I hope you’ll contribute to the discussion, too, by jumping in via comments to share your experiences and opinions, especially when they differ from ours–and just to make participating even easier, we’ll throw some silly little polls your way as time goes on.
[Note: Digital Media Central is sponsored by HP’s MediaSmart Server; as part of this sponsorship, HP is holding a contest that lets you submit your favorite videos, songs, and photos in return for a chance at winning a MediaSmart Server. As with all of Technnologizer, however, the buck stops with me when it comes to the editorial content; HP doesn’t see it or control it.

Last week we launched a Cheetos campaign that has garnered some deserved attention. For some background see ChasNote. And I posted about it here. See below for industry commentary. This campaign really does everything right. It’s transparent, it’s authentic and it adds value for the reader, the author and the brand.
From PSFK:

… it’s inspiring to find people in media who really are interested in creating a win-win-win – a win for the publication, a win for the brand and a win for the reader.

From ClickZ:

Cheetos and its creative agency, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, which is part of the Omnicom group, approached FM in July “because they wanted to do something very specific around the Cheetos personality and have the theme of adults having more fun at work, something that’s playful,” Jackie Mogol, regional sales manager of FM, said. So FM came up with the idea of asking some of its publishers to create content around the Cheetos brand and the need to take a mid-day break from work.