SNCR = Society for New Communications Research. And I had a great time. Travel was ever bit as exciting as usual. The Santa Rosa Airport is a page back in time, but I liked it. I decided to tell about my experience in a visual way, thanks to Dan Roam and his book “The back of the Napkin,” and to John Moore who gave me the book.

I arrived at SRS but my luggage did not, so I started the first day of SCNR in not-so fresh a way. But you present-on and it was my first experience with the “twitter bomb.” The minute my first slide went up, keyboard bombs went off, I just paused, thought it was cool, and went on my way.

After my luggage arrived I was off to look more presentable and ready to learn. Tons of smart thinking. Let’s just say there were alot of doctors in the house.

Sessions that made me think:
Exploring the ROI of online press releases; excellent data, and a lot of spirited discussion on what it all meant.
Exploring the link between customer care & brand reputation in the age of social media; one word, aggregation.
Using social media to build your professional & personal brand; most brands needed to hear this stuff.
Whispering to be heard; the killer APP - the audience.

Everyone was so friendly, Chuck Hester “Mr. Linked In,” lives by what he preaches about Linked-In, thanks to him I had some wonderful dinners. Next time in Sonoma check out Tex Wasabi’s Rock-n-Roll Sushi-BBQ.

And finally my journey home had to match my journey to Sonoma. I was greeted at DFW by delay, delay, delay, canceled. Thanks to some support by some other Greenville passengers, we booked passage to Charlotte, rented a car at 1:30 am (kudos to Avis for staying to make sure every person had a car) and made it home just before sunrise.

Who’s up for SCNR next year?

When I first came to Brains on Fire a few months ago and heard Geno, Spike and the rest of the team here talk about “sustainable” word of mouth, I felt like sustainable wasn’t the right word. For me it had specific connotations around environmental sustainability and I thought that green connection was already too established and could potentially cause confusion about what we were doing. It’s also a bit trendy, and there’s always a natural caution about tying yourself too closely to a buzz word.

The more I think about it, though, the more I think it’s exactly the right word. Maybe it’s the idealist in me, but I’m hoping sustainability isn’t just a trend. I’m hoping this is the beginning of a paradigm shift toward more sustainable business practices in general. Not just with respect to the use of renewable vs. non-renewable resources for manufacturing. But also with respect to the kinds of consumer goods we innovate, and how we communicate about products and services to people. I long to see sustainability as a price of entry for doing business, and yes marketing. Wouldn’t it be nice if you actually kept, for example, 80% of the mail you get instead of throwing it straight in the trash?

We spend billions of dollars on communications that are short-lived and sadly waste paper, vinyl, and other things. We know that mass advertising isn’t having the impact it used to, and that we need to look to other venues like word of mouth. But even then we’re still thinking short term; creating buzz, not lasting energy and enduring excitement.

You’ll think I’m crazy. But I’m hoping that oil prices stay high. That the “crisis” mainstream advertisers are in doesn’t subside. That consumers continue to grow their demand for pesticide-free, natural, organic. Even that food prices rise. It’s instabilities like these that drive REAL change. Why? Because they create the motivation for finding a better way to do things. They force us to innovate and not relax back into the status quo.

Marketing, like manufacturing, stands at the doorstep of a great opportunity. An opportunity to revolutionize how we think about growth, measure return, and exist in relation to the communities that support us. Will we invest in developing better, smarter, more efficient ways to excite people about our products? Or will we continue to play the numbers game and bask in a false sense of security we feel when we’re promised a reach of thousands and millions of people, even when our strategic objectives have moved beyond raising awareness.

It will take courage to look beyond conventional ROI. It will take dedication and creativity to see new ways to measure return. It will also take companies demanding sustainability from their marketing departments and partners. And the recognition that it emerges from passion and excitement, not impressions.

Anyhoo - don’t take offense or interpret my comments to mean all marketing is bunk. Definitely not. I just believe there is a better way to do things. Have you looked at your marketing program through the “sustainable” lens lately?

Everyone is always talking about what they are going to do next. How they are going to start this initiative or that social network. How they are working on the next big thing. And that’s great. It gets people excited about what’s to come. But don’t overlook what you could be doing now instead of next.

While you are creating that next great thing, you could be building a groundswell of support for launch day. Don’t go off into a corner and come back to your customers and say ‘ta-da!’ Why not involve a select group of them in what you’re working on? Not only does it empower them and make them feel valued, but in turn they will start telling their contacts about what’s going on…and the buzz begins.

The power of now is much greater than the power of next. So don’t forget about now. Don’t wait and (hope to) get people involved after launch. Open the doors and let them in now. And then watch what happens.

This post is actually inspired by a friend of mine… and I intend to make largely the same point she was making, which I realize is a little lame, but this image is just too good to pass up:

There’s an important lesson to learn here, don’t you think?  How much time do we spend sweating the small stuff and missing the forest for the trees (or the bridge for the sharp corners, for instance)?  You can nitpick all you want - buy more billboards, drop another FSI, run a dozen more :30s, redo the carpet in the waiting room, wear a cooler tie, fire that PR guy - but you’d better watch the road while you’re on the way to get that tetanus shot, right?  Take a step back.  See the whole situation.  See if the supports for your bridge between you and your customers is really solid.  If you’re so busy complaining about that little scrape from some sharp sign that you forget about all the maintenance and time and attention that goes into a reliable bridge… well… you can curse that sharp sign the whole time you’re doing your Vanilla Sky impression off the bridge, but you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.

That got a little morbid at the end there, but you catch my drift.

Wanna follow us? We wanna follow you.

Brains on Fire - it tweets all by itself

Geno - currently in CA speaking at the NewComm Forum

Spike - at the home office in Greenville, SC

Justin - currently in Charlotte speaking at AFF Charlotte

Robbin - also at the home office in Greenville, SC

Carrie - MIA

Matt - Somewhere on the other side of the office

Joe - Sitting near Matt on the other side of the office

Jenn - Just joined the bandwagon as of 4/29

I do believe that these are the current folks at Brains who use Twitter. I’ll update if I’m wrong.