Lunch was "butlered" no less.

This FOOA conference really has a great line up of speakers.  There's almost too much to digest, but I've been busy making mind maps for each of the speakers to help me remember the salient points.  And my MacBook Pro has been performing flawlessly.

Chas Edwards of Federated Media kicked off the afternoon focused on the emergence of conversational media.  For businesses, the key is finding out what your customers are discussing and then try to enter into that conversation.  He noted that Business Week says its blogs are now more influential than its magazine.

Ted Murphy of PayPerPost talked about connecting advertisers to bloggers.  I'm not too big on the idea of bloggers selling ads and I think the number of organizations who can benefit from blog advertising are limited.  But, PayPerPost is a good resource for those interested.

Henry Copeland, founder of BlogAds, was up next.  Blogs could be locations where your customers are carrying on those conversations. 

From Advertising Age (Danny Sullivan) -

"It is clear that 2007 will be the year that mobile-search-query traffic grows substantially." That's what Google CEO Eric Schmidt told analysts during his company's earnings call in January. Schmidt hopes his prediction comes true, because mobile search could mean new revenue for the search engines. But are we ever seriously going to search while on the move?

We've certainly been told long enough that mobile search is the next big thing. Heck, Google rolled out its first mobile-search service back in 2000. Seven years later, it's finally going to happen? That long-promised reservoir of search queries will be tapped at last?

Complete article

Do you remember the old Burger King advertising campaign - "Have It Your Way?"

Menlo Park Presbyterian Church has done a great job of organizing and presenting six different options for visitors to use in accessing sermons on their website.  Several free options, a couple paid, but really a great job of presenting the content in a clear and intuitive way.  Doing this makes the content accessible to the maximum number of visitors in the medium they prefer.

Check it out.

My only recommendation would be to include a summary or description of each message that could be accessed by clicking the title or a "Message Summary" link.  Adequate product descriptions are a key to conversion rates.

Interesting article from Information Week about why businesses should blog.

Blogging strips away the polished veneer of official company communications and can put you and your company in front of the marketplace in a more authentic light.  If more light would be good for your business, then blog.  If lurking in the shadows behind authorized sound bytes seems to fit your company culture better, then by all means avoid the blogosphere.

And prepare for irrelevance.

Technorati tags: Blogging, Blogs, Blogosphere

Thanks to Larry Scott for the point on this article.

Seth Godin has a great post on marketers as architects.

Architects dream.
Architects imagine.
Architects design.
Architects execute.

Real entrepreneurs are architects.  Maximizing existing business is for the safety-minded bureaucrats.

Architects need new projects and new challenges.

I first visited Despair.Com a couple of years ago.  This site has been great for laughs many times since.  Their 2006 calendar is now available with a new lineup of demotivational themes.  Dr. Kersten's new book, The Art of Demotivation, is also available.  Have fun.

Blogs Only Promotion for new Budget Campaign.

Budget Car Rental has launched a new campaign with no promotional support other than blogs.  Budget has not even prepared a press release about the campaign. The Up Your Budget promotion features a 16-city treasure hunt with $160,000 in prizes.  Four $10,000 prizes will be hidden each week for a month.  New clues are posted daily at the Up Your Budget site.

A good explanation of the treasure hunt here at adrants.com.

Read more at whatnextblog.com and at gapingvoid.com.

UpYourBudget.com

technorati tags: UpYourBudget, UpYourBudget+Treasure+Hunt,  UpYourBudget+Treasure+Hunt+clues, Budget+Car+Rental, BL+Ochman

Several of us from BMC got to spend a little time talking to WonderBranding maven Michele Miller at the annual reunion at Wizard Academy today in Buda, TX outside Austin.  Michele's blog was named Best of the Web 2005 in the marketing category, which is a great achievement.  After reading her blog faithfully for over a year, it was a treat to meet her and hear a bit of her journey. 

If you don't have her blog on your regular reading yet you're missing out on some good stuff.

Pictured here behind Michele are my wife Linda - me - BMC VP for Creative Services Mary Ellen Breitwiser - my daughter Kim - and Kristin Lamb from our Media department.

Does ANYONE know how to Market? (and will anyone care?)

Interesting manifesto at changethis.com.

Link

Unique Format Used for Longhorns Football Season Coverage

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- A fan-targeted magazine for the University of Texas football team is being held up as a groundbreaking way to market to a niche audience on the Web.

The university, with the help of Host Communications, Lexington, Ky., has produced what is believed to be the first Internet-based video magazine. The Texas V-Mag will chronicle the 2005 Longhorns season.

“It’s reality TV via the Internet,” said Kathleen Hessert, CEO of Charlotte, N.C.-based NewGame Communications, which is producing the magazine.

The technology itself is not unusual, but no one is using video in a magazine format in this particular way, said Don Nicholas, editor and managing director of Mequoda Group, which provides consulting to Internet publishers. “Of the 300 case studies we have [of publishers] using video, not one is doing what the University of Texas is doing,” he said.

Link to complete article at AdAge (free registration)

VMag Promo <= click there.

Narrowcasting is another important trend.  I don't believe TV, Radio and other broadcasting is going away.  At least not completely.  But, the ability to narrowcast through podcasting, VOD, internet radio and video... all of these will gradually but surely eat into the dominance of broadcasting.  The people at UT are aiming at a very narrow audience, supporters of UT athletics, particularly football.  But, because video production costs have dropped greatly with technology advances and since the internet allows the athletic department to talk to its supporters (those who have given permission, many enthusiastically), I think this may have a chance of being very successful.  The cost is $24.95 for four issues delivered over the course of the football season.

How could narrowcasting change your business or ministry model?