My Road to Social Business Strategy

My background is research (physics, oilfield, NASA/Voyager I,II) and business management (Progressive Insurance). I got into advertising via technology consulting: I co-founded Digital Voodoo in 1994 with my wife. About ten years later, working at Austin-based GSD&M, I becoming interested in three things, each of which I'd talked about in successive panels at ad:tech in 2003 and 2004. No wonder then that I asked Susan Bratton to write the foreward for my book.

Below are the relevant slides for the panels: The decks themselves are the property of ad:tech.

The ad:tech panels involved non-interruptive advertising (San Francisco, 2003), advertainment and disclosure of product placement (New York, 2003, I was moderator), the idea of branding as inclusive of the actual product experience (New York, 2004) and the impact of CGM and Social Networks on the Purchase Funnel (New York, 2005). The purchase funnel work followed a conversation with Powered CEO Dave Ellett and led to a whitepaper (see link below) that pulled these concepts together in 2005.

The first two projects grew out of separate efforts: One was an advergaming initiative that was running simultaneously with work we were doing internally in the strategic marketing group at GSD&M. Message overload and saturation were a focus area, as TiVo and similar were emerging. The other was product placement and the outcry from consumers' advocates around undisclosed payments. Added to this were the ideas of "proactive branding" and the integration of the brand experience into the overall product plan: This was the subject of my panel at ad:tech New York in 2004. So here were three fundamental concepts--non-interruptive advertising, the brand experience as the basis for social campaigns, and disclosure all bubbling up at the same time as Web 2.0 technologies were coming on. WIth important regard to disclosure, it was at this time that a group of us were forming WOMMA, led by Andy Sernovitz (now leading the Social Media Business Council with Bob Pearson) to head off the whole disclosure issue, specifically by taking a stance as an industry group that required disclosure.

Bouncing inside my Product Manager/ R&D brain (with who knows what other space debris!) it all came together for me in a whitepaper called "The Art of Consideration," the title for which came shortly after reading Guy's "The Art of the Start." Good ideas can come from anywhere, as we used to say at GSD&M. The whitepaper held that the product experience, combined with the emergence of "2.0" social networks and publishing applications, was now (or would soon be) the centerpoint of marketing. It coincided with my leaving GSD&M that same month.

I started writing for ClickZ almost immediately: I met Editor in Chief Rebecca Lieb after being introduced by Susan and Pete (Blackshaw) at ad:tech New York in 2005. Beginning in eMarketing, I started pushing my column toward social media and the connection between Operations and Marketing. At the same time, I had launched HearThis.com and was developing a podcast series for WOMMA: I interviewed Fred Reichheld, author of "The Ultimate Question" (it had just come out) and another big block snapped into place: Metrics. Remember, I was a long-time Product Manager. At Progressive to say the focus is on quantitative marketing is putting it lightly. In 2006 I wrote "The Operations/Marketing Connection, " followed by a column on the importance of the CMO's role in taking what is learned on the social web to the COO and building it into the products and services. This remains a great role for forward-thinking CMOs.

More work with Powered--a firm I always being around, a platform deployment for Pluck, and time spent in 2007 and 2008 understanding the Bazaarvoice, Jive and Lithium platforms (DIsclosure: I am a Lithium Referral Partner) and continued strategy work bring my story to where I am now: New Delhi, working with Gaurav Mishra on the launch of 20:20 Social, a consulting practice focused on social business strategy. About two weeks ago we published our first whitepaper on the topic, which I wrote about in my column that led to my conversation with Ted.

There you go, full circle. What road brought you here?