Mesh Marketing: the dance floor where spin has been left for dead
Canada’s Web Conference is holding a satellite event today that cuts out their rickety bridge between journalists and technologists and gets straight to the point: Mesh Marketing. The nightclub CiRCA, originally conceived as a transformative Studio 54-level presence in the Entertainment District, to no avail, is at least getting some use as the ideal spot to explore the next online goldrush. Five folks who applied two months ago were granted media accreditation to the $489 day-long event, but why bother? This might be the most tweeted event in Toronto history! Morning keynote speaker, business card cartoonist Hugh MacLeod, has earned enough of a following to move into book form with Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity — and actually get people to buy it. He also sold a Moleskine notebook with an illustration inspired by Psalm 23 for $1800. What does he have to say in the company of hitherto ignored folks like the marketing director for Frito Lay Canada? Find out below!
Knowing no one is actually going to look at you when you’re on deck to speak at a conference can’t be too encouraging, but the Mesh Marketing attendees were looking out for your best interests, see. Hugh MacLeod’s most quotable quote: “Being fucking amazing is job Number One.” Also: “If you’re not interested in people you’re kind of screwed!” “Passion is social!” “People matter, objects don’t!” His line that Web 2.0 was invented in 1917 in the South Pacific relates to where and when modern relationships were first documented by anthropologists. And in more than 140 characters, probably.
With the delegates dispersing into different rooms for panel discussions and workshops, the thoughts become more scattered, though. Strategies put up for scrutiny from Molson, and Rogers, and Canadian Tire all seem to translate in the same way: we are trying to figure this out before we get busted for not having figured this out. Remember: spin is dead!
And the benefit of having a marketing conference in a nightclub? You don’t have to relocate elsewhere for the party afterward. Nor will there be any need to dress to impress a doorman along a velvet rope.