It’s been a busy week of Boston area networking events: on Tuesday night Mashable, the social media focused uberblog, hosted its summer tour stop at the Roxy for around 400 local marketers, techies, social medialites, PR people, and more, and on Wednesday night BIMA (the Boston Interactive Media Association) held its annual Harbor Cruise, attended by just under 500 local marketers and ad vendors.
By all accounts, both events were a great time filled with very bright people, good conversation, more-than-ample “refreshments”, and an overall awesome networking experience. What I found most surprising was the different crowds at each event.
Somehow, I assumed that there would be a large overlap in attendance. Mashable readers are by and large, interested in social media. Interactive marketers are interested, I hope, in marketing. Interactive marketing and social media go hand in hand. Right? Well apparently “interactive marketing” is a broader term than I initially expected which made the Interactive Media cruise somewhat strange.
For starters, I was pretty surprised to not run into a single person on the BIMA cruise from the Mashable event, but further, not run into a single person that I know from the social media scene of Boston. I mean sure, it was a big boat with almost 500 people, but I at least expected a few familiar faces.
So, while on the boat I did what any good social media junky would do at a networking event: I searched Twitter. As it turns out, I was only person tweeting from the boat.
Even the next day, I scanned Twitter to follow up. Just me. And @SteveBags, who brought me to the event in the first place and watched me Tweet all night… so that doesn’t really count. The Mashable event by comparison, had dozens of tweets an hour, including conversations from attendees and new connections that happened in real time. That sounds pretty interactive to me. To fully illustrate this point, check out a Twitter search comparison: BIMA, Summermash Boston (and yes, BIMA is a much easier term to hit, “summermash boston” is one of hundreds of terms I could have used…).
Not surprisingly, the discussion topics at each event supported my confusion. The interactive media cruise played host to thousands of conversations about PPC advertising, Search Engine Marketing, and CPMs for banner ads. Are any of those things really “Interactive”? I argue no, but had a literal boatload of people arguing against me. Apparently all “Interactive” means is “internet”. This is wrong.
In my mind “interactive marketing” requires some sort of “interactivity” to deserve that name. “Internet marketing” is one thing, but to me “interactive” is social media.
To follow up on this, yesterday I looked online to see what follow up coverage each event received. Mashable’s party: hundreds of blog posts, flickr galleries (see embarrassing pictures here) , Facebook pages and discussions, tweets, FriendFeed discussions, YouTube videos, etc. BIMA’s cruise: NOTHING. Come on, Boston Interactive Media Association, where is the interactive media!?
So here’s my signoff for the day: for the boatload of interactive marketers talking about to promote brands online, you wouldn’t think that the #1 search result for “bima + cruise” would get this result…
What do you think? Is it just a vague umbrella term, or do marketers need to reevaluate how they are going to reach customers in the quickly evolving web? (Whoa, that was a much, much deeper question than this post deserved… but oh well.)
August 8th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
great post. can we nickname you “the truth?”
August 14th, 2008 at 8:27 am
Great post! I have to be honest with you when I say that the term “interactive” is incredibly cliche’ and over used - kind of like “optimize.” Being in the Digital space professionally, more and more of what we are seeing the importance of true interactivity through social media channels… but not everyone is really recognizing this.
Banners, and search efforts are supported by an integration of numerous media channels. While offline channels are becoming less enticing, there is no compromise for a true “word of mouth” experience - whether that be offline or online.
Consumers are pushing us as marketers to become more savvy and relevant with our efforts. There is no longer the opportunity for big business to dictate what we do and what we want - consumers (or I should say the “influencer’s”) for the most part - are getting smarter. Whether we pull together a billboard, roadblock Yahoo!, or create a snappy TV spot, nothing can overcome a brand or its representatives actively engaging it’s consumer base front and center.
Social media is a channel that is “interactive” and can allow an engaging audience to interact with that “word of mouth” mindset. However, until the marketing community takes hold of social media the way PR does, digital marketing will never reach its full potential.
August 15th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
I don’t think I have anything else to say but: seriously??
September 30th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Social media my opinion, is not the overriding and defining characteristic of the interactive medium. It is as @stevebags states merely: “…a channel that is “interactive” and can allow an engaging audience to interact with that “word of mouth” mindset.” Sure interactive marketing could be anything and everything ‘clickable’ on the Web but it doesn’t necessarily require a conversation or real-time RSS feed to be interactive. User-interaction can be a solitary experience like playing a game online or browsing the iTunes store for music.
Perhaps the people on the boat at your conference were too busy socializing and having fun to be Tweeting all night or compiling photos for their Flickr pages.