FutureM is here.
June 18, 2010 by Anita Tandon · View Comments
Like you, we’ve all been to one too many marketing events … and yet, we still have the feeling we are missing out on something. We’re constantly scanning any number of event calendars and wondering if that event last night was it. But it always feels like there are too many people doing too many things in too many places to keep up … and we just wish we could figure out the big picture.
It got us thinking — along with our friends and colleagues at MITX — that there had to be a way to stage a meeting of the marketing minds that would go beyond talk. And so, between cocktails and panels and whiteboards, FutureM was born. Slated for October 4-8th, FutureM is a week-long collaborative conference on the vision for marketing in Massachusetts through an intersection of people and ideas and inspiration. It’s a chance to hear about the latest in marketing, technology, and design– together. And if the thought of nonstop keynotes scares you as much as it scares us, fear not: FutureM includes panels, roundtables, summits, parties, meet-ups, and more, because the best ideas rarely get created around a podium. We can’t wait. Check out the rumblings of the future here.
In the meantime, we wanted to share the opportunity to be a part of FutureM. If you have a topic, technology, team, or even a question that can help define what’s next for marketing, submit an event idea. So get creative and join us at the future here.
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Chris Colbert joins panel at MITX on the future for advertising agencies
February 24, 2010 by Anita Tandon · View Comments

- Image of Chris Colbert
Here at Holland-Mark, we’ve been thinking out loud for a while now about how the agency business has changed for good. It’s no longer good enough for marketing to just be interesting – it must be imperative. As CEO of our resurgent business, Chris Colbert has been asked to join industry heavyweights from Mullen, Razorfish, Sapient, and W2 Group to discuss his perspective on the new age of agencies. The event by the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange (MITX) will be held on February 25 from 6-8 p.m.
Keynoted by Sean Corcoran of Forrester Research, the group will discuss how agencies will adapt to new marketing paradigms, the impact of technology, and agency/client relationships in a new era.
“When I restarted Holland-Mark in 2007, I did it because I knew it wouldn’t be business as usual. The economy has allowed us to reinvent how advertising agencies work – and it’s a good thing.”
We’ve been thinking about this for a while, and we look forward to being a part of this new conversation. Come by and have a listen.
More details on this MITX event can be found on the event website.
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The Siren Song of Perfection
January 26, 2010 by Mike Troiano · View Comments

- Image via Wikipedia
We’re getting close to the finish line on a handful of client projects right now, and I’ve observed that one of the biggest challenges “real marketers” have in embracing social systems is, for lack of a better term, cultural.
It’s almost a cliche now to say that embracing social media means giving up the sense of control marketing communications types are used to in other media. Like most cliches, there’s a kernel of truth in that observation, but it’s only part of the leap we ask our clients to take.
The less obvious but in some respects equally daunting leap has to do with embracing the ethos of successful software development, which differs quite dramatically from the ethos of successful print and broadcast development.
Marketers are shaped by the awareness that a typo in a print ad is pretty much grounds for termination. A brand manager will spend hundreds of thousands on a TV spot to get it exactly perfect before spending millions to distribute it over the air.
But that’s not the way you build software. It used to be, when software lived on mainframes, or whatever. The “waterfall” methodology was a lot like the ad creation methodology, a system oriented to deep and thorough planning before a launch where perfection was always aspired to, and sometimes required.
The problem with this approach as applied to business software was that it took too damn long, to the point that by the time the system launched, the business issues it was intended to address had evolved. To be more responsive, software development methodology evolved toward the sprint or “scrum” methodology, which is all about iteration, and the perpetual beta was born.
Entrepreneurs and social folk have an almost religious conviction about the design-ship-evolve model of creating software. But it’s an unnatural act for marketing folk, with the effect that building social software in marketing applications puts stress on the relationship between provider and client.
Have you seen this? Do you agree with the diagnosis? And either way… what strategies have worked for you in mitigating it?
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