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Ypulse President Dan Coates reports back from the first-ever ANA Digital and Social Media Event in New York.

The Future Of Marketing @ ANA Digital & Social Media Conference

The Association of National Advertisers held a sold-out Digital and Social Media event yesterday at the Grand Hyatt New York. Sponsored by Meredith, the event drew more than four hundred marketers from major consumer brands as well as scores of marketing agencies.

Leading brands such as Coca-Cola, Intuit, Mars and Mastercard shared social media marketing success stories, best practices and tips for the eager audience, all of whom were hoping to generate awareness, recruit new consumers and strengthen loyalty among their current customers via social media.

While one can only roll their eyes at the frequency with which those that ply social media will cite the fact that all of this awareness, prospecting and loyalty-building occurs ‘for free’, the fact that consumers are better marketers than marketers themselves has all of corporate America curious to unleash the power of ‘social’ upon their brand. As advertising models emerge from the recession, most everyone expects mobile advertising and social media to lead the charge.

While all of the sessions were informative, the highlight of the event was an interview of Arianna Huffington (on her birthday, no less), who’s insights on the future face of media were sublime. She mocked those that questioned the motivation of those who spend their time engaging in the social media process, describing posting, reading, rating and reviewing as ‘the new entertainment’, forever displacing ‘sitting on the couch and watching bad TV’ as a pastime. She also quoted Ken Newhart in stating definitively that ‘trust is the new black ‘.

While this event was not specifically tuned to youth marketing, I couldn’t help but feel that those of us that communicate with youth on a daily basis are supremely positioned for the future of marketing. While those that target the mass consumer are coming to terms with social marketing, we in the youth marketing world have been playing this game for a while now. As social and mobile ascend, some of you may want to consider how shifting from ‘youth marketer’ to ‘mass marketer’ will make you the most knowledgable marketer in the room.

But what do you think? Is it better to jump out of youth marketing to lead mass marketing as the recovery kicks in, or is it far more rewarding to remain focused on youth?

About Dan

Dan brings two decades of experience in technology and survey research to the Ypulse team. Based in New York, Dan is a veteran within the online research space. Prior to joining the Ypulse team, Dan was co-founder of SurveyU, drove exceptional growth as Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Polimetrix (acquired in December 2006 by YouGov PLC), served as Vice President of Surveys and Samples at SPSS and was a co-founder of PlanetFeedback.com, an ASP-based consumer affairs portal that rewrote the rules of consumer to business interaction. (PlanetFeedback was merged with Intelliseek and subsequently acquired in January 2006 by Nielsen Buzzmetrics). Dan spent the first decade of his career developing cutting edge research practices and methods on behalf of Burke Marketing, Millward Brown Interactive and the Angus Reid Group, enabling companies to develop online marketing insight.

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Categorized under: Workplace

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