eROI NYC Interactive Agency

A week or so ago I attended this years Twestival with @redirect. What is a Twestival? This is from their site:

“Twestival™ (or Twitter Festival) uses social media for social good.  Twestival is the largest global grassroots social media fundraising initiative to date, raising over $1.2 million within 14 months for 137 nonprofits.  All local events are organized 100% by volunteers and 100% of all ticket sales and donations go direct to projects. Twestival™ Global is a series of offline events hosted on one day for one cause in cities around the world. Twestival™  Local is a series of offline events which aim to support local causes over a designated weekend.”

So there are a series of parties going on around the world on the same date for the same cause. What is it about collective experience that is so sweet? Knowing you are a part of something global seems to resonate a ton these days….especially with web heads. Its was at Good Units which is an underground venue for parties and shows…it was a pretty sweet set up save the fact that it was so far underground that my BB couldn’t quite catch so you notice my own tweet stream end about the time I get there. At any rate the venue was great and the energy of the rooms were good. The band certainly kicked ass….Shinobi Ninja. More on them in a bit. On a global scale the event seemed to do well. Mashable just wrote an in depth post about it…here are some highlights:

• $450,000 raised for Concern Worldwide, an international NGO helping fund educational projects around the world.
• Contributions to Twestival Global 2010 grew by more than 80% during its second annual fundraising event.
• $1.2 million has been raised over the past 14 months on behalf of 137 organizations.
• Twestival helped accept a truly worldwide outpouring of support from 45 countries in 12 different currencies.

So kudos to the planners and organizers of this whole thing. I can only imagine how much work went into it. I met some cool people there and saw some old friends as well. If you read through my blog you know that I document almost every event I attend however as I went through my assets for this event I realized I was pretty thin on video. I did however get a bunch of great stills. I realized my night is actually best documented by going through the unedited pics on my camera in sequence.  There is some video in in there to set it up though.  I did reach out to #nyctwestival for more video assets so I could make a proper one but I haven’t heard back. At any rate the video is a bit raw but that isn’t always a bad thing.

A bit more about Shinobi Ninja….they are a Brooklyn based self proclaimed “super group of the 21st century”. That night they probably were. They were terrific and I highly recommend you check out their shows.  High energy high movement. They made the night for sure.  They are highly active on twitter and also have an EP out that I picked up which happens to feature a video game as well.  Nice work. They are an odd mix of peeps with an eclectic and hard sound. The video above uses a remix of their Brooklyn to Babylon single. @shinobininja hit me if you need/want any of these assets.



Here are some links to more pics from the night:

www.nbcnewyork.com

Guest of a guest

Random night out

At the beginning of the year I was asked by the Direct Marketing Club of NY to become a Board member. The timing of this invitation was interesting because it came right about the time the National organization DMA was having an alleged internal political feud regarding the ever complicated series of tubes called the internet.  While all of the infighting was hearsay there was something palpable in the air. What happened after the dust settled is what interests me. Matt Blumberg CEO of Return Path emerged as a key player in the outcome….he reacted and recapped the situation on his blog. I pulled the relevant parts but please read the whole post here.

Why I joined the DMA Board, and what you can expect of me in that role

I don’t normally think of myself as a rebel. But one outcome of the DMA’s recent proxy fight with Board member Gerry Pike is that I’ve been appointed to the DMA’s Board and its Executive Committee and have been labeled “part of the reform movement” in the trade press. While I wasn’t actively leading the charge on DMA reform with Gerry, I am very enthusiastic about taking up my new role. I gave Gerry my proxy and support for a number of reasons, and those reasons will form the basis of my agenda as a DMA Board member. As a DMA member, and one who used to be fairly active, I have grown increasingly frustrated with the DMA over the past few years.
1. The DMA could be stronger in fighting for consumers’ interests….
2. Despite a number of very good ideas, the DMA’s execution around interactive marketing has been lacking. The DMA needs to accept that interactive marketing IS direct marketing – not a subset, not a weird little niche. It’s the heart and soul of the direct marketing industry. It’s our future.
3. The DMA suffers from a lack of transparency that doesn’t serve it well in the hyper-connected world we live in here in 2009 – that’s a nice way of saying the organization has a big PR problem.

While I do not hold the political weight of Matt and do not have nearly the experience, I do see some key similarities in what he is trying to do at the DMA and what I hope to do at the DMCNY as the DMCNY is like the local version of the DMA…a sort of microcosm if you will.  The part of Matt’s platform that has the most relevance to the DMCNY in my opinion is point 2. The DMCNY lacks a cohesive interactive vision and that has a profound effect on new membership and the clubs ability to stay relevant.  They need to embrace digital…even more they need to cuddle with it…they need to tuck the internet in at night and give it milk and cookies. I need to somehow ignite a sea change to make that happen.

Here is the challenge…I am just the new kid at school. It’s difficult to make immediate impacts when you have to worry about the political ramifications of your actions.  I am not trying to go Jerry McGuire at the first board meeting you know? So…I decided to do it the old school way (no pun intended)…one person at a time. In the era of crowd sourcing, millions of twitter followers and thousands of FB friends I am doing this door to door baby.  That’s the only way to get someone to understand the true power of web 2.0. I just sounded like the Emperor right there… “Something something web 2.0 Something something Complete”. Kind of an obscure reference so here is the source…wink.

Anyway here is another key point…the DMCNY gets the internet they just stopped advancing around 1998. So my first goal modest as it sounds is to bring the DMCNY into the web 2.0 world one member at a time. My second goal is around membership. We need an infusion of web kids. We need to get the club on the digital communities map.  We don’t need a whole continent on the map…we just need an island, a niche.  To help establish that I we are doing probably the best thing we can do…having an open bar. A group of us in the events committee are throwing an event this April that will be a great first step in the right direction for getting new members interested.

Luckily I am not alone in my quest to shoot some Web 2.0 steroids into the DMCNY. There are a ton of club members that share my interests and passion for the cause.  We stand together my friends…committed to raising the bar. Good luck and good night…and to infinity and beyond.

eROI NYC moves its doors. It felt like graduation day.

@vitaloca found this cool little site called Wordle. Check it out:

“Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.”

Here is the Wordle of eROINYC:

I have been struggling lately about my posts and what you guys actually care about and I have been reviewing my analytics to make sure I am giving you info you actually want. Enter me thinking about what I know and what is worth sharing. So I decided to reflect on the last 16 months and examine what I have learned from this crazy town. So here it is…straight from the dome.

1. NYC is a numbers game
2. Trust your instincts
3. Never call yourself an expert
4. Tell your story
5. Truth Truth Truth

1. NYC is a numbers game: Over the last year, I have realized that the romance of the New York dream is only realized with effort. Whether you are selling gogs or trying to be a super model, being seen in NYC is key. You don’t need to be the smartest guy in the room.  All you need to do is show up and engage.  The more events, shows, and meetings you can set up the better. There are so many opportunities in this town that only through trial and error can you realize where you fit.

2. Trust your instincts: I had a sense when I first moved out that NYC was this dream place where all the best hung out and no one ever screwed up. It was like the epicenter for the over-achiever. Because of that, I used to second guess my instincts but I have learned to overcome this. NYC is no different than any other place. you can’t be afraid of failure or afraid to be wrong.  There will always be some one better than you….but there will aslo always be some one worse.

3. Never call yourself an expert: Dylan Boyd told me this and its true. No one in cares to hear you call yourself an expert. Some one else needs to call you an expert. Its like being a ninja…does a ninja need to say he or she is a ninja?

4. Tell your story: This is an offshoot of #1. Going to the event or show is not enough. You gotta learn how to tell your story. As lame or boring as it maybe, everyone is unique. So find what makes you different and run with it.

5. Truth/Truth/Truth: This is an offshoot of #4. Tell your story but don’t lie. If you don’t lie you won’t have to remember anything. Try telling different stories or making totally outrageous promises…it eats you alive, esepcially out here. Don’t be the big man on campus, just tell the truth and it will set you free. This includes knowing when to say no.

In honor of my New York education…take a listen to a joint that helped me fall in love with this city in the first place. eROI NYC be slicker this year fo sho.

Today I had the opportunity to speak at NYU for the DM Club of New York. Truth be told it was my first speaking engagement in New York so I was stoked. I had trouble trying to figure out what to talk about but it all came together for me. I basically took a look at the work we have done with Wacom and presented it in a linear way to describe the Journey a brand can take from email marketing to a full fledged Social Network. The people in at the event were great and offered terrific questions about engagement and our execution. I have embedded my deck below and its available for download here .

eROI does SXSWi 2009….yeee hawww!

To my kick ass teammates at eROI:

An ironic side effect to moving to NY is that I now have the opportunity to work more closely with each department. I may not be there physically, but you would never know it. You guys never skip a beat. In the past few weeks I have worked or called on a ton of you for a ton of different things and each time you guys come through like rock stars. That sounds like business as usual at eROI, but something is different now. We are all contributing our best efforts and there is heightened sense of pride even felt 2000 miles away. I know that shows in our work and is contagious for our clients. You guys are do’ers. And team is as team does.

On a completely unrelated but sort of related note here is the source of that from Google Answers….thanks again PDX. 

Forrest Gump's "Stupid is as stupid does" is a variant of an old
adage, "Handsome is as handsome does." This saying appears in J.R.R.
Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and in Herman Melville's "Billy
Budd," and can be traced as far back as the 14th Century.

"Handsome is as handsome does" basically means that true handsomeness
has to do with a person's behavior, not just a handsome face. The
saying is also phrased in the forms "Pretty is as pretty does" and
"Beauty is as beauty does."

Forrest's version of the saying means that stupidity is not just a
surface thing derived from a person's appearance. Stupidity is a
matter of deeds, not looks. Like the other versions, it comes down to
this: judge people by what they do, not by how they appear.

Wow. It has been a crazy month. This took me a bit longer than expected to put together but it’s worth the wait. I gotta give a special shout out to Luke Jackson for hooking us up. Also…hit me with an email if you can tell me what they say in the sample of the Daft Punk song I used.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to get tickets and back stage passes to NYC Fashion Week in Bryant Park. What an experience. I went to two shows: Tony Cohen and Terexov and both were incredible.

Walking into the tents you were hit with a tastefully done tribute to the 50 years of Barbie. The shrine spelled BARBIE in 6 feet tall letters highlighted with famous dolls. We mingled around for a half hour or so and then made our way to the Tony Cohen show. No matter how many times you have seen it on TV or in the movies nothing can really prepare you for seeing it live. Now, I am not necessarily a ‘fashionista’ but the energy and anticipation in the room was incredible. The press pit, the white chairs, the flashes, the music. It was all so surreal. I can see why so many people are drawn into this industry.

When the show does start the music is incredible and you are taken away. You are now in the designers mind. Everything on purpose and nothing wasted…the models walked effortlessly and the garments hung perfectly. I got some great footage from the show and met some cool people. I am putting that together now and will have a sick video soon. More to come from Fashion Week 09.