The Basement

Well, I am here in New York – in Brooklyn – on a friend's couch. It’s late but I wanted to post a bit about my surreal WOMMA experience tonight.

What an amazing group of people!

Three months ago I didn’t know what WOMM was. Tonight, I was at a WOMMA banquet meeting some of the industries leading players. I think I was the only person in the room not professionally involved in marketing or related offshoot. That didn’t seem to matter much to anyone though – what a great bunch of people.

Andy Sernovitz, WOMMA’s fearless leader, kicked of the evening with a toast. Andy and I talked a bit – he’s a really great guy. He announced that WOMMA is now 200 members strong – this is huge for a trade association in it’s infancy. I’m not sure if this is a testament to WOM, WOMM, or WOMMA or all three, but you can just tell that SOMETHING IMPORTANT is going on here.

Sometimes you hear people talk about meeting someone online and then meeting them in person. Well, tonight I meet lots of online friends for the first time. I met…

Andy Sernovitz, WOMMA
Mike Rubin, WOMMA
Jonathan Carson, BuzzMetrics
Gary Stein, Jupiter Research
Spike Jones, Brains on Fire
Robbin Phillips, Brains on Fire
Geno Church, Brains on Fire
Greg Cordell, Brains on Fire
Owen Mack, CoBrandit
Brad Fay, formerly of GfK NOP – now a part
     of a secret project, details forthcoming
Ed Keller, co-author of The Influentials, –
     formerly of Gfk NOP, now conspiring with
     Brad Fay

These are all folks who I’ve met through blogging. It was wonderful to meet all of them, but the odd thing was that they all felt like old friends.

I also met…
Bill Tuohig, Umbria Communications
Gordon Ebanks, Customunity

Gordon was at my table. His company, Customunity, is doing some really interesting stuff. Namely they provide custom social netowrk solutions - say, for example, build for a particular product, brand or community. I struggle with the social network concept, but Gordon (and table-mate Gary Stein) has convinced me that I need to look a little harder.

I enjoyed wonderful dinner conversations about applying WOMM, working with bloggers, and appropriate levels of transparency. Our table talked a lot about the particular difficulties of a company such as a large pharmaceutical company applying WOMM. In addition to the normal challenges, there are governmental limitations on what they can and can’t say, do and promote. Online community building is also challenging because of the nature the commonality of the participants. For example, as a pharmaceutical company, how do you get people to participate in online communities about a condition that might be embarrassing or that carries a negative stereotype? Certainly this can be done, but it is much more difficult than say, creating an online community of people who love their cars. Very thought provoking and enlightening.

I also noticed a flurry of activity on the WOMMA WOM v. Advertising blog today. I noticed that the WOMMA staff blogged about a negative experience with Kinko’s – namely failing miserably to deliver on their marketing promise. Alas, I had to wear a hand written name tag – can you image the embarrassment?

So I have to agree, Kinkos, you picked on the wrong crowd.

Kinkos sucks. Pass it on.

I don’t have time at the moment to read everyone else – I have to sleep sometime. I’m very excited about tomorrow. Good night.