Reflections on Mass to Grass Part 1
It’s 11:30 and I just got in the door. I was at CMA’s Word of Mouth conference most of the day and went to see the Jays game after that.
As any Blue Jays fans know by now, the Jays lost. Not cool.
But on a brighter note, the conference was awesome.
My thoughts:
Jackie Huba, co-author of Citizen Marketers
A great way to kick off the day. Jackie touched on some of the highlights of her book and showed some great samples of user generated content. My fav? The Chicken McNugget Guys. Had that little beat stuck in my head the rest of the day. It was like having my own theme music.
Jackie talked about the Four F’s of citizen marketing: Firecrackers, Filters, Fanatics and Facilitators…..and went on to compare citizen marketers to a biker gang via the 1% rule. Strange, I know, but it made sense when she said it.
I guess you’ll just have to go read the book. I know I will be.
Eric Petersen, Director of Community Relations, lululemon
This guy was cool. Started off by telling us that he doesn’t usually “speak at these things”. Nevertheless, what he had to say was very interesting. I’m not a yoga guy, so I guess I wouldn’t know this, but it turns out the majority of lululemon’s marketing is done through word of mouth. They give their employees creative control when it comes to promoting the company. This leads to some pretty interesting exampls. Imagine spray painting “cult” and “sell outs” on your own store window. Why? To create buzz of course. And Eric Peterson is ok with it, just as long as they’re creating buzz.
Some of his guidelines: Be authentic and keep it simple, practice what you preach, do the right thing, empower your team, ask customers what they want, give them what they want, hire customers, everyone (including the CEO) works the floor once a week.
And I’m done for tonight. Feeling a little sleepy. I’ll finish this up over the weekend.
