Vancouver Art of Marketing Sponsored by Microsoft Dynamics [A Recap]

Last week our team attended the Microsoft Dynamics CRM sponsored Art of Marketing. A big success by many standards.
With a star-studded line up and billed at Canada’s #1 Marketing & Innovation Conference it drew hundreds of people. And with the conference highlighting the latest trends and marketing research, it was hard for any marketer to let slip by.Speakers included Arianna Huffington (founder and editor in chief for the Huffington Post), Scooter Braun (talent manager of Justin Bieber), best-selling book author Jonah Berger (Professor of Marketing at the University of Pensylvania), Eric Ryan (co-founder of Method) and many more.Microsoft CMO, Cheri Chevalier, also joined the conversation on an interview panel, discussing the latest marketing strategies; including how they affect the big data discussion.

One of the most informative sessions was one was by Jonah Berger. the best selling author of Contagious – “Why Things Catch On”.

Jonah Berger as a quantitative researcher, doesn’t buy the notion that what “goes viral” is pure chance and luck. His book Contagious outlines six characteristics, defined by his STEPPS process, that improve the odds of marketing content going more viral.

In summary and in Jonah’s words, Contagious proposes the following content is more likely to go “viral”:

• Social Currency “We share things that make us look good”
• Triggers “Top of mind, tip of tongue”
• Emotion “When we care, we share”
• Public “Built to show, built to grow”
• Practical Value “News you can use”
• Stories “Information travels under the guide of idle chatter”

Marketing has always been just as much science as it has been creative. The difficulty was, in the past we didn’t necessarily have the tools to prove our results or discover what results we were getting.

To summarize the presentation, five quotes (see here for more) from Jonah Berger:

• “Social currency is about information senders and how information makes them look”
• “By acting as reminders, triggers not only get people talking, they keep people talking”
• “Some emotions kindle the fire more then others – activating emotion is the key to transmission”
• “Making products more observable makes them easier to imitate”
• “Stories are an important part of cultural learning that helps us make sense of the world”

It was a great marketing conference and we hope Art of Marketing is back in 2014. Maybe you’ll join us next year?