Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

CRAVE blog: Sweet vs Savory,Who beat the buzzer?

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

Eloise Longobardi

“I don’t really like food.” – Have you ever heard someone say that? I sure haven’t! I definitely enjoy a good meal, but would I consider myself a “foodie” or someone with a “well developed palette?” – Absolutely not! Therefore being a judge in our March HomeMadeness competition was a perfect afternoon event to be a part of. The annual MSL New York event isn’t about the newest, trendiest flavors and combinations, but rather about comfort food with a twist. It’s about introducing family and personal favorites to the office to see who tops the competition for a year’s worth of bragging rights.

I had the privilege of tasting Courtney Ryder’s “Cheesy Cha Cha Chicken Enchiladas” vs. Ali Tadeu’s “Tadeu’s Titillating Truffles” in the first round and then Guinevere Habersham’s “Sweet ‘n Savory Chili” vs. Niki Chakravarthy’s “Spiked Nutella Zucotto” in the second round.  About 9 out of 10 times I will pick savory over sweet but for this match-up I picked 1 and 1 – I’ll let you make the decision on which ones I picked as a winner.

I will tell you that I appreciated the simplicity of these recipes. One’s that you can make for dinner quickly but still fill up your belly while satisfying your taste buds. I think it’s important to take ideas and make them your own – you don’t have to follow the rules all the time and things don’t have to be perfect to be good.

In the end, Niki Chakravarthy’s Spiked Nutella Zucotto and Courtney Ryder’s Cheesy Cha Cha Chicken Enchiladas took the honors in this round, and were then pitted against one another in the semi-finals. Ultimately, sweet took top honors with the Nutella Zucotto not only trumping the enchiladas, but against Brian William’s Hoagie Dip in the final as well! While the savory dishes more than held their own with comforting flavors and flawless presentation, the rich, choclatey dish prevailed as the Grand Champion.

It was fascinating to learn about where these recipes came from – were they family secrets passed down from generation to generation? Maybe just ideas they came up with themselves? Or were they just a go-to meal for their family? No matter what the reason they all took time, effort and some creativity but in the end they were all just, simply put, really good! They were all foods I would make at home and serve to my husband. Nothing was too over the top and they could all be made with stuff I already have in my kitchen.

In my opinion cooking a good meal doesn’t have to involve a ton of pots and pans or loads of ingredients you can’t pronounce – it could even come right out of a box. A good meal is one that you take pride in, have a couple laughs over while eating and doesn’t include any leftovers. I can say for sure that there were no leftovers from what I tasted at the 2012 MSL March HomeMadeness!

Eloise Longobardi is an Account Executive at MSL New York working on P&G’s Family Care brands – including  Bounty paper towels, Puffs facial tissues and Charmin toilet paper. With six years of experience in non-profit and consumer public relations, Eloise has developed expertise in the men’s and women’s lifestyle categories.

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Last Day at SXSW:Where Brian Solis, Billy Corgan and Jay-Z Intersect

Tuesday, March 13th, 2012

Laura Chavoen

Brian Solis spoke at a SXSW panel yesterday afternoon about how audience segmentation is no longer only about age or demographics. One of the key audience groups is “GENERATION C:” C for connected. The connected generation not only integrates technology seamlessly into their lives, but this group also uses and embraces that technology to form, sustain and nurture relationships with others in Gen C.

Brian’s perspective is that we’re the problem and we are also the solution. This not about generations or age. It has to do with how we AS PEOPLE make decisions, interact and connect. We look at things in different ways. We have become a disruption. The decision-making cycle of connected consumers is very different today.

Later in the panel, Billy Corgan joined Brian for a sit-down chat about how the music industry is no longer “business as usual”, then went on a (seemingly angry) screed about how music is so different today and how music consumers ‘mostly just want stuff for free.’ He spoke about how the business of today’s music industry has ‘taken the claws out of the music,’ forcing musicians who seek fame (and fortune) to acquiesce to the demands of the business and not be driven by their creativity or their own desire.

And after seeing the Jay-Z show tonight, I can say that they are both right. Music is very different today, but not necessarily in the way Billy articulated, at least from my perspective, the perspective of the consumer, the FAN. There was NO lack of creativity, originality, in this evening’s show, nor was there any lack of pointed observations in Jay’s lyrics and even his stage banter. And Brian is also right, at least from as far as shared experiences go…the audience was connected, with each other as well as with Jay.

Jay-Z connected the audience. He interacted with us, and encouraged us to interact with each other in ways that I’ve never seen at the hundreds of live shows I’ve been to. He EXPECTED that the audience would know entire verses and held the microphone out so that we could join him. He had us waving our arms, bouncing, doing the 2-step, making some noise, singing the chorus behind his raps. We eagerly and passionately connected with him, with each other, laughing, taking pictures, dancing with total strangers.

He didn’t just perform. He connected with us. He didn’t just sing, he structured his set so that we could join him. He didn’t just perform the set list that the Twitter-sphere helped construct, he wove all of those songs together into a story and we all went on a fantastic, LOUD, energetic and completely transporting adventure.

I will continue to buy Jay’s music. And I won’t miss an opportunity to see him live again, at any cost. And I was delighted to see such a concrete example of Brian’s panel and book: “The End of Business as Usual.” It was a memorable way to close out another great weekend at SXSWi.

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SXSWi Recaps: PR Lessons, Data Tools & More

Monday, March 12th, 2012

The Floor at SXSWi 2012

Another full day in Austin — panels and people, as well as codification of some perspectives and new viewpoints on others.

The day began with confirmation of how critical it is for the communicator to have a seat at the table in making business decisions. I attended the “More Smart, Less Stupid” PR panel which underscored that through examples of public relations missteps and successes, including Susan G. Komen, American Airlines, Zappos, and Netflix. A key takeaway was that if you’re going to be bipartisan, decide in advance and plan out the scenarios — don’t react in-market.

I also attended two panels that approached data and the roles it can play in business in different ways. The first focused on integrating data into the narrative, exploring ways to turn statistics into thought leadership TOOLS that people can use and apply rather than just read and file. Visualizing data exposes opportunity that might otherwise be missed and brings it into the discussion in a compelling and shareable manner. The idea extends beyond simple quantitative data. Visual transformation of information can imbue it with new power and expose it to new audiences.

Another session I attended explored NEW ways that data is informing the editorial process beyond the impression and the click. The exponential increase in data availability along with new channels requires us to be smarter about what data we pay attention to and offers us the opportunity to begin to more deeply segment and categorize our audiences.

Later I attended a panel on creating “Great Events.” The speakers suggested that great events challenge and intrigue their attendees, have unexpected elements, and offer something aspirational. They also pointed out that allowing people to help shape their own experience can make an event memorable and continue the conversation long after the actual event ends.

The day came to a close with a deep dive into local marketing. The focus was both tactical and technical, offering insights into working with Google Places pages, mobile optimization, and geo-location search-term management. A key takeaway underscored the value of targeted social content, and how critical it is to ensure that your Google Places pages are correct, since many mobile apps pull business information from those pages. Keeping local sites in your reputation-management strategy is also critical given the power of online reviews.

I’ll close today’s post with some great data about the value of local marketing. I’m working on visualizing this data and will post that later this weekend!

–Google Places account for 33% of visits to local business websites.

–88% of people who search for local information on a smartphone take action within one day.

–67% of consumers would NOT purchase a product/service after reading one to three negative reviews.

Laura Chavoen is a senior vice president and digital practice director at MSL Chicago, with 20 years of digital communications expertise in food and nutrition, publishing, financial services and associations. Follow her on Twitter at @chavoen.

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SxSW 2012 – Wait, Talk, Discuss

Saturday, March 10th, 2012

Mark McClennan, APR

If today’s registration line is any indication, SxSW Interactive is going to be more popular than ever. Despite coming at an off time, registration still took more than 90 minutes – more than I ever had to wait at CES or COMDEX in its prime.

True to SxSWi though, the time was not wasted. While in line, I had great conversations about the future of interactive marketing, the rise of mobile payments, better uses of technology to aid elections and those suffering in Africa, and the five major design flaws found in most socks today (who knew?).

Based on my (admittedly small) sampling from the first day of the show two of the most prominent themes already at the conference are:

1) The transformative rise of mobile payments
2) The evolution of content

Financial services technology has always had a strong, but limited presence at the show in previous years. But between Isis’ prominent sponsorship to the 13 scheduled sessions looking at mobile wallets or mobile payments, financial technology discussions are becoming much more mainstream. It’s interesting to look at the dichotomy of the sessions’ focus. They range from “The Payment Revolution is Coming” to “How the wallet was won.” There is a very divergent set of perspectives on this topic. Personally, I disagree with both. The payments revolution has been underway for some time and the wallet is most assuredly not won. Expect me to blog more about it in the coming days.

Theme two: Content. This goes beyond Content is King. People are discussing new ways of using content to engage. I had a great 60 minute conversation with a USA Today executive about their new iPad app and new ways they are looking to leverage and use content. There were a few interesting debates on the form of content (video was the most discussed, followed by a debate on how not to lose the richness of language and its ability to subtly shift perceptions as we move to microbite creation and consumption).

All in all, a good first day at the show.

Like anyone, I realize my impressions at SxSW are shaped by the relatively small number of people I had the pleasure of speaking with. I thought it might make sense to take a step back and look at what the overall conversation trends were today:

Over the past day there were more than 140,000 tweets and blog posts about SxSW (98% were tweets). To put this in perspective, the social media volume around SxSW far exceeds that of the recent Mobile World Congress or RSA:

The discussion is relatively fragmented. The only tech brand to break into the top discussion word cloud is Nokia, thanks to its foursquare badge. Most of the discussion is what you would expect, with people surprisingly upbeat despite the rain.

What are your thoughts so far?

Mark W McClennan, APR is a Senior Vice President at Schwartz MSL Boston where he heads the consumer technology, financial services and research group.

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The Week Ahead at SXSWi

Thursday, March 8th, 2012

Laura Chavoen

So much of what keeps PR as a discipline relevant in the competitive landscape is Innovation. As an industry, PR strives to be innovative in every way, with new events, new ways to reach influencers and new types of content — that, at its core, is what SXSW is about.

I’m not a newbie to the SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin and it feels very different but no less inspiring and exciting than it was six years ago.  Today, I feel like there is a lot more business-minded content as opposed to “tech topics,” and I don’t think that is a bad thing. For a long time, the conference catered mainly to technology and creative folks and venture capitalists would drive through, trendspotting. Now, the (bigger) conference gives business people a deeper understanding of the creative executions, and it gives the techs and the creative attendees the opportunity to see the connection between their innovations and business. It is bigger, but now it is richer in content, more 3-dimensional, and tangible.

Since much of the conference content is picked through the SXSW Panel Picker, the attendees are more selective against panels that are strictly “marketing.” And I think it shows — the panel content is really fascinating. Last year, at the panel with Weiden and Kennedy discussing the Old Spice campaign, it was fascinating how they took tweets and turned them into video responses — I was amazed to hear that they got video responses online within 24 hours — it changed everyone’s perspective on speed responsiveness and video — especially for a ‘brand’. It was just another example of content that was business-focused and gave me something tangible to think about.

Because SXSW is all about innovation, you get a sneak peak at what’s coming in technology trends. For example, tablets were huge three years ago right before the iPad came out. Many panelists and speakers were using tablets, and attendees see that. As a result, these people started creating tablet applications and tools and thinking of different usages for the technology. So being able to get a sneak peak at what the other speakers and attendees are doing can give you insights on what to do to stay on the competitive edge.

There are a number of trends I’m looking forward to learning more about and gauging at the conference, from a professional and a personal perspective:

Transmedia: How do you link the customer experience across multiple screens? How do you support how people interact with content displayed on different screens? For example, Google TV is interesting but it’s doing really poorly in the market, so I’m curious to see how people are tackling that.

Privacy: The rise of Pinterest, followed by questions around privacy issues around Instagram to Google to the music industry — privacy is a part of all of those things. Privacy is a thread through all of those, we have not seen privacy driving any of those business decisions, but if all industries pulled together, they could reshape all of media.

Data as a Narrative: I’m curious to hear more stories about how consumption metrics become a narrative. How does the actual data become a narrative for the same people that are using the content in the first place?

Gaming: I’m really into game concept and game theory. The article in the New York Times highlighting Self Magazine’s new game, underscores how games are being rooted in everything we do.

Tech Trends: I’m always interested in hearing what attendees are doing with HTML, CSS 5, and even 3D printing.

Bruce Sterling: As the godfather of science fiction and the keynote speaker at the conference, I’m really looking forward to hearing his session — he has a fascinating take on distilling what is fantasy from reality.

At SXSW, you never know what is going to inspire you. Even if it is a tech innovation, inspiration is inspiration. The challenge for attendees is to take what they see and make it relevant for our world.

Laura Chavoen is a senior vice president and digital practice director at MSL Chicago, with 20 years of digital communications expertise in food and nutrition, publishing, financial services and associations. Follow her on Twitter at @chavoen.

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