Last Week In The Office

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This is my last week in the office before Lauren and I visit my Dad in Florida. I'm looking forward to some warm weather and a week away from the office. That's not to say that work won't be on my mind. There are two nagging things I need to devote some time to thinking about while I'm away, and they're the type of things that require relatively long periods of uninterrupted brain churning - exactly the type of thinking that is most difficult to pull off during this latest boomlet in the marketing services industry.

Something Wickedly Cool This Way Comes

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Quite a few of our clients have been looking to us for consultative help with what I'll call "conversational marketing." And I'm not talking about riding blogging's coattails in the hopes of having some of the cool factor rubbing off on client brands. I've had a few client calls in the past week that were centered around what needs to happen in order to effect real change - investments in conversation departments, dedicated conversational assets, willingness to listen, tools and more. What I'm pleasantly surprised by is the willingness to adapt on the part of clients. On a couple occasions, I made some recommendations to clients that required a lot of adjustment and adaptation on the client side. In one of those cases, I laid down an ultimatum where I thought the client was about to go against the grain of the fundamental principles of the blogging movement. I basically told them I was uninterested in moving forward if they weren't completely dedicated to doing things the right way. I thought I would be overruled. I wasn't, thankfully.

Simultaneously, interest in conversational marketing is coming from partner agencies as well. At least two agencies that we provide services to have made significant queries concerning conversational marketing and one new agency has approached us about our capabilities in that arena.

We have a basic capabilities presentation for Conversational Marketing, which includes a few small case studies. We've been working with clients, both formally and informally on conversational initiatives, but it's far from a fully blown out practice area.

I won't say much more now, other than this is an area we're very interested in, we have some great relevant expertise and success stories, and we're completely passionate about it. So let's just say something's on it's way.