• by Seana Mulcahy , October 1, 2007

I don't know about you -- but I am beat from last week. Those of you who were at Advertising Week most likely share the same sentiment. There are about 200 events during the 5-day period in NYC.

Even though I just hop on the shuttle from Boston, it never works out smoothly. Coming in on Monday, we were in a holding pattern in the air due to everyone being in at The United Nations. To top it off, the president of Iran was in town. Why advertising events are scheduled around such activity is a mystery to me. I won't even get into the trip home.

Once I arrived, it was pretty much the same as it always is: a bunch of rushing around, trying to find rooms, bumping into clients, colleagues and friends with no time other than a sound byte or two. All of this coupled with having to get to meetings, organize speakers, prepare presentations for panels and, oh yeah, try to make it to the press room.

That being said, I like to pull out the common threads -- what's buzzing or soon to be. From what I heard, everyone was talking about the impact of social media across the board. I moderated a panel that delved into the topic a bit deeper. I must disclose I wrote the content for the topic and the panelists did the rest. It was titled, "Social Media: The User is in the Driver's Seat: How to effectively market, advertise and stay ahead of the curve."

Joining me were industry leaders Lauren Bigelow, general manager of North America Weeworld.com; Cory Treffiletti, president, managing partner of Catalyst: SF; Elizabeth Osder, senior vice president, audience, BuzzNet; and Rusty Williams, vice president and co-gounder, Prospero Technologies.

The goal was to have the group share tips and tricks for not only surviving but leading the social media space. Lauren delved into the critical concept of immersion. It is defined as the state of being overwhelmed or deeply absorbed; deep engagedness. In other words, users feel like they are really in these social networks and virtual worlds. She stressed that advertisers and marketers should be respectful of such spaces and give users what they want.

Cory is at the helm of working with several clients in the space. He went back to the fundamentals media basics: right message, right time, right place. He also overstated the fact that users are being barraged by a slew of ads, messages and the like.

Elizabeth spoke directly about BuzzNet's rapid growth rate as it relates to music fans. She said they provide a community for fans to connect that enables them to spread messages virally.

Rusty summed it up by giving the following advice for advertising within social media:

Express your brand's personality

Don't force-feed; engage your audience

Use creative concepts that encourage word of mouth

Learn from what people are saying and incorporate that feedback into your products and future marketing

As you can guess, many heads nodded at these closing remarks. If you look around the Net you'll see Nielsen and ComScore trying to figure out how to measure such audiences. Forrester Research just released findings in a report entitled "Marketing's New Key Metric: Engagement."

According to Brian Haven, senior analyst at Forrester Research, engagement involves four components: involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence, each built from data collected online and offline. "Using engagement, you get a more holistic appreciation of your customers' actions, recognizing that value comes not just from transactions but also from actions people take to influence others," he writes. "Once engagement takes hold of marketing, marketing messages will become conversations, and dollars will shift from media buying to customer understanding."

David Verklin echoed this when he was interviewed by James Lipton at OMMA. He said, "The leading brands today are not the ones talking about themselves, it's the ones that people are talking about." I couldn't agree more. I'd like to get your thoughts on the hot topics of the events and your take on the power of engagement online. Post your thoughts and musings to the Spin blog.