CaseCampVancouver3 Live Blog

Tonight I’ll be at the Lamplighter in Gastown attempting to live blog an event that’s new to me. From my understanding it’s like DemoCamp meets marketing, but there’s much more to it than that. Every presenter will get a few minutes to talk about their product and present a case to the group.

For presenters so far I believe we have Marqui, Radient Communications, Smak, WiderFunnel, 99directions, and Donat Group.

CaseCamp is an unconference for marketers. Following in the footsteps of BarCamp, and building on the model of DemoCamp, CaseCamp brings together people interested in marketing-oriented activities to learn from their peers via case study presentations. CaseCamp is structured on purpose. The goal is to create an independent forum for for great dialog. Typically, a presenter presents a case (good, bad, ugly, lessons learned, etc.) and then a lively discussion ensues during a Q&A period. [CaseCampVancouver3]

The lighting is pretty low in the venue so I’m unsure any photos will turn out right away via my iPhone but I’ll attempt to have a live blog going on this post’s url. Things kick off at 5:45 and will run until about 7:00pm at which time mingling will be encouraged. The website isn’t currently working for me, so check out the Facebook event for more details.

5:58pm: I’m here, I have wifi. First Case will be at 6:15pm, stay tuned.

6:15pm: Quick show-of-hands survey to find out what kind of audience we have tonight: bloggers, social media enthusiasts, photographers, web designers, PR folks, marketers, and a ton of other professionals.

6:20pm: First up is Marqui with their client study with the challenge of creating a campaign during the holiday season to manage their customer base and introduce new products. 4 days to plan and 6 days to run. Marqui came up with a system for (new) client email input, and a landing page optimized with the help of Google. The result was thousands of sent emails, thousands of clickthroughs, hundreds of conversions conversions, and hundreds of sales-ready leads. FYI this was a slide presentation and there’s no way I can remember all the data that just flashed up on the screen (sorry readers!), especially when looking at the Campaign ROI overview, however all the numbers look pretty impressive.

6:29pm: The second case of the evening is VLES, the Virtual Lower East Side (of Manhattan) by Donat Group that provides online social networking services for companies. VLES is to enable fans and bands to network through a rich website complete with a 3D alternate world, kinda like MySpace meets Second Life… for the Lower East Side – complete with virtual venues, concerts and competitions. The entire project was initiated by MTV. Challenges Donat faced throughout the process was moving MTV from an ad campaign mentality to the concept of social networking, and also how to engage the real community, and transitioning them to an online presence. Side note: giving the presentation is Rochelle of Twemes – one of my favourite new sites.

6:40pm: Next is Smak. Their big client is Future Shop and for starters, the presenter just said he’s going to simply have rotating images on the screen behind him as he simply can’t stand Powerpoint. (amen). Smak specializes in event marketing and gained a huge case for Future Shop involving hundreds of contest winners, and flying them to an event in Miami. “Event marketing and destination management are two very different things.” Obstacles were overcome by organizing unique outings (including alligator wrangling) which had immensely positive results. The twist was that this was all internal marketing, for their employees – speaking to retaining personnel and rewarding them. Moral of the story, you can gain publicity for being a forward-thinking and generous employer, and the results could be quite lucrative in the long run.

6:53pm: I think we only have two presentations left tonight, which is good because as it usually goes when I live blog something right after work – I’m insanely hungry right now.

6:55pm: “You don’t need more traffic, You need more Actions” a new slide is up on the screen and it belongs to Chris from WiderFunnel who deals with ‘conversion optimization’. The case we’re being presented was a solution WiderFunnel needed to create to help reduce the risk involving a client’s website redesign and change over. I’m seeing the word Funnel about a dozen times, but there’s certainly method to all of this. WiderFunnel has dozens of branded (and trademarked) tools and methods that they apply to client processes to develop a strategy for a more functional website.

7:02pm: For someone with an aversion to mathematics, I’m sure being exposed to a lot of numbers tonight. Things are wrapping up here, watch for all of tonight’s case presentations to be available on the CaseCampVancouver website or up on Slideshare, keyword “casecamp”.

7:04pm: Megan is the MC, did I mention that? She just gave a call out for to the live blog, she’s pretty awesome. I’m going to be heading out (not sticking around to schmooze) but before I take off, check out Megan’s post about Bridging Media – a new and free community event coming in March. Attn: broadcasters and producers.