On occasion I like to leave my humble little cave and go forth into the marketing universe and meet real life marketers. Recently I had the opportunity to head down to the big apple and attend an event called DigiDay: Social.

Overall a really great experience as I got to meet a few nice people and also to get an in person view on how some of the more traditional brands are approaching social media. There was a nice variety of speakers including people from high profile brands like Pepsi, Wallgreens, Virgin America, MTV and ESPN. Overall they presented a very interesting picture that I was happy to hear was quickly moving away from “number of likes” and was instead focused on things like engagement and copy writing.

In particular one keynote I thought was spellbinding in large part because I personally like thinking about issues with a universal views was that talk given by chief strategy and innovation officer at Vivaki Rishad Tobaccowala. If you watch these videos (it is 2 parts) you will be engaged, informed and energized. So have fun….

Rishad Tobaccowala Part 1

Watch live streaming video from digiday at livestream.com

Rishad Tobaccowala Part 2

Watch live streaming video from digiday at livestream.com

All things considered, it was a very interesting day of learning and engaging.

A few other insights from the day. Facebook dominated (it was also F8 that day) along with Twitter and Google+. There was no talk about LinkedIn and virtually nothing said about email marketing either. Just pointing out what seemed to be the shared priorities of the panelists that I heard.
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Thanks again to the folks at Digiday for putting together such a great event, and also for having me.