Interactive media essentials 101

So, a bit of personal stuff really quick: I work all day in an advertising sales department and sell print and online advertising. I talk to ad agencies about ad rates, circulation numbers, market share, and click-throughs. I enjoy the creative side of it (though I rarely get to add much of that) and the fact that, in a small way, I'm helping a company achieve something through advertising.

I'm such the advertising nerd that I might as well have a picture on my wall of the advertising team from Grey Worldwide alongside Diageo North America's Dana Yerid (Senior Brand Manager) for their incredible holiday Tanqueray campaign. No seriously - you must check it out: http://www.effie.org/winners/showcase/2007/1844.

Anyways, so then I normally do one of two things: Hit a night MBA class (3x per week) or turn into an ultra consumer. Either way, from roughly 8:30 am to around midnight, I'm watching advertising, thinking about advertising or, as I mentioned, playing a tiny small part in somebodies advertising efforts.

With all the new advertising and marketing options open with the Internet, mobile advertising, web 2.0, social marketing, cause marketing, enviro-marketing, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Second Life, World of Witchcraft, Sex in the City, American Idol, Budweiser, crazy Burger King guy... etc., that it has gotten a bit overwhelming. I like the approach taken by Socrates in The Apology, "I know nothing except that I know nothing."

So, I took it back to basics and went to an "Interactive Essentials - Foundation" seminar in Baltimore hosted by one of the local pros, Congruent Media. They're specialty is Internet solutions so I was figuring to make out good and I did. If you ever need anything having to do with web design, website and database development, full-service Internet marketing and search engine optimization, or any kind of multimedia ad campaign hook up, check them out (www.congruentmedia.com).

The session was only about 2 hours long and the presenter was an account executive named Emily Chua. It was good stuff. Starter stuff. An easy "cheat sheet" came with it that showed all kinds of things you "should know but should have also learned it five years ago" along with some genuinely good tips to be more savvy and efficient when researching these kinds of things.

I'm going to lay it all out "note-style" in my next blog but, in the meantime, here's one of my favorite parts of the session - no, I don't mean favorite like the 2006 Budweiser pilots-love-Budweiser spot http://www.effie.org/winners/showcase/2006/686 - the favorite part of the session was when they went absolut101 with showing me where to find the blog by Avinash Kaushik (don't know who that is? yeah, me neither.) Mr. Avinash Kaushik is the Analytics Evangelist for Google. His blog is Occam's Razor at www.kaushik.net and I will now be a regular visitor there as I recommend you to do as well.

Stay with me and next week we'll really (finally) start to learn a bit here. In the meantime, drop a comment and let me know what your favorite all-time television commercials are. Thanks to the Internet and the fact that companies love the fact that we now search for commercials, they're at your beckon call.