The Company
Today I had the pleasure of meeting with David Sieburg, Production Manager, at the Impact Media Group, based out of Santa Cruz, CA. I’ve been down to their offices before so I was already familiar with some of the amazing stuff they do. What sets these guys apart from many small video/production houses is that they don’t see themselves as a video production company. They don’t meet with a client, find out the client’s name, get the client’s logo, and slap it on some generic backdrop in HD and call it a day. The priority of their approach is not just your story, but more importantly, how to visually and creatively tell your company’s story in a way that is powerful enough to be done without words if given the option. Their goal is to visualize your company’s message in a way that is unlike any of your most aggressive competitors. Some of their work is surreal.
We’ve all seen amazing ideas on TV created by multimillion dollar Hollywood studios and pricey over-hyped agencies in San Francisco. The beauty and uniqueness of Impact is that they can accomplish the same quality, professionalism, creativity, and delivery of any high-end agency that I’ve seen but with a fraction of the crew and overhead.
The Next Steps
They are about to embark on their initial planning stages of their social media push and I’m excited to see what they do. We talked quite extensively about some of this stuff and the challenges of social media for a small B2B company that is the genius behind video creative used by big names we all know like Apple, Starbucks, HP, NBC, Discovery Channel, and Adobe…just to name a few. I look forward to seeing this small company, capable of creating bigger than life video, effectively populate the social media landscape within their respective industry against their competitors. They got the talent and big brand client base to do it quickly. It’s hard to believe a company this small has done things so big.
Thanks for the sushi David!
My First Seattle: A #140tc Recap
What an amazing experience.
Yesterday I returned from Seattle, WA. I had only been to this city’s airport a couple times but I had never had an opportunity to hang out, meet some people, shoot some photos and eat 800 pounds of salmon. Well I did get to do that but that’s not why I was there.
I was there to attend the 140 Twitter Conference put on by @TweetHouse and the Parnassus Group. Jennifer Leggio (@mediaphyter) introduced me to Jason Preston (@jasonp107), the man running the show. Jason was gracious enough to give me the opportunity to be involved and share a panel with some super smart and seasoned tweeps that anyone can learn from and should absolutely follow – Jesse Engle @engle (CoTweet), Shauna Causey @shaunacausey (Comcast), H.B. Siegel @twhb (IMDb.com), and Brad Nelson @bradnelson (Starbucks).
I won’t go into a boatload of detail about everything in this post but thought I’d mention some takeaways and things that I had learned that I thought were either useful, funny, or both.
New Things I Learned
During the Media Panel session we were given some great things to ponder and think about when it comes to doing media and news coverage using Twitter. I had never really thought about what the effect of Twitter would be on broadcasting and doing the news. In a world where people use Twitter to not necessarily double check their emotions before posting, Linda Thomas (@TheNewsChick) deserves kudos for being anti-spin and ensuring her facts are straight before tweeting. Major news media outlets would be doing the public a huge favor by employing more people like her.
Ayush Agarwal (@yush) did a killer job moderating the Dev/Biz Panel. Brilliant developers like the ones on the this panel have to keep all of us emo marketing people in check by ensuring that data, and the tools used to gather that data, makes sense and help support our business objectives methodically. Sites like Twitter and Facebook would not exist with these brilliant minds.
On the Brand Panel Shauna Causey and Brad Nelson both reminded all of us that when you are dealing with customers that are frustrated with your brand, spouting off on Twitter because of a bad experience they had, always approach them with positivity and a focus on treating them with respect. Treat them like you would want to be treated if you were in their shoes.
One of the most educational moments for me was the opportunity I had to learn about an industry that I’ve never known anything about. Even more intriguing was how these two guys I just met were using social media in an industry that I had no idea would have a use for it. I had the chance at the tweetup hosted at Seattle’s Hotel Andra (@HotelAndra) to learn how the farming industry needed social media. With some tasty local wine in hand, Greg Guenther (@greg_guenther) and I sat down with cattle rancher Jeff Fowle (@JeffFowle) and dairy farmer Ray Prock Jr. (@RayLinDairy). These guys are definitely visionary in their approach to use social media as a channel for educating people on the science and process behind where much of our store bought food comes from, how it’s marketed, what we don’t know as Joe Food Consumer, how it’s bought and sold, and the process for monitoring, maintaining and growing a lot of it – meat and greens alike. Great stuff.
Things That Made Me Laugh
Damon Cortese (@dacort) – “People like to click on shit.” and of course DBI, the Douchebag Index. That will be my next t-shirt purchase.
Dom Sagolla (@dom) – His late night red wine-infused Entourage story.
Johnathon Fitzpatrick (@jjtweets) – For his ability to get all “Mike Singletary” on the HootSuite Owl Mascot at 1:00AM.
….and the Magical Unicorn Story of the Night award goes to David Dennison (@DavidDennison) for his mace story. The first, second and third rule of David’s mace story is: “Don’t talk about David’s mace story.” If I told you, I’d have to….well you know.
Onward.