The 6th Annual Interactive Day San Diego, or #IDSD as it was referred to on Twitter, was a huge success.  The all day event sponsored by the San Diego Ad Club, set a record in  attendance with 420 attendees, nearly doubling the 250 from last year.  Maybe it was the iPad raffle?  Although with speakers on hand from Google, Facebook and LinkedIn, it is far more likely that event goers went for the latest insight.

Insight is what they received.

Facebook Western Region Vice President of Sales, Paul Ollinger, stated that Social Marketing is not new, the Internet is simply changing it to become enormously effective. He pointed out that Marketing is being defined by relationships and these relationships create power. Power is influential because it allows consumers to advocate for brands and brands to better serve consumer needs. The next era of Web experience will be marked by these relationships, according to Ollinger.

Jack Myers, founder of M.E.D.I.Advisory Group, said, “60 to 90% of organizations spending and budgets are invested in basic survival and maintenance, 10 to 40% on growth, 0 to 30% on innovation.” He concluded that every industry will be forced to change due to the rapidly shifting marketing landscape and the need to innovate is here. Over the last 100 years we’ve shifted from personal to mass to relationship marketing and social media leading the way.

Denny Reinert, Director of Sales for the Western Region of Placecast, discussed the importance of mobile media. His research shows that the mobile device is rated by users as the “most important way to reach me.” Placecast offers ShopAlerts, an Opt-in mobile service to engage with consumers while in the right “mindset”. The service can use any expression of location (address, city, wifi network, etc.) to create customized brand messaging and deliver it to the user. 65% of those who received the messages made a purchase.

The closing session of the event featured panelists: Heather Blank, Responsys; Torrey Lincoln, Linkedin; Brian Lynch, Yahoo! and Paul Ollinger of Facebook. They offered some awesome companies online to check out!

RapLeaf.com
Behance.com/Behance.net
GiltGroup.com
Foodista.com
Gowalla.com
Foursquare.com
Zebek.com

Which of these sites are you currently using?

For more details on the event or to review each speaker’s presentation, click here.