One of the greatest thrills of being an Internet marketer is attending conventions, well, for me and in a geeky sort of way in any case. I usually try to complete my annual round of MIXX, OMMA, SES, and ad:tech as a sort of capitalist pilgrimage if you will. This year, I decided to add the AAAA (www.aaaa.org) convention on February 28th and March 1st 2007 to the roster. Sure, the trip to Vegas was more than a little out of the way for someone based in New York, but my rationale is that attending all of the right conferences is vital to getting ahead in the online marketing game.
Dig this – to get to the AAAA expo, I had to cross an endless colorful field of slot machines and craps tables. Fun you say? Yes, but maybe it would have been more relaxing if I hadn’t been carrying my entire booth on my shoulder. During the first day of the expo, the combination of a long plane ride, lack of sleep, a double shot of espresso, flashing lights, and casino sirens made me feel as if I was walking though a waking dream. Indeed later at dinner that night, the CEO of the ad agency ICMediaDirect.com, Vladimir Khomenko, said that the difference between New York and Las Vegas is that in the first, lights usually serve an advertising purpose, whereas in the latter, lights are mostly used for your viewing pleasure and evidently, with no branding message behind them.
Now that I’m back in good old NYC, here’s a recap of how the unique AAAA Las Vegas convention compared to the massive ad:tech NY convention that I’m sure most of you have at one point in your careers attended. Let the showdown begin!
The Two Ways of Generating Social Capital as an Attendee
Let’s journey for a moment to the magical land behind the scenes of advertising conventions such as ad:tech, where things that are not immediately apparent to the eye are indeed very realistically taken place on a sociological level. The number of interrelationships that gives you some sort of measurable benefit is defined as social capital. In this case the benefit can be more traffic to your website, more sales leads or, in short, anything that can get you ahead in the online advertising business and secure that retirement in a place with a lot of palm trees that you’ve always wanted. There are two main ways to generate social capital through such conventions: The first and simpler way is by gathering business cards and afterwards sending pitch emails and making follow-up calls to the people who hinted enough interest to do business with. The second way is to generate social capital at conventions through the formation of social niches. Both of these methods of social capital generation take place at the ad:tech convention. But as far as I can tell, only the first took place at the recent AAAA convention.
Social Niches Are Not Nearly As Present at AAAA as They Are At ad:tech
Sociologist Emmanuel Lazega defined social niches as a group of people who exchange resources. According to him social niches are valuable because they let their members temporarily suspend competition between each other, and allow for the easier exchange of resources, which can take the form long-lasting contracts and favorable ad rates. The social niches at ad:tech consist of people who do business with each other, who belong to the same online forum such as www.searchenginewatch.com or www.seroundtable.com, and who periodically meet at conferences and their after-parties. According to Joseph Morin, President of Boost Search Marketing and “Official Party Coordinator” for Search Engine Strategies, the benefits of social networking through conferences such as ad:tech are summed up by his following experience:
“Over the years I have come to know many, many people in the industry, initially through the forums and then in person at the conferences which led to my assignments as Moderator at Search Engine Watch and Conference Marketing Director for WebmasterWorld’s PubCon conferences (www.pubcon.com). This in turn has led me to one of the largest ‘rolodexes’ in the industry and many clients now hire me because of my access to leaders in the industry and to the search engines themselves, in fact I now have several search engines as clients – which of course is attractive to clients.”
Due to its size and reputation, ad:tech is a meeting place, a gathering for people who belong to a social niche. It creates a pretext for people who live, say, in San Diego to meet with people from the East Coast face to face, thus stabilizing and reinforcing the social niche over a long period of time.
I did not recognize any of the usual faces at the smaller AAAA conference in Las Vegas and so have to dispel the notion of widespread and pre-existing social niches in that particular conference. For the moment there just does not seem to be any more profound personal and long term relationships operating beyond the level of new business prospects at AAAA.
Why is AAAA Not A Meeting Point For Social Niches?
So why does ad:tech benefit from the gathering of members of the same social niches while AAAA doesn’t? I attribute this to the attendance numbers of each of the conferences. In November 2006, ad:tech NY was graced by the presence of over eight thousand attendees and three floors worth of exhibitor booths. Kevin McAllister, the CEO of “the world’s first and only online media marketplace” Mochilla, told me that his company will be doubling its investment in its presence for the upcoming ad:tech San Francisco in April. He explained that this is because “ad:tech puts us in a place where there are a lot of people interested in the work we do. There is a critical mass of people there.” This “critical mass” is comparable to the hospitality industry rule of thumb that people like to eat at restaurants that already have a crowd. With only a single floor of booths, the AAAA conference is large and productive but not extravagant enough to make it a pivotal gathering point for all social niches that exist in the online marketing world.
AAAA did offer some quite excellent leads, especially in the offline advertising world, that I eventually have to follow up on in gung-ho manner one of these days. Who knows, maybe I can form my own social niche at AAAA Las Vegas if a few of the contacts I met there decide to make the trip to Las Vegas an annual ritual. Hopefully my luck on the craps table will improve too.
Source: http://www.ArticlePros.com/author.php?Gene Heratori
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