Under a Southern Sky

Forrester held their first Forrester Marketing Forum conference in Miami last week. Organic was one of three Gold sponsors of the event and the only digital marketing agency on the roster.  We had an action-packed two day session and Organic certainly generated a lot of buzz. Here are a few highlights:

• We had our first "unbooth" booth that was designed as a persona room (comfy sofas and chairs, a coffee table, and our virtual fireplace). It was the perfect non-threatening venue to engage prospects in relaxed and informal dialog
• Many people, including some key Forrester analysts, said they are active readers of our Threeminds blog and kept asking to meet with Misha Cornes, our brilliant and prolific Threeminds editor-in-chief who ironically asked, "Blogging can make you famous?"
• We unveiled our Blindspot offering (futurecasting personas) at the event and Mark Kingdon and Chad Stoller gave a wonderful interactive presentation to a packed room of almost 200 people. We handed out laser pointers and Mark invited everyone to play the "Have you ever ..." game where people were asked to use their laser pointers to answer a bunch of "Yes" and "No" questions as a dynamic precursor to the futurecasting discussion.  It was awesome to see all those little red flying dots flying dots congregating on the "Yes" or "No" portion of the screen – a real time, interactive survey at its best
• The new Forrester Wave report was released at the event and, as you know, Organic has retained and advanced its leadership position
• On the final morning, Kerry Bodine, the author of the Forrester Wave, did a wonderful keynote presentation on, "How to Deliver a Great Customer Experience," and she showcased our process and the persona work that we did for Geek Squad; it was an incredible validation of our methodology and a powerful endorsement of Organic as a leader in customer-centric marketing.

Individually, each of these experience elements would have made the conference a success for me - combined they created a truly exceptional experience.  A special thanks to Forrester for delivering an EE and to Mark Kingdon, Chad Stoller, Tim Armitage, Amanda Van Nuys, Ann Freccero, Tracy Richards, James Kim and the rest of the Organic cast and crew. Organic ROCKS!

David Feldt