Events

The Ad Age Digital Conference continued this morning with a presentation from David Fischer, Facebook’s VP of business and marketing partnerships, whose presentation could be boiled down to this: “Your brand needs an always-on strategy.”

When your brand is on social networks, like, say, Facebook, it’s always accessible. Moreover, marketing efforts “have always tried to stimulate word-of-mount, but it’s really short-lived. Social technology is changing that,” Fischer added.

It’s not just about reaching the people who “like” you, it’s about reaching the people they’re friends with. According to Fischer, the average user has 130 friends. Reaching those friends spreads your company’s message naturally.

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Event planning ranks high for being a creative career with good job prospects, but it’s also among the most stressful occupations out there. Whether it’s a breakfast panel discussion, an all-day conference, or a multi-day annual meeting, the pressure to plan an enjoyable and worthwhile conference can push the stress level up to 10. One way to dial down the anxiety is to avoid careless mistakes and hone in on a few details.

After the jump, we’ve got a few suggestions for how to make your conference go smoothly and successfully based on the many events we’ve visited over the past couple of years. Any others you’d like to add to the list? The comments section is open.

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Baltimore-based Warschawski has been chosen to participate in Subaru’s “Work Play Love” tour, a springtime initiative that will take the automaker to companies they they’ve determined promote a good work-life balance. The firm doesn’t work with Subaru.

“Our ‘Work Play Love’ tour is a recognition of those efforts and an invitation to come out and play,” said Subaru’s promotions and sponsorships manager, Todd Lawrence, in a statement.

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Hispanicize 2012 is getting started today in Miami with sessions like “Blogging 101 (en español)” and “Is Your Brand Ready to Engage Latinos Online?” on tap. Besides all the social media business talk, there are also a few fun happenings, like the closing night screening of Scarface on Friday. The screening is part of the National Latino Film Showcase that Hispanicize introduced this year.

Influenced by SXSW, Manny Ruiz, the chairman of the event along with the co-founder of Latina Mom Bloggers and Hispanic PR Blog, told NBCLatino that there are three times the number of brands involved this year versus last year. And the event is attracting a who’s who of influential Latinos in the social media space.

“We plan to kick this event to another level and make it a place to catapult careers,” said Ruiz. NBCLatino is a sponsor of the event.

There’s also news coming out of Hispanicize 2012: Critical Mention has announced that it has added a number of new Spanish-language stations to its platform.

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“The only way to keep Davos private would be to confiscate participants’ cell phones,” according to Matthias Lüfkens, former head of digital media at the World Economic Forum (WEF) and current MD of digital, EMEA at Burson-Marsteller. He spoke at PRSA’s Digital Impact conference on Monday in New York, where he outlined how digital media helped make the exclusive conference more public.

The World Economic Forum’s five-day invitation-only event, held in Davos, Switzerland every January, draws 2,600 influential leaders from academia, business, and government to discuss the world’s most pressing issues. Lüfkens said WEF sought to reach a broader audience, and this year the event was livestreamed on four channels and on a press conference channel encouraging audience participation. They also livestreamed from mobile phones using Qik.

“The head of WEF is not personally involved in social media, but he understands it,” Lüfkens noted. “Social media is also a good way to brand the event and is now embedded in the organization. Our strategy is to release and stagger the content.” Davos now has a presence on several social media platforms and provides a lesson in how other major events, even those with off-the-record content, can use social media to their advantage.

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While creativity has long been a mystery, lately researchers have been unlocking keys to the creative process and dispelling some common myths. Jonah Lehrer, Wired contributing editor and author of Imagine: How Creativity Works shared findings about personal creativity and group collaboration during a presentation at the Advertising Research Foundation‘s (ARF) Re:think conference on Monday in New York.

Public relations ranks as the top creative services job in U.S. News’ recent report, underscoring its creative component. So understanding the secrets of creativity can be valuable the next time you’re asked to come up with a big idea. As it turns out, daydreaming, diversions, and random conversations all play a role.

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In addition to announcing a new corp comms model, the Arthur W. Page Society is having a spring conference in NYC that wraps up today. Yesterday, I sat in on the “CEO Spotlight,” which was placed on healthcare/pharmaceutical company Novartis.

Novartis faces a dilemma, according to CEO Joe Jimenez. “We’re ranked first as Fortune magazine’s most admired pharmaceutical company, but the whole industry suffers from a poor reputation,” he said. He bemoaned that “public trust of pharma even ranks below oil and tobacco.”

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BizBash, the publication focused on all things event-related, has released its “Innovation Issue.” And topping the list of Top 10 Event Brands for 2011 was… Coca-Cola. The brand got top honors for its 125th anniversary celebration, which included events around the world and numerous fashion partnerships.

Rounding out the top three are Target, for its pre-Fashion Week Missoni pop-up store, and Red Bull, for all of its various events — from the Cliff Diving World Series to a gamers get-together. Get the complete list here.

The mag also has a list of “66 Most Innovative Event Pros,” with execs from companies like Groupon, Fox Broadcasting, Sony, and a number of agencies making the cut.

[image: Gary Hunt competing in the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series. Photo: Balazs Gardi/Red Bull Cliff Diving]

The interactive portion of SXSW is coming to a close today (the music portion starts today and SXSW Film runs through the 17th). Many across the PR industry made the pilgrimage to Austin — our Tweetdeck was filled with check-ins from Austin Bergstrom late last week — and took some time to report on what they were seeing and hearing.

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From Sunday, March 11 at 6p.m. to Monday, March 12, Zeno Group will be giving free 45-minute consultations to start-ups and emerging tech companies at the Four Seasons Hotel in Austin. The “consult-a-thon” is an event they’re calling “6to6 off Sixth.”

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