Pivot Conference 2011 Round Up: Social Media Emergence, Sharing & Discovery

PivotCon is a burgeoning annual conference in its second year focused on Social Media and Big Brands. To first-year attendee Megan Cunningham, CEO of Magnet Media, the atmosphere conveyed a sense of emergence. Megan shares some of her 140-character (or slightly longer) panel takeaways from the two-day event, held at New York’s Crowne Plaza Times Square.…

Rebecca Millman of McKinsey and Company discussed the problem of “Spending Your Money in All the Wrong Places.”

“We’ve studied who is successful in times of radical industry-wide shifts. It’s those who take seriously the investment and the risk-taking—those who let go of things that worked in the past. It requires a company-wide cultural mindset that is committed to be a leader in the disruptive change.”

Jim Louderback, CEO of Revision3, and Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, exchanged some lively banter during Monday’s “Where’s the $%$# Money?” panel, which also included all-star players Jack Krawczyk of StumbleUpon, Jeff Jordan of Adobe, and Ed Haslam at YuMe.

Jim: Social can’t be designed as direct response?

Ian (roughly…): I don’t think it shouldn’t be measured that way. The keyword for social media is “discovery,” and that’s what developing brands are about. Direct response is about intent—responding to a problem. Can you solve this? Yes. Buy this and we’ll fix it. When people have intent they don’t turn to social media, they search.

Krawczyk: “Why do people share things? Two reasons: (1) I think my fans/followers would like this. (2) I want you to think more of me for being associated with this.”

In reply to the question, “Who are the best brands planning interesting things in social in 2012?”, the panel replied, “BMW, Starbucks, and Samsung.”

Britta Schell, MTV’s Director of Strategic Insights, presented some valuable original research on sharing and Millennials in her “Inside the Digital Mind of a Connected Generation” session.

“Millennials know instinctively what tools are best for each situation; they how to make the most of these tools, and they derive confidence from online feedback.”

Tomorrow, Mike Raffensberger, VP of Strategic and Creative Development at Magnet Media, will share his impressions from this week’s Digital Hollywood conference in LA.

Rendered in Tweets: Buzz about #PivotCon live on Twitter…

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Megan Cunningham is Founder and CEO of Magnet Media in New York City.

Tagged as: Conferences, Events, PivotCon, Social Media, Social Media Marketing