At the May 2009 Social Media Bootcamp in New York, Ian Schaffer (CEO Deep Focus) shared a great case study on how brands can leverage Social Media.  It is the story of the work his agency did with HBO for their show Flight of the Conchords.  Ian is one of the true leaders in the digital space and this presentation is more of the same great inspiration we have come to expect from him and Deep Focus.

Latest and greatest that caught my eye this week:

• The Economics of Social Media – Very interesting conference taking place in LA at the end of April.  Wish I could make it out there…
• Ian Schafer: Integrated (Big) Agency Model -The CEO of Deep Focus asks if all the reshuffling at major holding company agencies is really going to work.  Ian nails the answer when he writes “Brands need smaller, more nimble, more innovative agencies built as integrated problem solvers from the ground-up — with creativity as its religion and the ability to deliver experiences (with the results to back it up) as its practice.”
• Merging Real World and the Internet – Very interesting facts…”Gartner Group predicts that by 2011, 80% of internet users will participate in at least 1 virtual world. While Second Life has received about 99% of the media’s attention, it only accounts for about 1% of all the users globally. Globally, sales of items in virtual worlds account for $1.5 billion.”
• What I Want a Social Media Expert to Know – I would love to see a count of how many people claim to be “Social Media Experts.”
• Facebook Ads Don’t Rock -Bob Gilbreath put Facebook to test to see if advertising on the social network could drive traffic.  Unfortunately for MSFT and the $15 billion valuation they put on the site, Facebook ads didn’t deliver at all.
• A Billion Dollars in Internet Advertising is Wasted -Interesting study on where Internet advertising is going and what parts arent working at all.

Sorry I’ve been a bit slow with the postings this week.  I have a major presentation today but wanted to get a post out amongst the prep.  Here are the postings that caught my eye this week:

• Ian Schafer “How I Use Twitter”:  I was negative on Twitter for a long time but Ian sums up graphically why I have jumped on the bandwagon.  As he says, “[Twitter is an] efficient way to be notified of news, help out colleagues, network, and generally have intelligent, and believe it or not, intellectual conversations.”
• David Armano “The Conversation Economy”:  Armano’s poses an interesting question…has the conversation economy moved?  Sitting in the halls of P&G, I will tell you that I think it is just beginning and big brands are just now starting to wake up to that fact.
• Fred Wilson “The Hidden Return of Online Advertising”:  Fred points to a new comScore study that says online ads have a bigger impact for retailer’s offline sales than they do for their online says.  Interesting….
• Why do users flock to social network sites?:  Interesting study from IBM that summarizes why users go on social networking sites.  The breakdown is 53% Purely Social, 38% Professional, and 9% Brand Kinship.  The 9% shocks me.  What do you think?
• New TV shows coming to Xbox 360:  I love this quote from Mitch on Six Pixels of Seperation, “Traditional Marketers sit and stare at the changes taking place in the Marketing world. Here’s the raw truth: they think it’s just a fad. “  He writes this in article about veteran Hollywood Producer Peter Safran announcing he would create original TV content for Xbox 360.
• CollegeHumor’s Secret to Success…T-Shirts:  While the guys at CollegeHumor are media moguls with a hot website and an upcoming MTV show, one of their unknown secrets of success is that they are also fashion moguls.  Their website Busted Tees sells ~30,000 shirts a month and rivals better known Threadless.com.