Grady Britton

Jan. 28, 2010: Nothing small about small business these days. One look at the room for the FORGE marketing summit in Lake Oswego would tell you that. Small- to medium-size businesses hungry to turn the buzz of social media into real marketing results.

Perspectives from some of Portland’s best in digital marketing gave the room plenty to consider. Ryan Buchanan from eROI, Kent Lewis from Anvil Media, Kimberly Barta from Dr. Martens Shoes, and our own Dayn Wilberding from GB.

You’ll find Dayn’s presentation on SlideShare.net here.

And because we couldn’t all be there, a few key quotes we heard about our own social rockstar:

1. “He was so personable! You work with him?!”
2. “I would like to take him home with me. Maybe introduce him to my daughter.”
3. “I took so many notes — this was the best presentation we’ve seen.”
4. “Look at how many notes I took! A page and a half!”
5. “Is that the flip cam thing he was talking about? How does it work?”
6. “I’m going to go home and follow him on Twitter.”
7. “What does your agency do, exactly?”

#2 and #7 are just kinda perfect. Awesome.

“What’s a Newport memory look like, sound like?” That was the question we posed in the First Annual Newport Memory Derby— an open invitation for people to share their stories, images, movies, and tattoos about Newport. (Not really on the tattoos, but wouldn’t that be cool? Next year, people.)

Newport’s blend of coastal must-do’s and go-see’s makes it hard not to leave with a memory or two. For Newport’s Memory Derby contest, we asked people to submit what stayed with them— the stories, pictures, videos that captured Newport’s charm. The lure of winning some fabulous prizes probably helped.

Check out the website and this year’s winners— from Wyoming, Colorado and Hillsboro— and poke around the other photos and stories. Together, they are Newport at its finest.

Preview of a new spot we just finished for client EartH2O. A badly-needed overhaul of the EartH2O website is due shortly. In the “bottled-water-is-evil” category, this is a great story that needs to be heard. More background on one of Oregon’s best brands in our Showcase section soon.

Premier Portland-based motion graphics/animation company, Laika, made the magic.

More about this quietly amazing water (and company) here.

Okay, even the biggest SUV at the mall isn’t gonna do it for these gifts. We just launched this Holiday card (card? really? we still calling this a card?) for our client, Port of Vancouver USA. Good fun and TSFW (totally safe for work.)

But how do they handle returns?

Clearly GB client, Kryptiq, is out to make a name for themselves in the technology category, ranking 4th on Oregon’s Most Admired Companies for 2009 by Portland Business Journal. An especially cool honor to be recognized by over 1800 area CEOs.

The force behind Kryptiq is CEO Luis Machuca. If you haven’t met him in person (oh, you’d remember him!), you can catch a bit of him and the company’s mission to improve healthcare communication in this high-profile interview that also went live last week.

Sounds like the Holidays: just put this up for The Salvation Army’s seasonal donation campaign (ringbellsportland.com). Even if you can’t spare the $, seems like it’d be pretty cool to sign up and ring that bell for an afternoon or so…

It’s what a lot of companies are asking. A friend of ours asked this very question about starting a FB page for his company. Here’s what GB’s chief technopimp Dayn Wilberding had to say about it:

I don’t think you can hurt your business by putting one up. The hurt will come from putting one up and not providing fans with a reason to remain your fan. Make sure you’re approaching it as an opportunity to add value to FB’ers and or as an extension of your customer service.

Carve out some time for it, though. Like a blog, the successful pages are the ones that constantly provide quality, regular content. A killer FB page will get your fans talking with you and each other and trading tips. It’s all about participation and engagement. The more you can cultivate that kind of culture on your FB page, the better you’ll be able to leverage it as a marketing tool down the road.

Because it’s important, you’ll really need to touch it multiple times a day to keep it fresh and to engage your fans.

We’re also finding that with any community, it can take as long as a year for it to really feel like there is a self-sustaining ecosystem of brand advocates and new members. So, if you do decide to launch one, really decide that this is going to be something your biz will commit to nurturing.

Hope that helps! This was a great question. Think I’ll turn this into a blog post!

BTW— A good article: http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/08/04/8-best-practices-for-retailers-on-facebook-pages

Nice. Should put this on our own FB page, no?

It’s come to our attention that our blog is a little… lacking.

Very interesting in a “cobbler’s children have no shoes” sort of way. We preach the importance all day long to clients and prospects about remaining engaged, participating, openness, transparency, continuous sharing. So, what up GB?

Busted. But it got us thinking. Wondering if maybe the purpose of blogs has shifted? Ours clearly had. 2008 (okay, and ’09) was the year of Twitter and Facebook, and while Grady Britton itself could be filling those channels more too, the people of Grady Britton were certainly posting away. The ability to get these brief bursts of insight (and participation, etc.) out so quickly, so efficiently, I think took some of the “topical immediacy” our blog once had and channeled it more directly to our friends, fans and followers with a timeliness and brevity a blog couldn’t match.

So anyway. All that is a way-over-140-character way of saying stay tuned to the evolution of our blog, Intelligence. We think it’s going to be a cool little lab to test stuff in, reflect on what’s happening and hey… maybe even trot out some new shoes.

How’s that sound?

Starting July 31, 2009, GB welcomes in some exciting new Possibilities: four great people, along with seven very interesting clients.

Formerly with YRG (Young and Roehr Group), Becky Engel, Stacy Frey, Lacey Hinkle and Marion Margiotta are bringing added depth in strategy, account management and PR to an already strong GB team. The clients moving into our fold will benefit from GB’s inspired creative and interactive capabilities. Put that all together and it’s “Hel-lo, Possibility.“