Our Good friend Damon Oldcorn is helping to throw a not @ SXSW party and, well, let’s be honest who wants to be in the hot hot heat, listening to talks and presentations from some of the industries most esteemed people? And who really wants all this coupled with lashings of free booze and late night parties anyways?

No, not you? I thought not. You want to be slaving away in your day job in grey old London don’t you?

Details of the night are here, with the itinerary as follows:

Bordeans in Soho for Sticky BBQ followed by a lash at the Charlotte St Blues Club.

All sounds very good and makes me pine a little less for SXSW.

The night is hosted with the help of TechCrunch, Cosy Tweetup, Like Minds, Coull, Winston & Strawn, the Irish International Business Network, Stuffed Animals Media and our very own Ale 2.0.

It’s almost time for the next Ale 2.0.

“Chinwag is a bit of a life saver for this part of Ale 2.0.

Currently on the lookout for a new job in digital I was getting fed up of clueless recruiters cold calling me:

“So you’re looking for a job?”

“Um yeah”

“Brilliant I’ve seen your CV up on that faceless, mass market, un-targeted website, I think I have the perfect job for you.”

“Really? That’s great, what is it?”

“Veterinary assistant in Wales.”

Awesome

I was fed up with recruitment chancers who are only after their next piece of commission so I signed up to Chinwag. Instantly I was getting targeted, relevant enquiries, not just from recruiters but also directly from agencies. The difference is huge, Chinwag connected me with people who know and understand our industry, its saved me time and its saved the recruiters time. People who don’t understand the industry speak about the net being fragmented and I have to explain what a great thing that is, it allows people to reach out and speak to the niches, be more targeted and save time and money – Chinwag is a great example of this”.

How does a brand with one of the most challenging product offering changes of all time approach PR?

Traditionally a brand in this position would create a slew of souless adverts hoping for a trillion unqualified eyeballs not to glaze over while they are subjected to a hollow and vacuous “brand impression.”

So what did Kodak do? Microsponsorhip. Kodak are not after your eyeballs – they are after your heart.

With this in mind Ketchum Pleon – Kodak’s PR agency approached Ale 2.0 to sponsor London’s most chilled meetup. Kodak wanted to target the key influencers in the tech blogging community to introduce them to their client’s newest toy, the Kodak Zi8, a HD video camera.

Over the ensuing weeks we got to know @francesca25, Ketchum’s Digital Specialist for the UK and introduced her to our favourite pubs, she even made it to @charlescadbury’s birthday party, an act for which she was well rewarded. The only downside to this sponsored event was that we had to limit the numbers so we split the invite list between our closest and loyal supporters and bloggers we had the most admiration for.

The good news for those invited is that everyone was given a zi8 to keep for ever and ever on the understanding that they recorded the event and blogged about it in whichever manner they felt best. Kodak even gave up some budget to pay for a tasting session at the rake that was greatly appreciated by all – free HD cameras, free beer! Good times indeed.

You can see some coverage here:

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Flickr from @Bitchbuzz

What Is Ale 2.0?

“Ale 2.0 is a community of people who work in digital marketing who like real ale – we meet once a month to discuss the finer points of the business and to enjoy the best ale on the planet.

How Did Ale 2.0 Come About?

We were big fans of a regular meetup called Likemind which had an easy going vibe and ideas were shared freely, cards are swapped and it is a generally and fun positive experience. We met @al_robertson at one of the events, hit it off and decided to meet up for an ale or two in the coming week.

Once holed up in the Old Fountain we discussed the variety of tools and trends that we had been getting involved in. It was refreshing to talk about the technologies outside of a direct work context as we had become sick of talking about them in terms of clients. The agency environment has the capacity to be silo’d and it’s easy to become sucked in to the just reading about tech etc online. We are the kind of people that see the value in talking to real people and learning from each other in person all with a good ale naturally.

Louis casually tweeted about having an “ale up” and the response was good enough for us to take it seriously and put a date in a diary, set up a blog.

To our surprise about 25 people showed up at the Harp on a sunny day in June. Some people had travelled over an hour to be there and it was genuinely exciting to meet people whose faces you were used to seeing as a tiny crushed up little avatar. We all talked, drank ale (and recorded it on our phones – Ipadio) flicker.

Afterwards we all felt realy positive – we’d made something happen! Up to that point Web 2 had seemed like funny youtube videos/dell and facebook baby photos – but through realitme technology we’d put together a mini community – ale and digital combined.

We couldn’t leave it alone after that, Ale 2.0 blurrred the lines between work and non work. We now have a community of freinds who are equally a part of our work life as part of our personal lives – Ale 2.0 is neither one or the other – it benefits both equally.

We’ve run one everymonth (just about) since then and we’ve had people from the BBC, Thomson Reuters, Metro, Sun Microsystems, BitchBuzz, GDR, Gumtree, The Times, Agency.com, Which, Ogilvy, Dare, techcrunch, mashable, The Observer as well as bloggers and of course real ale fans.

A few months into it we thought about how we could be more productive with talent of the people who came to the meetup. Having been inspired by Tuttle and their consultancy model -Tom, Fleur and Kate came up with the idea that if everyone at the next Ale 2.0 out their cards in a pint glass wrote an amount of time and their specialism on those cards – we would then amass that time and donate it to a charity that had a low/no marketing budget. We asked the same crowd to vote for a charity and the APP was selected. Over 2010 – we will be working with the APP and the Ale 2.0 members to help them out this year.

We’ve had two members of Ale 2.0 get new jobs through the events and one couple (albeit briefly) – so there is some love in the air. So much so that the core team has increased to five. Charlie and AJ of www.whiteapp.com join Tom from Skive and Louis from We Are VI and Kate Arkless Grey (from just about everything).

It is the nature of the business that marketing can often involve flogging bad products to bad people and that the interest often can only be found in the process. Ale 2.0 looks to provide much needed soulfulness in the advertising industry or at least a respite from selling products that can often be less than inspiring.

Our aim is to make Ale 2.0 the most loved event for people in marketing who want to talk shop, learn from others, make new connections without name badges or agendas. If it’s not fun, then we don’t want to do it anymore. We’ve loved meeting 99% of the people who have come to the events and personally we’ve learned loads and made our digital experience fuller.

We’ve also learned a f**kload about ale – we had a passing fondness for the stuff when we started but there’s a whole world of ale/beer out there. Maybe for this reason Kodak has come onboard to sponsor the next event, it’ll be an invite only affair for some of our most ardent supporters and some bloggers to help spread the word. This format will continue throughout the year.

The next event is at to be found at The Cross Keys on the 25th of Feb.

Ale 2.0 is @howmanygills, @mrtomollerton, @CharlesCadbury, @kidcapricious and @radiokate

Thanks to @paulpingles for this article.

This article highlights the fears of the big ad agencies and the ambitions of the smaller integrated agencies looking to steal a larger chunk of the pie. As the article says this won’t happen overnight but it is happening though it is more of an arms race than a game of chess…

‘Great Race’ Between Traditional, Digital Shops

Just 23% believe their traditional shops are capable of executing interactive marketing, Forrester says

Dec 8, 2009

- Brian Morrissey

Clients generally distrust their traditional agencies when it comes to digital, but they’re still wary of handing over the keys to overall brand strategy to the Web specialists, according to a new survey of marketers.

Forrester Research conducted a “state of interactive agencies” survey of about 100 global interactive marketers. It found just 23 percent believed their “traditional brand agency” is capable of planning and managing interactive marketing activities. About 46 percent did not believe them capable, with the rest neutral on the question.

While that held good news for digital agencies, particularly as digital becomes a much larger part of marketing, Forrester found few clients are willing to give them responsibility for the brand’s direction. Just 22 percent agreed that their interactive agency is “ready to lead my brand.” Another 33 percent said their digital shops aren’t ready, with the rest neutral.

That sets up what Forrester calls “the great race” as traditional shops scramble to add digital know-how and digital shops seek to move up the ladder to become brand stewards, rather than Web site and banner ad specialists.

“We see digital becoming the backbone of marketing and technology becoming so vital that everyone needs digital capabilities,” said Sean Corcoran, an analyst at Forrester. “Everyone is coming from a different strength. Everyone is trying to add the other’s capabilities.”

Forrester found that clients, in an ideal world, would like to work with a single agency. Over 60 percent said they would like one digital shop. Yet the complexity of distinct marketing specialties often makes this impractical. Even within digital, only one in five rely on a single provider, the survey found. Nearly 60 percent have two or more. Forrester expects that will fragment even more thanks to emerging media like mobile and social. The multiple-agency approach means higher administrative costs and more coordination.

“We’re all waiting for this big moment when a bunch of interactive agencies take over from the traditional guys,” said Corcoran. “It’s not happening that way, it’s a slow evolution. You’ll see some interactive guys take over and some traditional agencies hold the fort.”

The risk for digital shops is getting caught in the middle. Some like R/GA and others are making the move to become a lead agency for clients. R/GA last week won lead agency duties for Ameriprise, for example. But others, Forrester concludes, will need to carve out a specific digital specialty rather than sit in the middle, between a lead strategic role and specialist position.

“There’s no perfect black-and-white situation,” Corcoran said. “It’s a very gray world. The whole industry is in flux.”