Here in Boston, this man (Marc Maron) is talking about interviewing President Barack Obama. In his garage. That's Marc's, garage, not the President's.
For Australians, Marc is a comedian, performer and hugely successful U.S. podcaster. And the White House called him, not the other way around, to do this podcast with the President.
Before we go too far I should explain I'm at Inbound15 soaking up all the free marketing intelligence I can from some of the world's best marketers, thanks to the good folk at Hubspot.
What can I share with you?
First, it's overwhelming. I have chronic first-timer's syndrome: brain is full, not sure what to do with it all but know I have gold in my swag.
Secondly, it's both personal and professional. Seeing Brene Brown live, listening to Marc talk about Barack Obama might well be once in lifetime experiences.
Third, this is real. The marketing revolution is well underway. And it's now completely accessible to any individual, small or medium sized business or large corporate.
How do I know?
Because we are IN it: we and our clients, and all 10,000+ people here today, are already doing much of what we've heard.
Why?
It works. It generates attention, traffic, leads, influence. It drives revenue and business growth.
And that is a thing of wonder. Not that long ago we and our clients were all sitting around, scratching our heads, experiencing patchy success but not yet seeing the full benefits of our efforts.
And partly that's because we've done a lot of "yak shaving", as Seth Godin calls it. A lot of blogging, social media, content, public relations and speaking that led absolutely nowhere commercially. That's just BlueChip's marketing over the last six years, but it's fair to say a lot of our clients' efforts have also been less than clearly commercially successful.
It's the old story: I'm wasting half of my marketing, I just don't know which half.
David Meerman Scott opened the conference, and introduced Seth Godin. These two men alone, both marketing prophets, foretold where we'd be now. Many of us read their predictions over the last ten years and hedged our bets - trying to move into social, integrated, content-led marketing but held back by stodgy corporate culture, lack of the right tools and strategy and the biggest barrier - fear.
Or we took their advice and simply didn't get enough of a return on our efforts. Measurement and attribution were hard or impossible, many of us were just addicted to activity (traditional marketing) not outcomes, or we simply didn't know where and how to start.
The good news, and the overall message from INBOUND15, is that the blueprint for marketing success is now well developed, available to anyone with a laptop, and can reliably deliver commercial outcomes.
AMEN.
In this new world The President of the United States, Marc Maron, Brene Brown, BlueChip and all financial services brands are now content producers and inbound marketers.
