I’m not sure if “Michael”:http://www.michaelmcderment.com/, “Mathew”:http://www.mathewingram.com, “Mark”:http://evans.blogware.com/blog, “Stuart”:http://stuart.blogware.com/blog, and “Rob”:http://www.robhyndman.com knew what they were getting into when they decided to start “the mesh conference”:http://www.meshconference.com/ coming to Toronto May 15 and 16 but they’ve really started something.
The event is already 2/3 sold-out with (literally) $0 in advertising.
All of the event’s instigators have posted thoughts on what they call “buttom-up Marketing”. All four are worth a read:
* “Michael McDerment on Bubble-up Marketing”:http://www.michaelmcderment.com/article/Bottom-Up-Marketing.html
* “Mathew Ingram on Bubble-up Marketing”:http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2006/05/02/web-20-marketing-bottoms-up/
* “Mark Evans on Bubble-up Marketing”:http://evans.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/5/2/1927307.html
* “Stuart Macdonald on Bubble-up Marketing”:http://stuart.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/5/2/1927016.html
* “Rob Hyndman on buble-up Marketing”:http://www.robhyndman.com/2006/05/02/bottom-up-marketing-at-mesh/
4 Comments
Comments are closed.
These guys are really testing the theory of Blog as marketing tool. I love it. I also posted about mesh here: Web 2.0, Marketing 2.0 And Mesh 1.0 – http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/000558.html.
All of this falls into a bigger set of questions that marketers have to face. If a handful of people can sell a conference with bottom-up marketing and get the same results as a team of conference planners… what’s business to do?
Marketers are being forced to look in the mirror and ask some really tough questions.
What’s more revealing is that Mesh 2.0 is held the exact same time as the CMA conference (as my friend Mitch muses) and still so many have registered further underlines the point of bottom-up marketing.
Perhaps part of the success is that Mesh 2.0 is not a ‘corporate’ event (similar to BarCamp)…
I’m curious to see what the mix of people ends up being. Without seeing the numbers, I’m wondering how “bottom-up” it will be. Targetting bloggers at a conference that is largely about blogging seems to be closer to savvy target marketing than anything else.
Regardless, it seems like it’s going to be a big success and they’ve done a good job getting the word out. Congrats!
Thanks for the comments, folks.
Funny thing is that we designed the event to *not* be a blogging conference, but more about the impact that next-gen web technology is having on four aspects of the world.
The turn out (we are well past 2/3 sold now btw) is looking to be virtually all non-bloggers. Not a preaching-to-the-choir thing. Lots of interesting folks, lots of start up types, PR types, media types.
All good.