Mediaboss Marketing

Andrew Dreskin, the CEO of the online-ticketing firm Ticketfly and an old-guard rave supporter, remembers a time in the sepia-toned days of the early aughts when dance acts were a tough sell for talent buyers.

"It was a very lonely world for the last nine years buying electronica acts," he said at a panel on "Circuit Breakers: Breaking EDM Artists" at the EDMBiz conference Wednesday. As a founder of the electronica-heavy Virgin Mobile FreeFest and the head of the indie-ticketing firm, he's on the front lines of the changing booking climate for dance acts. "There were like four of us back then. Now there's inflated guarantees, and we're all fishing in the same pond. But it's great."

Joel Zimmerman, the panel moderator (and as the head of Global Electronic Music for William Morris Endeavor, he's arguably the most influential figure in electronic artist management today), got his drift. "If there was a movie about bidding wars in EDM, I'd probably be Darth Vader," he said.

Zimmerman's line got hearty laughs, but it underscored the welcome challenge that this panel tried to address -- with so much money and interest sloshing around electronic dance music right now, how do you break and establish an artist for the long term?

The panel also included publicist Alexandra Greenberg, VP of MSO (who handles Deadmau5 and other EDM clients); Neil Jacobson, senior VP of A&R at Interscope; Stephanie La Fera of Atom Empire; Oliver Luckett of the Audience and Michael Satsky of Provocateur. All of them debated that central question from different strategic angles, proving that a genre's success doesn't necessarily mean a clear path to fame and fortune.

One avenue, according to Satsky, is to target those already versed in fame and forutune. "There wasn't a niche for electronica within high-net-worth individuals," he said. His Provocateur club in New York's Hotel Gansevoort took a high-end, female-centric approach to nightlife that he then applied to organizing VIP packages in the electronica scene -- peaking on Swedish Hosue Mafia's "Masquerade Motel" party last year. "We were like, 'Let's use our Rolodex and get them in.' We knew they would become obsessed with this music. The talent is sustainable; it has been forever. But we said, 'Here's an experience. Everyone in here is someone you want to get along with, and it's a raging party.' We built that mdoel into the Swedish House Mafia show, and it was a huge success."

For Greenberg, the climate of EDM reminded her a lot of the anything-goes jam band days, where fan word of mouth counted for much more than any top-down campaign.

"I read this book about marketing the Grateful Dead recently, and it totaly applies to EDM today," she said. "At Deadmau5 shows, kids were outside selling posters that they had made."

Jacobson, who works in a more traditional end of the label infrastrcture, emphasized that for all the shifiting tides in marketing EDM, the old virtues of musicianship and songwriting still very much applied.

"It's all about the melody and lyric," he said. "Music's primal; it's not going anywhere. There's a difference between songs and production, and I want to find magical songs." He also had more faith than the rest of the panel in the traditional benchmarks of pop success: "Radio and mass-market placements are still really important. Those things can't be ignored."

Continued here:
EDMBiz 2012: How to break an artist in the wild west of EDM

Sterling, VA (PRWEB) June 07, 2012

Sripada Marketing is focused on helping local businesses thrive with affordable marketing solutions and have released a free Whitepaper. The newly released whitepaper The Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Internet Marketing offers a comprehensive introduction to leveraging social media, blog content and search engine keywords for small business marketing.

The PDF report covers topics:

With the explosion of ways in which consumers are getting more than 3000 marketing messages every day, and with more innovative methods by which the consumers are blocking off these messages, it is hard to get your marketing message be heard, according to Sripada Marketing LLC, spokesperson , said Venu Sripada . One of the best ways is to be found with the right message for the right target audience, using the right media and preferably at the right timing. There are ways to do this and we can help.

Let Sripada Marketing help establish your businesss online presence. Call 703-651-2918 for a free inbound marketing strategy consultation.

About the company:

Sripada Marketing is an online leader in providing affordable marketing solutions. As an established web presence for providing inbound marketing strategies, Website Design, Web Development, Mobile Applications for Local Businesses, Traffic generation, lead generation and online sales conversion strategies, Sripada Marketing continues to provide local, small business with affordable and effective results for their clients.

Read more:
Sripada Marketing LLC, Releases Whitepaper: The Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Internet Marketing

MADISON, WI--(Marketwire -06/07/12)- Shoutlet, the leading cloud-based self-serve social marketing platform, today announced it has raised $15 million in Series C funding from FTV Capital, a growth equity investor focused on high growth businesses with innovative solutions. This round brings Shoutlet's total funding to $24.2 million in outside investment.

Shoutlet is the most sophisticated and comprehensive self-serve platform available to create, publish, and measure social marketing campaigns and activities on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Its enterprise-level functionality, Social CRM intelligence gathering and segmentation capabilities, trigger-based campaign publishing, world-class design tools for Facebook pages and web apps, and ROI-focused analytics differentiate Shoutlet from all other social management tools.

With the financing, Shoutlet will accelerate product innovation, grow its strategic partner network, and increase staff across all departments, including expanding account management and technical support offices in San Francisco, New York, and London.

In recent months, Shoutlet has added global brands including Canon, Nokia, Wrangler, K-Swiss, NASCAR, Fairmont Hotels, and Sandals Resorts to its roster of more than 400 customers who manage 6000+ accounts in 50 countries. Year over year revenue growth now exceeds 200%.

"The way brands and agencies manage social marketing is changing rapidly. For the first time, marketers can easily utilize a self-serve platform with power and flexibility not easily accessible via service-based tool vendors. The wave of customers making the change to in-house management has exceeded our wildest expectations and has validated our do-it-yourself model," said Shoutlet CEO Jason Weaver. "This funding will enable Shoutlet to innovate at an even faster pace and aggressively expand our product offering to meet the needs of sophisticated marketers who desire a more rapid response form of social media management."

"FTV has been an active investor in the digital marketing space, and we found Shoutlet to be far and away the strongest platform for sophisticated marketers to run their own campaigns. Shoutlet's self-serve model, product innovation, and high customer satisfaction and retention rates combine to uniquely position the company as a leader in the SMMS category," said Liron Gitig, FTV Capital principal and new Shoutlet board member. "To FTV's strategic investor network including many global financial institutions, Shoutlet's permission-based, governance approach to enterprise management is extremely attractive. We're confident the strength of the Shoutlet leadership team, vision, and long term product roadmap will ensure tremendous and sustainable growth."

About ShoutletShoutlet is a leading cloud-based enterprise social marketing platform that enables marketers to publish, engage, and measure social marketing campaigns and activities on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Its industry leading functionality includes a Social CRM for Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube management; Social Canvas for Facebook tabs, HTML5 pages, and custom contest and web app design; Social Switchboard for trigger-based campaign publishing; Social Profiles for data acquisition and interest segmentation; Social Enterprise for corporate-level control of multiple brands, franchises, and agents; and Social Analytics for metric tracking and custom reporting. For more information, please visit http://www.shoutlet.com.

About FTV CapitalFTV Capital is a growth equity firm with over $1 billion under management that invests in high-growth companies offering a range of innovative solutions in four sectors: business services, financial services, payments/transaction processing and technology. FTV's experienced team leverages its domain expertise and proven track record in each of these sectors to help motivated management teams accelerate growth. FTV also provides companies with access to its Global Partner Network, a group of the world's leading enterprises and executives who have helped FTV portfolio companies for more than a decade. Founded in 1998, FTV Capital has invested in 75 portfolio companies across three funds, and has offices in San Francisco and New York. For more information, please visit http://www.ftvcapital.com.

Here is the original post:
Shoutlet Raises $15 Million Series C Funding From FTV Capital to Fuel Further Product Innovation

MicroStrategy(R) Incorporated , a leading worldwide provider of business intelligence (BI) software, today announced that its Social Media Marketing iCommerce Summit (SMICS) will be held July 10-11 at the Amsterdam RAI International Convention Center and will run adjacent to MicroStrategy World 2012 Amsterdam.

SMICS attendees will have an exclusive opportunity to learn about innovative technologies from MicroStrategy in Social Intelligence and hear the views and experiences of industry luminaries at the cutting-edge of social media monetization. Digital strategists will share their perspectives on the future of social media and commerce, with a focus on how companies can best compete for consumer attention and relevance. Featured guest speakers include:

-- Michael Saylor, MicroStrategy Chairman and CEO, and author of the

forthcoming "The Mobile Wave." Saylor will discuss how the current

generation of mobile smartphones and tablet computers has set the stage

to become the universal computing platform for the world, and how

products, businesses, industries, economies, and society may be altered

forever as the mobile wave washes over us and changes the digital

landscape.

-- Brian Solis, world-renowned digital thought-leader and author of "The

Here is the original post:
The Future of Social Commerce at Social Media Marketing iCommerce Summit

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. and NEW YORK, June 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Indicating the continued strength of content-driven brand marketing, Project: WorldWide today announced the acquisition of Affinitive, a word-of-mouth and social media agency and Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) that handles consumer assignments for brands such as Random House, E.&J. Gallo Winery, Major League Soccer and Ubisoft. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Founded in 2002 and headquartered in New York City, Affinitive provides social business solutions combining innovative consumer engagement strategies with proprietary technology, real-time monitoring and integration with clients' existing enterprise systems to create a seamless platform for creating and executing integrated brand programs.

Over the course of a decade and more than 200 campaigns, Affinitive has created and managed online brand communities, customer insight/advisory panels, loyalty/rewards programs, social and mobile applications, digital promotions and much more. As a founding member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, the group is recognized as an industry pioneer and a leader within the industry's ongoing efforts to evolve social media marketing practices and standards.

"Affinitive is a natural fit for Project in that we share the same belief about how brands must adapt to spark two-way dialogue and actively participate in customer-driven conversations," said Robert G. Vallee Jr., Chairman & CEO of Project: WorldWide. "Brands today seek to engage through more meaningful stories and experiences, and Affinitive will help advance our mission to do just that."

"Project is built on a foundation of engagement, and they understand that social media is the fabric that ties everything together - from online and offline consumer behavior and experiences to the marketing, loyalty, CRM and research functions of any organization," said Bob Troia, Affinitive's founder and CEO. "Affinitive shares that vision, and by joining the Project: WorldWide family, we can now provide fully integrated, best-of-breed social business solutions for our customers on a global scale."

Affinitive's creative, technology and strategy teams put brand personality and a customer-centric approach to work on client campaigns, rather than focus on technology for its own sake. This philosophy has allowed Affinitive the freedom and flexibility to create ideas that work across multiple channels even as new social media platforms rise to shake the status quo on a seemingly regular basis.

"The rapid pace of innovation in the social media marketing sphere sometimes distracts clients from the real revolution happening in terms of what online and mobile mediums make possible for really powerful consumer engagement," said Warren Ackerman, EVP of Affinitive. "It's been a wonderful journey helping clients see the real opportunity, and now with a platform like Project behind us, it's exciting to imagine what we can do for clients who share our same vision."

In joining Project: WorldWide, Affinitive is teaming up with a diverse roster of highly collaborative, award-winning agencies including experience marketing agency George P. Johnson, G7 Entertainment Marketing, interactive marketing shop JUXT Interactive, multimedia production content company Spinifex, creative ideas agency Partners + Napier and 3D marketing production shop Raumtechnik.

About Project: WorldWide (project.com)

Read the rest here:
Project: WorldWide Acquires Social Marketing Firm Affinitive