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This week I’m in New York attending ad:tech, an interactive and digital advertising conference. After the first day, my head is spinning with new ideas and inspiration.

Today I heard some of the most respected people in the industry discuss consumer generated media, the future of search, dynamic vs. static campaigns, the valuation of engagement, podcast production, the cultural and market effects of mobile media, and on and on.

Not to mention – I got to spend a few minutes talking with Ze Frank, host of “the show,” after he participated in the CGM panel discussion. Anyone who knows me knows how much I respect and love that guy…it was an exciting moment for me.

On a totally different level of satisfaction, two other celebrities I saw were The Question Mark Guy and Elmo. I’ve posted a few photos after the jump.

Huffington Post Founding Partner Jonah Peretti and Ze Frank:

The Question Mark Guy, Matthew Lesko:

Me, Chad, and Elmo:

I plan on going deeper on many of the topics covered after I come home and have some time to digest. But for now, I’m about to fall asleep while I type, and tomorrow is another day of more special goodness. Stay tuned, this is exciting stuff.

Social media and word-of-mouth marketing strategies have certainly been picking up steam over the past few months. More and more companies are ready to give all of these fancy new vocabulary words they’ve been hearing and reading about a whirl.

This is both good and bad. Good for reasons we’ve discussed before. Bad because some businesses are jumping into social media head-first without understanding what they’re getting into. Or even worse – jumping in with full understanding but complete disregard.

In the mood for a rant? Read on.

On our other blog, Open Source CU, We had someone make a comment about Second Life that applies to the entire social media space:

“It‚Äôs about people. When you focus on that, everything stands a better chance of making sense.”

The reason MySpace has become over-run with corporate presences that have lead to widespread user resentment is because the companies see MySpace as a billboard instead of a community.

To quote our buddy Charlie:

“I can just hear Agency Account Executives saying, ‘We need to get into MySpace and get all those eyeballs.’”

The same goes for ticked-off Second Lifers reacting angrily to corporatization (made up word) and PR claims that border on lies (warning: the linked article has some strong language, working folks).

And don’t get me wrong, I love Crayon, and everyone associated with it. But I’m just saying – the last thing we need is for cynicism to take hold of new media before it has the chance to fly.

Meanwhile, fake blogs are being outted all over the place. This includes three Wal-Mart corporate blogs posing as legitimate fans and a couple of fake McDonald’s blogs, and that was just October. There seems to be a race to see who can kill blogging’s legitimacy the quickest.

What’s the problem? Too many businesses are quick to see the people as little more than a conduit to opportunity in these communities. It’s the same kind of mentality that destroyed mass marketing: “If you bug them, they will come.”

The point is this – no business should ever plug themselves in to blogging, podcasting, Second Life, MySpace,and any of the number of social media communities unless they can really add value.

Of course there’s huge opportunity in all of this, but the opportunities rely on relevance and added value. Otherwise it’s just more yaddayaddayadda. And we don’t need more yadda.

Last Tuesday I had the pleasure of speaking at the CUES Wisconsin Council’s Fall Meeting. I was pleasantly surprised at the attentiveness of the attendees and their real desire to learn more about “Web 2.0” and the ways in which social media can impact their credit unions. During the breaks (which we definitely needed—it was a 3 hour session), I heard several groups talking about concrete ways that they could implement blogging at their credit union and start participating in the online conversation.

I told the group I’d post a copy of my presentation, so here it is. I don’t have a fancy video like Trey and Brent, but that’s because they’re much cooler than I am.

One of the main reasons why I enjoyed this session so much is because it was such a contrast to the last CUES event I spoke at. The 2005 CUES Annual Convention was my first real speaking engagement in the CU industry and was the real catalyst behind Trabian’s entry into blogging. The more I learned about the industry and its past, the more I saw an opportunity for CU’s to set themselves apart from banks and actively engage their members and communities using social media. We spent the month before the session absorbing anything we could find about business blogging, read The Cluetrain Manifesto several times, and launched Open Source CU. And while there were several people who came up to me after the session to say how much they appreciated the introduction to blogging, the overall feeling I got was “where’s the ROI?”

Now don’t get me wrong—I don’t blame the audience at the annual convention for this at all. At the time, there weren’t many examples of businesses that were successfully blogging and even fewer examples (maybe 1 or 2) of credit union blogs. Also, not many people at the convention had even heard of blogging. That’s something we don’t find much of anymore—whether they’ve seen one or not, I’ve found the majority of people at our sessions are familiar with the concept.

So thanks to the Wisconsin Council for hosting a great event and for giving us the opportunity to introduce more credit unions to the social web. Hopefully we’ll hear back from some of the attendees after they’ve had a chance to implement some of the things we discussed.

I just returned yesterday from another trip to Seattle. This time I was up there to co-pitch the next round of the Washington Credit Union League’s cooperative advertising with Daniel Thorpe and the rest of the Boom Creative team.

Their brand research focused in on a target demographic of value-conscious females ages 21 to 37. They’ve even named her “Kate.” Their aim is to promote credit unions as caregivers, which is right on the money in my opinion.

Although the creative brief hasn’t been released yet, and it is irresponsible to pitch any creative concept without understanding the research, I’ve decided to unofficially put out a few ideas I’ve been tossing around.

The following are only “what ifs,” but I would love to see some credit unions run with the broad-strokes concepts behind these, with or without us.

The main idea I’d like you to take away from this is – engage your market, be relevant, and use interaction to talk with them instead of relying solely on mass media to talk at them.

So you want to make yourself more visible and relevant to Washington’s Gen Y, value-conscious maternal figures? What if…

What if you started a podcast on motherhood?

And I’m not talking about “Financial Tips for Young Mothers Like You!” What if you created a show dedicated to parenting tips, stories, interviews with young working mothers, single mothers, book reviews, and so on.

This way you produce something your members will actually enjoy checking out, position yourself as a care-giving resource, and ideally grow a community around your ideas. Need inspiration? Check out the Mommy Bloggers.

Set up a blog around the podcast too, invite appropriate members to write guest posts. Encourage comments.

What if you released a suite of products and services dedicated to easing the transition into motherhood?

The transition into parenting, just like other large life events, is one of the most financially stressful times in woman’s life.

Offer a free financial planning session explaining how to invest for their kids’ education. Offer a HELOC at a special rate for expectant mothers to build or furnish a nursery. Offer a free seminar on protecting your child physically (proper car seat installation, safety issues around the home, etc) and financially (avoiding identity theft).

What if you let your members’ own stories drive the campaign?

Picture this – you set up a website where your members call in, upload video, or even post a text-based narrative of an experience they’ve had with your credit unions? You could even use the submitted media as the foundation for the TV or radio spots.

Blend the video clips together into a tightly-woven and eclectic narrative created by your own members. If someone calls in a story, animate it in with a storybook aesthetic.

What if you monitored public opinion of the campaign in real-time using RSS?

Using Google Blog Search, you can subscribe to specific keywords and be notified as they show up in website content. No matter what, you marketers on the Washington League should be subscribing to “Washington Credit Union League,” and your specific credit unions’ name.

During the campaign you can subscribe to a campaign’s tagline (for example, McDonald’s I’m Lovin It) to keep your finger on the pulse of consumer opinion. This allows you to react immediately, instead of waiting for the polls and focus groups to hear how it’s been received.

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I could go on and on, but this is getting long. The long-short is this:

No matter what agency or creative concept you go with, demand interaction and experience … because that’s the only way to cut through the noise and build lasting relationships.

I’d like to introduce you to a designer we’ve been lucky enough to work with on the majority of our most recent projects. Meet Charlie Trotter, from the design studio Type is where it’s at.‚Ñ¢

Charlie’s work includes some fantastic illustration, identity design, print, and soon-to-be-showcased web design work that is near and dear to our heart. Plus, his portfolio is pretty innovative itself in its presentation style.

And finally, Tiwia‚Ñ¢, as it’s referred to on the street, has a brand new blog that rocks my face right off my head. My favorite post to date co-stars Emmanuel Lewis (aka Webster) in a Baby Bjorn. Read it and your day will be better.