Mashable Connect Day 2: Mad Men + Math Men = Digital Branding

 Cindy Gallop, a tech entrepreneur, consultant and the founder and CEO of www.IfWeRanTheWorld.com was clearly the most dynamic speaker at Mashable Connect 2012, last week.  On day 2 of the event, Gallop’s  presentation “Digital Branding Secrets: Why Most Marketers & Startups Get It Wrong,” was an elixir of factoids and sizzle. She mesmerized the audience with her top-notch presentation skills, declaring that the equation for digital branding in today’s world must include art and science. Throughout her session, Cindy stressed the impact that data has on new world marketing, music to the ears of course of those of us here at Webtrends.  Simply stated: Digital Branding = Mad Men + Math Men.

Today’s marketing landscape requires brands to have a mathematical understanding of human interaction. Through data analysis, brands must understand how and where users are talking about them. From there, brands must create content and a strategy that maps back to business goals and considers the context in which the content will reach, and be received by, the online community.  Here’s a few of Gallop’s ideas for brands, broken down:

• Gallop said she recommends that brands develop their own metrics, because at the end of the day, “you are what you measure.”
  To take on this approach, a brand must understand the value of the data they’re collecting and make an informed decision about what metrics are valuable to them and why – because there is no standard measurement system that works for all companies across today’s digital channels. Gallop believes that engagement is the metric of value for content, but each individual brand will need to figure out the context of that engagement. This again only further emphasizes the need to wrap context around data.

• Gallop also stated that the new creativity is metric-informed which ties back to the idea that ‘mad men’ must work with ‘math men’ in the digital arena. When creating content, brands and companies of all sizes need to create content based on what was learned through the measurement process. The creation of content needs to be based on metrics and a deep understanding of the context in which it will be received.

Throughout her session, and throughout the conference at large, Gallop and the other speakers shared their vision of the new world order and how it will affect marketers.  Here at Webtrends we love discussing this as we are in the business of helping brands shoot directly to the top in the digital marketing acumen. We have rich data and advanced tools that brands are able to use to create their own system – a part of Gallop’s plan. But beyond that, we have analysts and services to help companies analyze and strategize. Webtrends help brands wrap context around core data delivering a perfect blend of Mad Men + Math Men.

 For more on Gallop’s presentation, see Mashable article: Why Marketing is Broken and How to Fix It.

Periodic table created by Emily Miethner.