If you want to get a crowd mad at CJU, here are some tips for you. I'm giving out my own awards:
- Be shamelessly self-promoting. Talk about your greatness and past positions. Promote your site. Make sure there is no real information that will help your audience. Award: Mark Papia, Vice President of Performance Marketing, Fox Interactive Media (MySpace.com).
- Make sure what you talk about is too esoteric for anyone to relate to that isn't in your inner circle. Award: panel that was so hard to follow I can't remember what one it is.
- Put down search affiliates and give information that is misleading. Make sure Vinny Lingham isn't in the crowd when you do this. Award: this is one I only heard about and didn't attend. There was a shouting match at the end. Too bad I missed it. Someone fill me in on the comments section below.
- Tell people they can't fly their helicopters in the lobby or outside during networking events. Award: CJU staff.
- Set up a lab to help people learn how to be power users of your site who don't know much about it. Award: CJU staff – note this was my experience only. Complete waste of time.
- Give good information based on real-life experience. Be bold and honest in the outcome. Award: Steve August, Operational Vice President of Customer Marketing, Brookstone. What a classy guy
- Choose an amazingly beautiful location and give people lots of opportunities to network. Award: CJU staff
- Give clear and well-articulated tips on how to run an affiliate business from someone who knows. Award: Jeremy Palmer. I heard a CEO commented to his staff – we need to hire this guy to consult for us!
- Conduct relevant and important surveys about the industry and clearly articulate the findings. Award: Rebecca Madigan, Director, Product Management, Commission Junction – she was outstanding.
- Engage the audience and wow them with your PowerPoint show and grasp of the industry from a high up view. I have never been disappointed by anyone I've heard from Ogilvy and so I'm a big fan. Award: Greg Smith, COO of Neo@Ogilvy North America
Now for the positive ways to get a crowd riled up:
To get more news about the affiliate industry check out (thanks for putting my posts on the list!) Affiliate Classroom's news page.
Also, read Revenews bloggers to get their take on the event. http://www.revenews.com/. Sam Harrelson made some dire predictions (I tried to meet him but no luck). I did get to see Vinny Lingham, Adam Viener, Jeremy Palmer, Justin Bowen, and others.
Fun times.
Sorry we didn’t meet, Janet! I was looking for you, but unfortunately didn’t cross paths.
I’m still a faithful reader of your stuff, so keep up the great posts (like this one).
Sam
“Be shamelessly self-promoting.” – Haha, people would start throwing things at you on stage.
Heather,
It was great seeing you at CJU this year. It’s true, they scheduled Vinny in the other room, luckily Tony Pantano and I were in the room to fill in the gaps in dispelling myths about search engine affiliates. As Tony pointed out Mike Jacobs probably propagated more myths than he dispelled. I think the only true statement made in that session was that the companies goals should be to make the most amount of sales at the least cost. The how to do that left a lot to be desired. It’s a critical time in the market right now where you have agencies protecting their turf and trying to squeeze out good search affiliates so that they can “protect” 100% of their campaign and avoid any potential overlaps, instead of doing what would be best for the company whose goal is to get the most amount of sales at the least amount of cost. Good agencies and good affiliates make a killer combination it’s only the not so good agencies that don’t want to look bad that try to push out the affiliates from the companies display URLs and in doing so actually do more harm than good for their clients by pushing good long term partners to their competition.
We actually caught up with Mike at the cocktail party after the session, and he basically said, there wasn’t enough time to provide both sides of the debate, and everyone needs to make a buck. Nice!
CJU was a great networking event, but the content this year had a lot to be desired. They have been very careful about the message the were presenting in past years, this year I felt that having a presentation like this, and what I heard of the Myspace presentation was either laziness or irresponsible.
Adam
The awared for handing out cool toys goes to Affiliate Manager Troy McDonald of HobbyTron.com 🙂
Wait, I guess this is a shameless plug for how cool I am. Ahh.. Janet, you know it’s the truth. ;P
Troy