BRITE 08

The BRITE 08 Conference was amazing. The combination of people and case studies on cutting edge branding and the latest in social media were very exciting. Here are just a few highlights.


Bernd Schmitt (prefers to be called Schmitt rather than Bernd) presented his newest book Big Think Strategy published by Harvard Business School Press. This book lays out Schmitt's method for competing in a world where excellent marketing has become the status quo.


Schmitt uses the story of the Trojan Horse in the book. He commissioned this version of the Trojan Horse from a sculpture workshop in Shanghai.


The BRITE Jury Award for Big Thinker was given to Marty Homlish, Global Chief Marketing Officer for SAP. He is responsible for creating the key SAP strategy, "The best run companies run SAP."


Stephen Voltz is the creator of the original Coke and Mentos videos. He has an interesting story. He was an attorney and quit to pursue a dream. He spent 6 months developing the first Coke and Mentos. They posted it on Youtube on a Friday. By Monday they had 40 million hits and got a call from David Letterman. Sales of 2 litre bottles of Diet Coke skyrocketted and sales of Mentos went thru the roof. Stephen, however, has still not made any money on this. He would like to develop a business around viral marketing and performing, but the business model hasn't kicked in yet. Coca-Cola and Mentos companies had very interesting reactions to the videos. Mentos tried to be too close. They called right away, but they didn't know if this guy was a crazy or what. They were not able to cut any deals. The Coke people were in China at the time of the video and the issue was routed to the Coke risk management people. They were very stand-offish. A deal was not made there either.


Every attendee at the BRITE conference received one of these Spotme devices. Each person has a personal profile. The device allows you to interact with the rest of the group. You can see who is near you and how close they are. You can send text messages or just use the info in their profile to know who you want to talk to. There were also group voting activities and speaker feedback activities during the conference. Bänz Ledin is the founder of Spotme. He is just moving from Switzerland to launch Spotme in the U.S. Regine Flimlin is leaving Dialect and has taken a position as director of new business development for Spotme. We are very excited for her.