Jimmy Gilmore

My first expe­ri­ence with Bac­kNoise ever was three weeks ago at the New Media Atlanta con­fer­ence. Bac­kNoise is a web­site that allows peo­ple watch­ing an event to pro­vide a run­ning com­men­tary of what is hap­pen­ing. They can do it anony­mously or, if they choose, com­ment using their name.

What this pro­vided was a win­dow into what peo­ple hated and occa­sion­ally liked about what was hap­pen­ing on the stage. Some of it was the kind of com­men­tary, in polite com­pany, peo­ple keep to them­selves. This pro­vided a wake up call for the event orga­niz­ers on how lit­tle patience the audi­ence had for pro­mo­tional blather. It also informed some of the speak­ers on how they should do their pre­sen­ta­tions after the pre­vi­ous pre­sen­ter got low marks on their Pow­er­Point. It also informed how nasty some peo­ple can get with what nor­mally would be their would be inter­nal dialog.

Jeff Turner men­tioned the con­ver­sa­tion and even let it influ­ence his pre­sen­ta­tion. Later, Chris Bro­gan took the demon by the horns and put Bac­kNoise up in place of his Pow­er­Point. I think this actu­ally worked in his favor. He def­i­nitely had one of the best pre­sen­ta­tions of the day, many would say the best.

Other folks have done a more exten­sive job about dis­sect­ing what hap­pened and another has writ­ten about how speak­ers should react. So let’s talk about what it means as marketers.

Imag­ine your cor­po­rate web­site was sub­ject to this kind of bru­tal­ity. Well it is now thanks to Google Side Wiki.

Or folks were trash­ing your com­mer­cials while watch­ing a pro­gram. Thanks to Twit­ter, they are.

Now peo­ple are com­ment­ing dur­ing meals at your restau­rant and post­ing while stay­ing in your hotel. Frankly, the mar­keter, the speaker, the busi­ness and the actor have all lost con­trol of the con­ver­sa­tion. But if, like Bro­gan, and embrace the con­ver­sa­tion, you can make it work for you. Because, what choice do you really have?