The topic was around the role of marketing in today’s globalized world. I had the pleasure of meeting fellow panelist,  Joan Schneider, president of Schneider Associates. It’s amazing that our paths haven’t crossed until today as she is also a passionate marketer and creative brand thinker – and we tend to agree on alot of points, which is nice when you’re sitting next to someone for almost 2 hours. The conversation kicked-off around launching new products, something Joan and her firm know alot about. Being in start-up land at Currensee, launches usually happen over-night, or so it seems. Joan talked about launch planning and how she helps her clients get ready. Her advice? Start the launch planing while ideas are still ideating. Waiting until the widget comes off the assembly line is often too late to plan all the details and line up the pieces for a successful launch. I spent time talking about launching a social network and how to gain sign-up momentum. The key? Identifying your influencers – the people who are willing to try your product early and tell other people about it. Joan and I both agreed that influencers are everyone from mommy bloggers, to WSJ press to the average consumer. It’s all about figuring out who they are, how to connect with them and what helps them engage with your brand.

We talked alot about social media and how we are using Twitter, Facebook and other social channels to engage customers and how we measure the success of social media. It was a topic that picked up on the themes from last week’s Espresso lunch with friend and colleague, Marta Kagan, where we talked about how social media is creating new channels and new challenges for us as marketers. Before, customers wrote an email or called us to complain. Now we manage the trials and tribulations of upset customers who can do more to damage to a brand in 140 characters than we ever thought possible. Measurement of social engagement, awareness, lead gen and membership is blurring the lines of ROI and marketers often don’t have the time or budget for big measurement products and, quite frankly, they’re not always the answer to the measurement question.

After a great discussion that’s far too detailed to transcribe here, we opened the session to the audience, mostly comprised of students. There were some great questions:

- What do you do when you have a bad press launch? How do you measure that and communicate that to your clients/management team?

- How do you decide what level of writing is appropriate for an audience mixed with newbies and experts?

- How do you find the influencers who can help launch your brand?

- What advice do you have for finding an internship or full-time job?

The last question really stood out to me because it takes marketing full-circle. Marketing is all about identifying the differentiator – the value prop that makes your idea, brand, product or service unique from the other guy’s down the street. Then, once you figure out what that is, you write it down and convey it in everything you do – consistently and emphatically. You talk about it, you Tweet it, you find people to talk about it. The it is the differentiator and the differentiator is the marketing. When it comes to getting a job, the same rules apply. You send me a resume. I look at it. The marketer in me does a few things immediately – 1) Assess the design. Did you just use a Word doc template or did you actually get creative and create a logo or unique format? 2) Check for typos and grammar. I know, it’s so anal but I can’t stand typos in a resume. You want me to hire you but you don’t have the attention to detail to actually proof your resume before you send it to me? Trash can.  3) Scan to figure out what’s different about you. Oh, you know Word, Excel and PowerPoint…yawn. Oh, you were the captain of your lacross team? Hm, team player, competitive, interesting. Oh, you were a sugar plum fairy in the Nutcracker Ballet? Discipline, focus, practice, cool. You started a mentoring program for inner-city kids? Initiative, compassion, giving back. Love it. You did an intership for the summer? Gave up the beach for the office. That’s dedication.

In my book, you have about 30 seconds for your resume to either get my attention or not. I apologize that I have the attention span of a gnat when it comes to stuff like this but I know I am not alone. People are busy. You need to cut through the clutter and create your difference. Whether you’re marketing yourself or a product someone’s going to buy, you’ve got 30 seconds to get your differentiator across, get them to understand it and make them feel like they need it (or you) right now.

And, now, over to you. Are you marketing your differentiator?

I’m the marketing chick. I come equipped with a designer bag full of tricks. There’s Twitter, Facebook, blog posts, email campaigns, partner marketing, affiliate programs, you know the drill. But, there’s alot of noise. If you post a Tweet to 1,000 followers, do they hear it? In my opinion, not so much. So, my mission is less about getting the message out and more about standing out.

I watch my six year old with her friends. They pretty much do everything that the other person is doing, wearing, saying. Their mission? To be the same. Standing out is scary when your six. You could be placed on exile island during recess by the mean girls who are all the same. Most brands act like six year olds. Oh, we can’t say that or someone might be offended. Hm, we can’t show that or we might get sued. Jeez, we can’t suggest that or someone might think we’re not professional or perhaps semi-crazy.

What a load of crap.

Isn’t the whole point to create your differentiator and stand-out? As my friend, Alex Neihaus, so poignantly penned in his blog post yesterday:

In high tech marketing, the “blend” is everything. You gotta have creativity… you gotta have authenticity…and given that small tech startups are either a) a completely new idea and/or b) trying to unseat titans, you gotta have balls to make your point. Big ones.

And my friends at currensee.com have ‘em. Watch this video. In just 1:02, you get it all in the blend. The beans (what currensee.com is), the roasting (it’s a social network for currency traders) and the infusion of…well…tush into the blend. If you don’t smile — and then head right over to the site — it’s definitely your problem.

My hat’s off to Dave and Michelle for ignoring all the reasons marketers come up with not to stand out and delivering their message (make more money trading money with a group) with a liberal dose of authenticity and humor.

As you’ll see from my latest “project”, I put the big ones to the wall and admittedly teeter on the edge of controversial, sexist and down-right inappropriate. At the end of the day, producing another campaign or line of copy can only get you so far. I say, take a risk, put it out there, make your mark and have some fun. I sure did.