I’m really looking forward to the opportunity next week to contribute to an industry panel, where we will discuss, “The Next Frontier: Marketing 2.0.” The key issue here is that companies are struggling to adapt to a marketplace that moves faster than their organization is designed to tolerate. Technology has accelerated social change with unprecedented velocity. The companies that learn how to harness this energy will weather the storm, while others will be left wondering, “what just happened?” If you’re planning to attend the Red Herring CMO Conference next week in San Diego on Tuesday, February 5th, please don’t hesitate to come-up and say hello. Here’s the premise lifted direct from the Red Herring website:

"Technology transitions are always exciting, but until the process is complete we are left driving hybrids. For marketers it’s not just a matter of being caught between gasoline and electric: you must cope with fi lm and digital, seminars and Webinars, direct mail and email, press releases and blog posts, pushed material and user-generated content, all somewhere between Web 1.0 and 2.0. And perhaps no one has adapted to this transition more wholeheartedly than professionals in marketing, who are exploring possibilities and nudging progress towards a complete transformation. This panel explores ways to juggle the old and new in marketing and to profit from the cutting edge.”

Proprietary Panels Help Consumer Companies Shape Products, Ads

The private networks are part of companies' continuing efforts to figure out how to use the Web to assess and shape the way consumers think about their products.

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21st century technology has hastened the creation of a new mediascape. Intersecting the x-axis of The Long Tail and the y-axis of James Surowiecki's Wisdom of the Crowds are bywords like UGC, viral, buzz, and influencers. But we're still in a nascent stage, one where social networking has been deployed pell-mell in the service of brands with questionable impact and value. So what's a brand to do these days?

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Justin Cooper (Co-founder, Chief Innovation + Marketing) and Justin Wills (VP, Strategy) from Passenger will be presenting "Customer Collaboration: Shaping the Future of your Brand and Products" at Gridley's seventh annual Conference featuring presentations by approximately forty leading private companies from: information, marketing, financial technology and internet services sectors and some selected industry panels from public company and private equity participants.

The Conference is designed to offer senior level executives and investment professionals an excellent opportunity to learn about interesting growth companies, to gain insights into industry trends, and to network with their peers. The audience includes C-level executives from public company industry leaders, CEOs of presenting and non-presenting private companies, and leading debt and private equity investors.