The Good, The Bad and The Very Bad of Red Herring

While I can't speak much about the pinnacle of Red Herring power, I'm almost certain it's not what it use to be. I attended the Red Herring Monterey conference last week because we were chosen to speak on a panel about Search Marketing 2.0. The panel addressed concerns about businesses marketing themselves on the web and those businesses missing out, simply because they lack a website. (You can read more about the subject discussion here.)

While it's always a pleasure meeting executives from a broad range of companies, spanning bio-tech to media - the true joy of this conference was chuckling at Red Herring's CEO and Publisher, Alex Vieux. Not only did he give one of the cheesiest, cliched speeches I've heard in a long time, I also question if he's got a hole in his marble sack.

Vieux made the rounds throughout the conference, toasting everyone several times personally, patting everyone on their backs, and shaking hands, as if everyone was his best friend. The worst part was when he did this DURING keynote speeches, walking in front of the podium, in front of people, walking back and forth smiling as if you were sitting there naked.

You know it's bad, when seemingly professional professionals stare at each other in mock glazes as if to say, 'what the heck is he doing?!?!' Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hater, but after reading about all of Red Herring's possible troubles, I can put together a very biased assumption of what went wrong. It's a shame too, because Red Herring has some of the classiest employees I've met.

On another note, my glass of wine at dinner never hit the bottom - so with that said, the conference was a success!!!

Sincerely,
Kevin
Community Relations

Red Herring Juice

While Red Herring may or may not be in default. There's still a lot of quality folks who work within the organization. They may have received some knocks on their previous conferences - particularly in Cannes, but I'm still looking forward to attending the conference starting today in Monterey, CA. (BTW, I believe everything ValleyWag writes).

Our Co-Founder Wayne Yamamoto was invited to join a panel speaking on "Search Marketing 2.0"

Here's the panel summary:

There is no question about it; search is the hottest topic in marketing. Even hotter is local search, with over 14 million SMBs missing out on the revolution, simply because they do not have a website. Even with this enormous opportunity, many brands are not taking advantage of this opportunity. What is the biggest mistake paid search marketers are making today? Will pay-per-call every truly catch on? How problematic is click fraud? Search has transformed the world of marketing and new technologies are changing the world of search. How can your company best take advantage of this transforming communication strategy? On this roundtable, a group of industry experts will analyze this ever changing landscape and help us make sense of what to expect for the future.

I think we've solved that first part of the equation. We're speaking on Thurday, here's the agenda. Stop by if you've got an extra $2,000 lying around! If not, we'll let you know how it goes from our MerchantCircle blog for free.

Sincerely,

Kevin