So – it’s not a shock to me that Digital Media Buzz is catching on to the trending of “Twitter parties” as a marketing strategy. It’s more a long the lines of, “Where have you been?”

So many companies work on wooing celebrities and superstars to come out to events like store openings, product launches, etc but tweet ups and other social media influenced offline events can often drive engagement that – while it might not engage as many eyeballs as a Kardasian – it converts at a much higher rate. Offline engagement has been driving marketing endeavors for most successful social media companies. Scott Monty seems to throw a Tweet up whenever he is in a city – drawing engaged followers and creating opportunities to generate that word of mouth buzz both offline and on at very little cost. (Not to mention Ford having test drives with bloggers and the Fiesta Movement cars out there driving real people to give real opinions on the vehicle) Having worked with Jyl Johnson-Pattee of MomitForward.com – they drive lots of action through their digital #GNO campaigns and now have offline events centered around campaigns like Office Max’s A Day Made Better (Slideshow below is from the Denver event.  Photos via Greeblemonkey). Flying Dog Brewery has sponsored Tweet ups in the Denver area with much success. Twestival – the twitter inspired charity drive – has created events in over 200+ cities. It’s been done and done and done – it’s not a trend, it’s an established and successful strategy.

As social media becomes more directed at offline behavior (think Foursquare, Whrrl, and other mobile apps of that sort), companies are going to need to embrace the fact that these online influencers that they’ve pursued via the internet are now creating large networks of offline influence. The innovators are already on this and, as usual, other companies are just waiting to play catch up…

(FTC Stuff: I have a HUGE ball of rubber bands that I got from an Office Max “A Day Made Better” event in Denver. I have a crush on Jyl from Mom It Forward – but to be fair, I also have a crush on her husband who is a fellow Yankee fan. My buddy Jeremy Tanner is a Ford Fiesta Agent and has driven me places – which means “Uncle Scott” picked up the tab for gas. A few friends that work at Whrrl have bought me beers at bars during events like SXSW, BlogHer, and Blog World Expo. I’ve received a free keg of Flying Dog for an event that I put together in Boulder called Kegs and Kites. While the ball-o-’bands, free gas and beer, and platonic crushes are amazing – it doesn’t change anything I would have written in the above post. I appreciate the trust my readers have in me – so thanks for reading!)

There are a lot of subtleties to this ad that make it very effective. The closing message: “Some people say this is unfair competition, but competition is as American as Apple Pie” is the type of simple line that can be repeated in debates centering around one of the central arguments that people have over the public option.

The entire video seems to try to target the white conservative male voters. Start with the casting – the Insurance companies that get the most screen time are played by minorities. The public option, is of course, Heather Graham – who is a beautiful blonde white woman. The contrast is subtle – unless you’re looking for it, you don’t see it – but it definitely is a play to those white male voters. Even in the scripting, there are things meant to prey on those white males. There’s a bit of phallic symbolism (and an attempt to conjure up homophobia?) with the champagne bottle. All of this is done purposefully and, together with the simple tagline, creates a well constructed piece of political advertising that garners attention without creating much controversy.

(Editor’s Note: Again – this isn’t a political statement or a pledge to support certain beliefs. If you do ever want to get into a political discussion with me, feel free. I love debates if both parties are open minded and respect the opinions of the other person.)

I started to think about spam recently. How can something so universally maligned manage to exist without an end in sight? Then it occurred to me, Spam’s ability to survive illustrates some good marketing insights that you can apply to your (hopefully) non-spam marketing plans – especially in the social realm. Here are the marketing lessons that spam taught me:

Fit In

Spammers are notorious for fitting in.  Often times, you can track a source of your spam to a web form that you filled out innocently, a cookie that you picked up from that site you shouldn’t have visited, or a variety of other things.  So much of the spam that’s received can be tracked back to user behavior – meaning that they are trying to assimilate to the anonymous person that had ventured to the wrong side of the tracks.

I was struck by a recent article on Ad Age entitled, “Marketers: Think About Fitting in Before Breaking Through.” The article focused on the changing way that consumers experience their media – with the proliferation of technology causing interruption marketing to not only be interruptive of entertainment, but of people’s lives.

One section of the article summed the scenario up perfectly,

“Instead of asking “How do we break through?” advertisers should be asking “How do we fit in?” If your audience is on Facebook, don’t interrupt their social life by shouting at them; find a way to insinuate your brand into their existing behavior. Burger King did it when it realized people with “friend fatigue” would gladly sacrifice 10 friends for a Whopper. On another hand, if your audience is made up of runners who like to run with music, put a sensor in their shoe that connects to their iPod and then to a network of runners around the world and call it Nike Plus. Or, if your audience is already searching the web for cooking ideas, do what Kraft did and give them a “Food and Family” digital magazine and iPhone app full of inspiration, recipes and tools.”

The main premise behind all of this is understanding what the consumer wants. Using these social technologies, brands can begin to understand the motives of the crowds that drive revenue. It’s about capitalizing on micro trends in cost-effective ways to assimilate your message into the prevalent topics of the day.  Spammers attempt to do this with little effort – which is why they’re strength lies in the millions of messages they send and not the content.  If you’re not a spammer, make a concerted effort to fit in with your customers in natural ways.   Which brings me to my second lesson…

Be adaptable

How many of you received spam emails about product x that included references to Michael Jackson dying within 24 hours of his death? (Raises Hand). I know I did. I laughed, probably tweeted about it, and moved on with my day – yet those emails started to stick out in my head. I was amazed at the adaptability of those spammers to capitalize on an event that captured the curiosity of a great majority of the population. After all, even though I knew it was spam, I ultimately opened the email. They won half the battle.

Obviously, cueing on non-relevant news stories to push your products is not the way to get the right attention. But, being adaptable enough to contribute to relevant conversations is the right way to engage with your core demographic.

Be Personal

It’s ironic that I’ve seen more spam emails use my first name than I have from PR companies and others that send out mass emails. My first name is in my email address. If what ultimately amounts to a computer program can take the time to figure out my first and last name, why don’t some people who I know have genuine interest in learning about my business practices? Simply addressing someone personally in an email conversation is an attention getter and a practice that is often left out by many PR and Marketing pro’s for the sake of time and effort. Again – if spammers can figure out a way to do it, why can’t you?

Build Trust

While you would never associate trust with spammers, it’s often a key ingredient to their manipulation of the web. Without going into too much detail on spam practices, spammers often hack or create pages on trusted domains in order to set up a formula to create great SEO for their spam pages. What this shows that, even in the seedy underbelly of the internet, trust is important.

The best way to build trust is to be honest and earnest in your endeavors. You don’t have to take my word for it – Chris Brogan and Julien Smith wrote a great book on Trust. Trust is the currency that powers the Internet – knowing this will help any brand endeavors.

Have any other lessons you learned from unlikely sources? I’d love to have you share them in the comments!