Teresa Does Some “Marketing Judo” on Grapes on a Plane

Recently, I had the opportunity to turn a negative blogosphere commentary into a positive, or what John Battelle calls “Marketing Judo”.

Over at Liz Strauss’ blog, some criticism was leveled at our upcoming conference our upcoming conference was being discussed in a less than 100% glowing way.

“Every word I read about this conference seems geared toward folks who are already blogging. I wonder about that,” wrote Liz.

In the comments, the commentary got even more negative there was some more criticism. Commenter Sabine wrote:

I know what you mean — blogging is still an “early adopter” phenomenon, I think.
Well, I’m going, so I’ll let you know if it was worth it.

Still, I’m a little less excited about it now that I read that a few lucky “A-listers” will be getting a ride in a private jet at the conference. Jeez, let’s widen that gap even more, why don’t we?

Well, I’ll be there to represent the “Z-listers” who just want to get an answer to the question “What can blogging do for my business?”

I have to say that - even with my blogosphere-savvy - my first impulse was to get snarky with Sabine. “How dare she impugn the good name of our ‘Grapes on a Plane’ event?” I thought to myself.

Then I took a step back, which is what Scoble always advises his readers to do. After all, I didn’t want to be accused of having a “ready, fire, aim” mentality.

Also, and very fortunately, our excellent conference co-chair Maryam Scoble jumped into the conversation and smoothed things over. After reading her post, what I came to realize is that with an event like “Grapes on a Plane” does have a ring of exclusivity to it. And yes, a lot of the folks on the plane could be called “A-list.” Sabine had some pretty understandable misconceptions about the event Grapes on a Plane.

But the bottom line is that this is an event with two primary goals:

1. To provide our client Greenpoint Technologies with exposure to influential bloggers who are interested in what they’re doing.
2. To thank the people (speakers, sponsors and attendees) who have gone above and beyond the call of duty to make our conference a success.

We think we’ve walked that line pretty well with this event, and we’re proud of that. We’re also proud that just about anyone can get a seat on this jet if they work hard and are innovative. If you’re a speaker, a sponsor or an attendee and you’re interested in getting on the jet, e-mail me at teresa [at] blogbusinesssummit [dot] com. We’ll hook you up.

Update: Broback’s hypothesizes that Google has created a self-reinforcing system of influence that perpetuates an “A-list.” That’s a problem and it needs to be fixed.

Update 10/11/06 10:10 a.m.: I’ve had a conversation with both Sabine and Liz via e-mail. Apologies for making the original interaction bigger than it needed to be. I wanted to provide it as as case study, but sometimes we all forget we’re dealing with real people. Sometimes it’s better to have these kinds of conversations more privately. Live and learn.