Nail and Influence 2.0

Cymfony's CMO Jim Nail dropped by Club Ammo the other day. We went to lunch along with co-workers Andrew and Kerry. Jim was in town for WOMBAT, naturally, and took advantage of flying west to get in early and hang out on a beautiful day.

Jim outlined his thoughts around Influence 2.0, a topic pretty dear to our hearts. He's in AdAge talking about it as well.

The topic is certainly familiar--how are companies going to continue to successfully market their products and services in a media-world turned upside down? There's so much momentum behind the old way of doing things (run a TV spot, paint your logo on a bus), that it seems nearly impossible to see a real change.

Jim's approach is to start a Wiki. He's got an e-book in the works and will just simply launch it out there for anyone to change, update and comment. It's a pretty bold move. I mean, this isn't an encyclopedia. This is a business 'book' and business books are about providing specific recommendations and specific advice. One can imagine product reps beginning to move into this space and gently shifting conversations one way or the next. This clearly happened with Wikipedia. How will this one work?

Whatever it may be, Jim's to be commended for sparking the conversation. He and I used to be sworn mortal enemies. He was at Forrester; I was at Jupiter. Of course, it never really worked that way. I always liked talking with Jim and reading his stuff. Same with Charlene Li. But he's got that analyst approach tattooed in his mind, and this is an analyst job.