Tobaccowala kicks off 2011 IMC Professional Speakers Series

By Courtney Uchytil

Rishad Tobaccowala is a marketing innovator, business leader, the chief strategy and innovation officer of Vivaki, and CEO of Denuo. And this Monday, Rishad will be the kick-off lecturer for the IMC Professional Speakers Series for the Northwestern Medill community.

In anticipation of the event, Rishad was kind enough to give us a little insight into his thoughts on social media, the blogosphere and Twitter.

As a guest speaker for the Integrated Marketing Communications program, what does IMC mean to you? And how to you see IMC fitting into the marketing world?

RT: IMC to me is the future of how marketing will be done. In a digital age the old silos of marketing, from promotion to PR to advertising, etc., are collapsing and what matters is planning/measuring across all connection points of paid, owned and earned media driven by consumer insight and business metrics. I see IMC as ideal for this hybrid/mongrel marketing world, which combines data and insight, science and art.

I believe the biggest thing IMC should plan and plot about is how to measure and plan across paid, owned and earned media. Today database marketing and understanding a person’s media usage and the context in which it is used is critical and will remain critical. But over time instead of marketing types (above line or below line) or forms (analog or digital) it will be about paid, owned and earned connections.

How effective are blogs and other social media as a form of word of mouth?

RT: Hugely effective especially when used in combination. Blogs are where your content is written and stored and discussed, while social media like Twitter and Facebook are where they are promoted and to a certain extent discussed. As you know I have a blog, which I promote on Twitter (@rishadt) which is connected to my Facebook page and LinkedIn page. If I post a blog there is little traffic until I tweet about it. If people like it they retweet. So for instance, when I blogged about the four trends of 2011, I tweeted it to my 3,800 followers. Now at any time only a fraction will see my message and a fraction will click on the link. But because those that did liked it, they tweeted and retweeted it and so within a week I had nearly 10,000 visitors. Social media is the new discovery engine.

In one interview you referred to Twitter as a “great discovery engine.” How do you see the role of Twitter evolving over time?

RT: As noted I believe social media (not just Twitter, but Twitter is the most effective in promoting discovery) is a discovery engine. I see Twitter evolving in the following ways:

A) It becomes a place where you discover things in real time.

B) It becomes a place where you search for things and perspectives (which is why Twitter made $140 million in advertising because brands are now promoting tweets, promoting their accounts and promoting trends). It is an addition to Google.

C) It is where you eventually will have curators. For instance, I make lists of people who are very good at pointing things in art or film, and I look at these lists almost like a magazine article by a critic pointing me to important things.

Faculty and students, make sure to RSVP to the event to reserve your spot and to hear more of what Rishad has to say. The lecture starts at 4p.m. in the MTC Forum, Monday, February 7.

Courtney Uchytil is a student in the Masters in Integrated Marketing Communications program at Northwestern University’s Medill School and can be reached at courtneyuchytil2011@u.northwestern.edu.