Canada's Word of Mouth "From Mass to Grass" Conference

I couldn't be prouder to announce the Canadian Marketing Association's first annual conference dedicated to Word of Mouth called "From Mass to Grass". 

As the co-chair of the conference, I'm naturally excited and absolutely giddy with the lead up, day of and post-conference ideas and agenda. It's been well over 9 months in planning so  I hope you'll be excited enough to join us too. 

Mark the full day off in the calendar - April 12th, 2007 in Toronto. With word of mouth marketing now becoming the fastest growing vehicle in the U.S. (Source: CMO Magazine), this is a "must-book" event whose time has now come in Canada.

The April 12th conference in Toronto  will cover off the 6 corners of the word of mouth world -
- Consumer Generated Content
- Social Media, Networks & Virtual Communities
- Viral Marketing
- Influencer and evangelist marketing
- Experiential & buzz marketing
- Grassroots Community Building.

It has the full spectrum of some of the best keynote speakers on this subject anywhere:

Jackie Huba from Church of the Customer - an expert and author of what I consider perhaps the best two books on the subject Creating Customer Evangelists and her recent book Citizen Marketers  

Kyle MacDonald from One Red Paper Clip  - you'll love his story and the way he thinks - he launched his star to "buzz fame" with his "very cool" flip of one red paper clip for a house in Canada and has now moved onto other buzz-generating ventures - get the scoop from Kyle on how to get noticed and talked about

Eric Peterson from Canadian brand icon lululemon   - we'll find out how to "get off our asana" and learn the lessons about building a community of life-loving, active-seeking customer evangelists from the icon of Canadian grassroots business and word of mouth success

We've also brought together an uber all-star list of Canadian brands to talk about their first-hand experiences with word of mouth: Degree, Dove and the Campaign for Real Beauty, Evian, Harper Collins, lululemon, Monster.ca, Nike, Nokia, Rogers, Scotiabank, Steam Whistle, Sweetspot, Unilever, Vespa Canada, West 49 and Yahoo.

Not to stop there, we've also got a roll call of some of the best forward-thinking Canadian leaders in the space providing their own provocative insights: Agent Wildfire, CanWest, Cossette Media, Fleishman Hillard, Hill & Knowlton, MacLaren MRM,  Oglivy, Provokat, Segal Communications, Social Signal, Sequentia Communications and Twist Image.

Finally by popular demand, we have brought in a crowd pleaser and cultish Canadian word of mouth phenomenon -  the World Rock Paper Scissors Society  - learn about their story and also get the chance to be called the King or Queen of Canadian Marketing & Communications RPS Fame.

As the program says, "whether you’ve never considered word of mouth or have spent years in the industry", after this day you'll be "full of realistic and powerful word of mouth ideas and concepts" and the forum to connect and network with some of the best players to be found anywhere in Canada.   

By the way, the registration link is here....(how convenient...and no I'm not getting paid to co-chair this event, it is a labour of passion and love)

I'd be remiss if I also didn't thank a "super cool" posse of folks comprising our committee (Christina, Cindy, David, Kiran, Lisa, Michael, Mirabel, Mitch, Stephania and my Montreal com-padre and co-chair Louis)  - I've enjoyed the ride, I thank you for your help and I look forward to an awesome conference and to be sure, an entertaining rap party.

See you there and we'd appreciate as this is a conference about word of mouth to spread the word as well. More exciting updates on this conference here and elsewhere very soon....