At a Paris incubator this past week, I had a lengthy chat with the Anne-Celine Jeanneau from Zoomorama. We received a number of demos from early stage startups, who were all located in one of five incubators run by Paris Developpement. (Martin Guerin hosted)

Below is a chat with Gary Vaynerchuk on LeWeb stage in Paris this past week. As passionate as ever, he takes over the interview, wanting to make sure he doesn’t leave the stage without the audience knowing that they ‘must do what they love.’

He touts that most people don’t although LeWeb audience seemed to respond differently than the typical yank crowd he’s more accustomed to addressing. While clearly this isn’t scalable, he says – answer every email, answer every direct message tweet. Not only scalable but highly inprobable once success really hits unless you give up ever seeing your child or a tree again. At some point, something has to give.

That said, what he’s talking about is the personal touch, the value of connecting with your audience and a large reason for his success. It’s not because he’s a master of wine above and beyond everyone else.

His success is because of his resilience, his determination, his ability to connect to the every day man – in their language and in a genuine way. he wears his immigrant status on his sleeve and as second and third generation Americans, we can still relate to that. Rags to riches and of course social media makes that reality more possible than ever. The second gold rush is in play.

A very short clip of Jennifer Corriero from Talking IT Global on LeWeb’s stage last week.

Loic LeMeur interviews YouTube’s Chad Hurley on LeWeb stage in Paris this morning.

Mashcast, a very cool company that does video mashups and much much more created a very creative and humorous video of Traveling Geeks heading to Paris. (Oh yeah and potentially inheriting the earth).

Below is a teaser and here is the video. Be prepared to laugh. A lot.

RepairPal    PlanetEye    VideoEgg    1800FREE411    Newsgator    Spock    Sharpcast    Retrevo    eSnips    Teleo    Xitel    Dragon

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Campaign
VoiP B2B solution launch, targeting SMB market, including specific verticals. Branding and PR campaign included viral communications activities on and offline as well as a heavy national media blitz before, during and after the rollout.

Teleo, a VoIP solution (acquired by Microsoft) was the primary contender to compete head-on with the then industry leader, Skype. Their feature set and unique portability made them a perfect choice for mobile business professionals.

Together with Revell-Pechar, Inc., we launched Teleo into the marketplace through a series of viral marketing and communications activities over a several month period.

We mapped all of our efforts to an integrated roll-out strategy that combined unique message development with a brand awareness and thought leadership campaign through speaking panels and blogs, and massive influencer outreach.

Out-of-the-gate, Teleo ended up in a full page spread in Newsweek, the result of a 60+ day effort leading up to the event, which included ‘dog-and-pony’ meetings at CES the previous month.

On-the-ground in Vegas, we created a “Limo Demo,” where we held meetings and social events, which included the opportunity to evangelize and educate the market about Teleo to the mobile market.

Stage one was to create the right environment in which to build ‘the brand,’ and set a precedent for what was to come in the months ahead, leading up to and post launch.

Our first challenge was to have at least one thousand people download the free trial product the first week it was announced.

The Result: media coverage was extensive starting with the splash in Newsweek, with hundreds of articles following in the mainstream and business press, broadcast TV, trade rags and the blogosphere. Scoble referenced the solution as “the Skype Killer,” and downloads went through the roof.

As a result of widespread visibility from our relentless team, we reached 10,000 downloads in the first two days.

In addition to generating speaking engagements following launch and pitching reviews across the board of still a beta-product, Ann and team managed a marketing partnership with Avis rental cars to distribute copies of the software along with VoIP headsets to all Elite-level customers.

We developed and executed several events, including press receptions, that kept the Teleo name alive and in front of several unique audiences. Teleo was soon thereafter acquired by Microsoft.

Media Buzz is a Sample, not an Exhaustive List

[/column] [column width=”24%” padding=”0″] “Blodgett is one of the most well-connected people I’ve ever met. She is tapped into the blogging and social media community and was instrumental in Teleo’s success – I plan to use them in my next company.”
– Peter Sisson, CEO and Founder, Toktumi, former CEO, Teleo (acquired by Microsoft)

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RepairPal    PlanetEye    VideoEgg    1800FREE411    Newsgator    Spock    Sharpcast    Retrevo    eSnips    Teleo    Xitel    Dragon

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Campaign
Full Scale Global Communications Campaign for Consumer, Vertical & Corporate Markets

A successful worldwide launch of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the world’s first continuous speech recognition product, led to a Software Marketing Excellence Award for Best Marketing Strategy and countless other awards worldwide. It also resulted in Dragon’s move to the 7th largest software publisher in the U.S.

Press coverage increased by over 380% in the first year of its launch, which was instrumental in Dragon’s aggressive move into the retail space against major competitor IBM. Experience on-the-ground also resulted in managing two delayed IPOs, and an acquisition to Lernout & Hauspie, which was acquired by ScanSoft, now Nuance.

In addition to a global media effort on an ongoing basis after launch, hiring international agencies to handle foreign language launches and working with strategic partners, such as Corel and others, a vertical market strategy was put into place to drive sales for Dragon’s corporate solutions.

This included a PR and marketing strategy for their VAR Channel, user groups, and the following verticals: legal, medical/healthcare, government, disabilities and education.

Dragon received acclaim from worldwide TV and radio stations as well as the top business magazines in England, France, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Spain, Italy, Scotland and Belgium and others.

Media Buzz is a Sample, not an Exhaustive List

[/column] [column width=”24%” padding=”0″] “Blodgett and Magic Sauce Media^TM have a rare gift for building bridges between technologists and the media.”
– Sean True, former VP, Technology, Dragon (prior to acquisition)

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RepairPal    PlanetEye    VideoEgg    1800FREE411    Newsgator    Spock    Sharpcast    Retrevo    eSnips    Teleo    Xitel    Dragon

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Campaign
Education, Marketing, Positioning, Thought Leadership & Branding

We launched NewsGator into the marketplace from one founder and an idea to a recognizable brand in its category. In the early days, NewsGator focused on the consumer market and was the most well known RSS aggregator in the industry, far before anyone outside geek circles knew what RSS was or what its impact would be in the years to come.

After creating brand recognition and building up momentum with early adopters and consumers, we designed a new campaign to re-define their brand as we expanded into the enterprise market, a core target for them today. We developed both B2C and B2B communications campaigns, which included a thought leadership effort to promote the founder in strategic Web 2.0, RSS and social media circle nationwide.

We focused our attention on speaking engagements, media interviews, and engaging the community which included developers, the “geek” and open source community as well as the publishing industry, content providers, advertisers, bloggers, trade and business press.

Following a venture capital financing and a CEO change, we shifted strategies again and implemented an education campaign that moved beyond the value of RSS to consumers and into “why RSS is a great idea for corporations and media players.”

We worked closely with early adopters and Web 2.0 influencers in the blogosphere to communicate these messages virally as well as through internal and external blogs.

We also lined up an interview with the founder on CNN together with a Fortune 500 CEO and also generated buzz internationally, including Time Magazine Europe Edition. NewsGator today is a recognizable, respected and established leader in its category.

Media Buzz is a Sample, not an Exhaustive List

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