It’s an interesting question given digital marketing and social media can be used to reach the masses or niche markets. The big issue facing luxury brands is whether leveraging digital and social media marketing drives and enhances what luxury brands are doing or whether it causes luxury brands to lose their lustre, stature of exclusivity.

Given this marketing challenge and opportunity, we thought it would be interesting to have a panel at meshmarketing that looks at what luxury brands are doing digitally and how/if their approach to digital marketing and social media is different that what mass-oriented brands are doing.

The Panelists

We put together a panel that features people from different parts of the luxury marketplace.

Joanna Track is the CEO and co-founder of Dealuxe, an online destination for contemporary designer brands. Felicia Yukich is the global social media marketing manager for Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, and Jason Lonsdale, head of planning with TAXI, one of Canada’s leading advertising agencies.

The luxury panel happens on Nov. 15 at the Allstream Centre in Toronto. It is part of an afternoon of workshops and panels that are  hands-on, interactive and engaging so people can go back to work to do their jobs differently or better.

Here’s where you can find more information about the meshmarketing schedule and speakers. You can purchase tickets for meshmarketing here.

Without creating a well-defined plan for social media, it can be challenging to develop a foundation for success – however you want to define success.

At meshwest, our “Building Social Meaning to Support Success” panel addresses the important questions of what needs to be done other than establishing a social media presence. This panel gets beyond the early lessons of social media and into how to develop social meaning from the inside out.

“This isn’t about keeping up with the Joneses but realistically challenging ourselves and our marketing teams on how to create sustainable competitive advantage through building connected brands and organizations” is how marketing and innovation strategist Leigh Himel describes the panel’s focus.

The panel also includes:

- Greg Hounslow, the Emerging Media Advisor for WestJet, who manages the company’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube communities, as well as being involved in the airlines’ short- and long-term strategies for social media.

- Sarah Dickinson, SVP, Strategy with Blast Radius, a strategic digital agency based in Vancouver, who has played a key role in helping Starbucks establish its strong and vibrant social media presence.

This year, however, we’ve addressed the Twitter “gap” by inviting Laura Fitton to do a super-panel about how brands can effectively leverage Twitter.

We’re excited Laura is coming to mesh because she not only talks the talk but walked the walk by launching oneforty, a social business site that helps large and small companies find the tools needed to coordinate and optimize their social media activities.

Laura’s appearance at mesh is particularly timely because an increasing number of companies are starting to move from the “enthusiast” stage about social to scrutinizing what they’re getting from social media services such as Twitter and Facebook. We’re looking forward to Laura providing her insight into how business can leverage social media in a better, smarter and more effective way.

For more on Laura, check out this interview she did with Dan Martell on the Flowtown blog last year.

Here’s a recent video interview in which Laura provides four points about using Twitter for business.

The opportunities and challenges were one of the reasons we wanted to bring together a panel featuring companies attempting to leverage social media to build and grow their brands. We wanted to learn about what has worked for these companies, what they have done to capture the attention of consumers, and the techniques and tools that have been effective. As important, we wanted to get their perspective on the lessons learned along the way.

The panel includes:

- Elizabeth Margles, vice-president of marketing with Porter Airlines. Armed with a strong brand and customer loyalty, Porter launched itself into social media earlier this year with a Facebook Page and Twitter. The company was looking to achieve three objectives: drive sales and promotion, customer service and handle crisis situations.
- Ramon De Leon (aka @Ramon_DeLeon), who owns several Domino’s Pizza stores in Chicago. De Leon’s creative and active use of social media has made him one of the leading voices within the social media marketing landscape. This include a popular video in which De Leon publicly reached out to a customer who had an unhappy experience.
- Graeme Menzies (aka @graememenzies), ex-Social Media Director, Vancouver Olympic Committee and President, MenziesOnline Communications. During the Vancouver Olympics, social media was effectively used to provide insight into the competition, as well as provide insight behind the scenes.

So, we’re really excited to pull the covers of meshmarketing ’10. meshmarketing is happening on November 17, 2010 in downtown Toronto. (We’ll announce the location soon.) Tickets are $489 (plus HST) before Sept. 17, and $539 afterwards. There are also 50 student tickets for $99 each (plus HST). And, of course, we’ll have a social afterwards. Tickets can be purchased here.

While we’re keeping the same focus and approach, there are some wrinkles that we think are going to make meshmarketing even better.

First, we’ve partnered with Trina Boos, who has been running the successful Ad Lounge events. Trina delivers terrific insight into the advertising and marketing worlds, as well as a huge community that she has nurtured and built over the past nine years. As meshmarketing’s programming director, Trina is the driving force behind the event’s sessions and and speakers, and we’re overjoyed about her key role within meshmarketing.

Second, we’ve tweaked the programming format. Rather than have a single keynote, we will kick off meshmarketing with two keynotes – Michael Slaby and Marian Salzman – along with a super-presentation by Lee LeFever. Part of the change in format was our excitement about several speakers. Rather than pick only one, we decided to go with a three-pack.

Michael Slaby is executive vice-president and global practice chair of Edelman’s digital practice. Before joining Edelman, he was a technology and new media advisor to the Obama administration where he led operational and long-term planning for technology including web strategy and utilization, and data integration opportunities.

Marian Salzman, one of the world’s top five trend spotters, will offer insights into the future of digital marketing and communications. As a leading communications professional, digital marketer and author, Marian will provide her insight on what’s on the horizon and what we need to know now to prepare.

And for those not familar with Lee LeFever, he (along with his partner and wife, Sachi) are the brains behind the popular Common Craft video series that provides user-friendly insight into technology and technology trends that everyone can understand.

As for the rest of the programming, we’ve got a great line-up of speakers, panels and workshops – everything from the ROI of social media customer and trans-media storytelling to how retailers are using location-based services, and future of social TV. For more details, visit the speaker and schedule page.

meshmarketing tickets can be purchased here. Don’t forget to take advantage of the early-bird special until Sept. 17.

After a lot of thought, we decided to do a marketing conference. It was a big decision because putting on meshU and mesh is a lot of work, and doing a conference in October meant working on it over the summer. Still, it was something we wanted to do so meshmarketing was born.

Over the past five months, there’s been a lot happening behind the scenes (particularly by our event planner extraordinaire, Sheri Moore), so it’s really exciting that meshmarketing is now only three days away (Oct. 22.)

We’re particularly satisfying is the high quality speakers that we’ve been able to attract – everyone from keynote speakers Hugh MacLeod, Ferg Devins, Katherine Fletcher and Mitch Joel to Dan Martell and Amielle Lake. And we believe the concept – a morning of a keynote and panels, followed by eight workshops – is the right content mix.

As well, it’s also been rewarding to see that the decision to hold meshmarketing was the right one – people are still looking for insight into what to do when it comes to digital marketing and, as important, how to do it.

For those of you attending the conference, things kick off at 6 p.m. on Wednesday at The Drake Hotel (Underground) with a pre-party featuring the artwork of Hugh MacLeod.

See you there!

Note: If you haven’t registered yet, you can do so here.

A blog post on Silicon Valley Insider talks about how Facebook was the only social network being enthusiastically discussed at the recent Ad Week and Social Ad Summit – even though other social networks have large numbers of users.

The post’s author, Rory Maher, contends that Facebook’s edge is the high levels of engagement among users who are spending more of their social networking time on Facebook.

The chart below shows how time on social networking social has social over the past year:

The emergence of social media as a new, different and effective marketing medium, however, has changed the competitive landscape. Today, public relations, advertising and digital agencies are all providing or moving to provide clients with social media services – everything from strategic plans and tactical implementation to creative and applications.

It means that the days of working in isolation are over. Instead, the different agencies are competing for business and increasingly working together to meet the needs of clients.

The challenge for clients is determining who provides what services, and who should be the lead agency when doing social media marketing campaigns. Do companies lead with their advertising agency, and get them to coordinate with the public relations and digital agencies on record? Or do all three agencies need to be at the table at the same time so they’re reading off the same script?

At meshmarketing, one of our two panels is focused on marketing within the social media landscape, how marketing fits into the scheme of things, and how public relations, digital and advertising agencies are competing and co-existing. Our panelists – Fleischman-Hillard Canada president Mia Wedgbury, iStudio co-founder Katherine Fletcher and Juniper Park president Jill Nykoliation – will be offer their perspectives on what’s happening and what it means to their businesses and their clients.

You can register for meshmarketing here.

One the major reasons why we’re so enthusiastic about meshmarketing and how it meets the needs of people within the digital marketing space are the eight workshops that are happening in the afternoon after Hugh MacLeod’s keynote and two panels in the morning.

The workshops are happening because people who attended the marketing stream during the last mesh conference said the keynotes and panels were interesting but they wanted more insight and information into the tools and tactics to help them get things done.

As a result, we’ve put together workshops featuring people who are working in the digital trenches, which means they can provide hands-on insight into best practices, the most compelling tools, and real-world examples of what works and what doesn’t. Here’s a snapshot of the eight workshops.

Insight Into SEM/SEO
Search engine marketing and optimization continues to attract more attention and advertising dollars because advertisers like the fact it is an activity that can be tracked and dynamically adjusted to get the best results. Jeff Quipp will provide insight and perspective on best practices and how to be more successful with your SEM and SEO spending and programs.

Social Media Analytics – What, Why and How
As social media becomes a bigger part of the marketing/advertising landscape, more companies want to know who’s talking about their brands and products, and how they can engage with key influencers and opinion leaders. Katie Delahaye Paine will talk about why social media analytics is being embraced so enthusiastically, the benefits its provides to companies who want to get a better handle on the social media ecosystem, and tips into using social media analytics services.

Tapping Into Facebook
Facebook has more than 300 million registered users – a number that makes it an interesting advertising medium. But many companies are still trying to figure out what works within Facebook. Is advertising effective? Or should marketing activity be focused on Facebook Pages that engage consumers while offering them information about products and services. Facebook Canada’s Elmer Sotto will offer his thoughts on how companies should approach Facebook to reach consumers.

How to Approach Mobile Marketing
With the continued growth of wireless device usage and the emergence of high-speed networks, the mobile advertising market has huge potential for advertisers and marketers. eMarketer suggests the U.S. market will grow to $1.3-billion from $320-million in 2008. One of the big challenges facing advertisers and marketers is determining the most effective mobile campaigns. Tagga Media CEO Amielle Lake will talk about how media planners can create, deploy, manage, and analyze mobile marketing campaigns for their clients.

The Keys to User-Generated Creative
One of the more interesting parts of social media marketing is how a growing number of companies are “outsourcing” the creative process by encouraging consumers to come up with videos and new product designs. Among the most successful campaigns was Dorito’s, which attracting a huge amount of attention with a program in which consumers created Super Bowls ads. Frito Lay’s Andrew Sutherland and BBDO’s Dino Demopoulos will provide behind the scenes insight into how user-generated creative campaigns work, and how they can be effective in driving brand awareness and consumer engagement.

Build Web Properties that Convert
After you have managed to attract people to your Web site, how do you get visitors to convert into customers? What are the tricks in getting them to make a purchase, fill out a contact form, or make a phone call. Dan Martell promise to offer nine tactics focused on Web conversions and user retention to drive real results.

Creating Inbound Marketing Campaigns
Finding it hard to get leads and customers? Are things such as tradeshows, advertising and telemarkteting not working that well? Dharmesh Shah will show you how to attract people using through Google, blogs and social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and provide insider tips from the trenches about what works and what doesn’t when trying to “get found” online.

Targeting Audiences: Practical Uses of Behavioural Targeting and Retargeting
This workshop is an introduction into the world of online audience targeting through the use of behavioural and retargeting technology. In this session, you will get a better understanding of audience targeting and how data is collected and used, receive insight about current privacy issues, and practice advice when it comes to best practices for marketers. Olive Media’s Mladen Raickovic will provide insight how advertising networks work and what they offer.

Here’s why we think you should come to meshmarketing:

1. Hugh MacLeod’s keynote. A marketing consultant, blogger and a well-known cartoonist, Hugh’s going to offer a unique perspective that will draw upon his experience in launching creative and successful marketing campaigns for clients such as Saville Row tailor English Cut, South African winery Stormhoek.

2. The panels. While there are only two panels, we think they’re going to be provocative and engaging.

The panel looking at how digital, public relations and advertising agencies are co-existing and competing will be fascinating at a time when social media is causing the lines between them to blur, making it a bigger challenge for clients to determine who does exactly what these days.

The second panel exploring the role that marketing plays in social media will offer lots of food for thought given the rules of engagement are very different from traditional marketing.

3. Mitch Joel. This is the first time that we have had Mitch at a mesh conference so we’re excited about the insight he’ll offer. The timing for Mitch’s appearance couldn’t be better as his new book, “Six Pixels of Separation” looks at how businesses can use digital marketing and social media to reach a global audience.

4. The workshops. The entire afternoon of meshmarketing will be devoted to eight hands-on, interactive workshops that will put the spotlight on the tools, technique and best practices for digital marketing.

The workshops cover a broad range of topics: everything from how to effectively use SEO/SEM and insight on how to market on Facebook to social media analytics and creating Web sites that convert. The workshops are designed to be interactive and engaging so be prepared to participate and contribute, as well as learn.

5. The socials. The opportunity socialize, network and meet new people is a key part of the mesh experience so we’ve got two socials happening.

The pre-conference party will be an art exhibit featuring Hugh MacLeod’s work, and an opportunity to meet all of our speakers. The after-party, sponsored by the Social Media Group, is open to the high-tech community, and a great opportunity to meeting and mingle.

We’re really exciting about putting on the first meshmarketing. More information about the speakers and the schedule can be found on the Web site. Tickets can be bought through Eventbrite.