It was truly and amazing experience to attend the NAMM Show this year. I started off on Friday at the NAMM U Breakfast Session with a creative and informative seminar by David Meerman Scott on Real-time marketing and PR. I was very lucky to win a copy of his book by the same name. Here’s a quote I made sure not to forget to post for you guys: “On the internet you are what you publish”.
After that it was over to the NAMM Idea Center for a 30 minute seminar with Greg Billings and Grant Billings, where they gave an overview of how to use facebook to your business’ advantage.
At the NAMM Hot Zone, producer Jeff Weber talked about “Survival secrets of the music business”. He gave same great tips on touring, music production and selling music. I wrote down an interesting quote from the seminar: “Performance is perfection. Not technique or technology.”
Later on I attended the Social Marketing Mini-Conference which was by far the most educational seminar of the day. Richard McDonald, Senior VP of Marketing & Sales for Fender, talked about the importance of brand management and social networking. He could not emphasize enough having the ability to look at your life equity when branding instead of starting from ground zero, having authenticity and transparency and knowing why you are doing what you’re doing. He was followed by Mike King from Berklee College of Music for a master class entitled “Chaotic Cohesion: an integrated approach to direct to fan marketing and sales”. Mr. King covered DTF marketing strategies and platforms combined with what he called “gatekeeper” based marketing, measuring success, e-mail marketing and service providers, as well as the aspects of fan funding.
Even after a full day of seminars, I hung out a little bit at the Fender lounge and got to meet a couple of my rock n’ roll heroes from Alice Cooper: Keri Kelli and Chuck Garric. Earlier during the day I also got to listen to one of my favorite blues guitarists Eric Gales at the Tone King Amps booth. On Saturday, jazz guitarist extraordinaire Stanley Jordan put on a great show at the PreSonus booth, which I was very lucky to catch with everything that was going on at the expo.
Keri Kelli, Myself, Chuck Garric
Eric Gales and Myself
All in all, going to the NAMM Show was a great experience and I can’t wait for next year and get my networking on! If anybody was keeping up with my twitter during these past few days, i hope you enjoyed my coverage of the event.
