Recently, Maritz hosted its inaugural Innovation Symposium for a select group of 200 employees. The purpose of the event was to bring fresh ideas from industry thought leaders in the areas of disruptive innovation, big data and social business. Brian Solis, Principal Analyst at Altimeter Group, joined the A-List speaker lineup, and shared some powerful ideas on connecting with today’s digital consumer.

Heather Bartel of Maritz shared some of her reactions to Solis’ presentation…

Brian’s insights on marketing during the digital age and making emotional connections to connected consumers.

On the Gifts of Technology: “The gifts of technology are Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn and all the others. These gifts help us better understand how to engage, how to understand what people want, and how they communicate. These gifts help us learn what it takes to be part of a community, and what it takes to lead a community. They are not just channels to market at people or to talk at people, or to do what we’ve always done, like try to drum up interest or drum up reactions. We now have to find the meaning within all this activity.”

What Brian Solis Said

The notion that digital tools and social media allow us, as marketers, to better understand our target audience and what drives their behavior like never before is exactly why I came to work at evolve24. It’s about connecting these public conversations taking place online to behaviors and getting to the underlying emotion(s) that feed the conversation. Brands that infuse this level of social intelligence into their strategic planning processes have a competitive edge – no matter their industry.

Brian Solis said gifts of technology help us better understand how to engage, and we couldn’t agree more.