"The middle of the funnel is where selling happens." 

I heard that last week from Jabeen Yusuf, Traction's strategy director, in reference to a case study she had read online....

Last night, I attended the gala event for sfBIG, the BIG Star Awards. Traction was nominated for yet another award for our work with Adobe on the "Real or Fake?" campaign.

Yesterday, I was on a (standing-room only) panel at the BtoB Digital Edge conference along with other top interactive agency leaders Lori Feld from MRM and Dennis Reilly from Digitas to discuss emerging trends in digital marketing. After much to and fro in preparation for our panel, we settled on five trends. Here they are....

Al Gore discussed The Future with Walt Mossberg from the WSJ at SXSW this weekend. His new book discusses six shifts that reshaping our planet. One shift that was of particular interest for marketers: an over-reliance on the concept of growth as the core metric for success in society.

SXSW may be known as a launch-pad for startups like Twitter and Foursquare, but like anything that grows big, it has evolved. Just this morning, a Austin newspaper ran a story on how start-ups are having a difficult time launching here.

That may be the case, but SXSW still remains one-of-a-kind and I continue to come year after year. Here are a few thoughts on why.

Just because you can never have enough SXSW Stereotypes as Cats...

Traction has been named Interactive Agency of the Year by BtoB Magazine.

This is the second time Traction has been given this honor—we won in 2009—and the fourth time in the past five years that we've been included in the list of the top three interactive agencies by BtoB.

Back by popular demand. It's your favorite stereotypes of SXSW. As cats.

Last weekend, I bought a new car. It was the culmination of a month of research, soul searching, exploring, negotiating—and driving. I tried to observe the process I went through as a consumer to see if I might learn something about marketing.

I did.

I was able to get a beta invite to Facebook Graph Search a few weeks ago. Many marketers are wondering what this will mean for them. 

After playing with it for a while, my opinion: not too much.