It's day one for the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas, and I'm lucky enough to be on the ground here at the Austin Convention Center. The entire city is buzzing with geekery - you can't swing a 3-foot USB cable without smacking someone who's busy blogging, tweeting or generally acting engrossed in their laptop or iPhone. (author included)

So far, the big buzz has been around location-based applications and services like Foursquare and Gowalla - and the announcement that Twitter turned on its version of location-based status for all users. Add to that other services like SitBy.Us and Plancast, and it seems that everyone wants to know where you are and where you are going.

One's thing for sure - EVERYONE is using these tools here. The question will be if they can make the crossover to mainstream culture the way Twitter did in 2007. If there is a front runner right now, it's Foursquare, with all of the exposure it is getting lately. Gowalla is putting on the full court press here in Austin, though Will it be enough to command the attention of the digerati?

It’s safe to say many of the media’s most influential editors and reporters are based in major markets like New York, Los Angeles or Chicago. And, while brands can be successful communicating with these reporters via phone and email, there is nothing quite like a face-to-face meeting between a brand representative and a reporter to foster a fruitful relationship.

Brands can take several approaches to these meetings:

• Deskside Tours – a brand representative travels to the offices of several media outlets over the course of a day. Reporters often find these convenient because they don’t need to leave their offices and may even feel more comfortable sharing their thoughts about what your brand is presenting. But remember, deskside tours can be time consuming for the brand representative who has to get from place to place.
• Editor Events - editors gather in one location to hear an announcement from a brand. This format allows your brand representatives to speak to a variety of people in one location, but limits the amount of one-on-one interaction. It’s valuable if there are a lot of products to share (that don’t travel well) or if there is a spokesperson who has limited availability.
• Lunch Meetings. Of course, there are always good old fashion lunch meetings, coffee and drinks. This is encouraged when brands want to foster a deep relationship with a reporter – maybe they are offering him or her an exclusive – or if the reporter is a new contact and the brand would like to build a more personal rapport.

When planning for these meetings, here are a few things to think about:

• What type of media are you trying to reach? If it’s high-level business media, a CEO or senior level executive should be a part of the meetings. If it’s a lifestyle editor, an industry expert could be valuable.
• Is the reporter in high demand? If so, you may need to get creative with your meetings or events. If you are launching a nail polish, try offering her a manicure at the editor event, or if it’s a fashion product, consider planning a fashion show.
• What do you need to be prepared? For face-to-face meetings, it’s important to have any available press materials, key messages points, background information on the reporter and his or her recent stories. It is also helpful to develop sample Q&A, anticipating any tough questions the reporter may have. If your spokesperson is new to media interviews, he or she may require media training.

While a lot of planning often goes into face-to-face meetings, brands often experience positive results and find, in the long run, they’re well worth the effort. I know I have!

--Jennifer Newberg, Account Supervisor

Customer service is more than just a 1-800 line or salesperson who helps you. As a marketer, I believe it is really about external brand communications and ultimately enhancing brand equity. Now more than ever, a small, isolated customer service incident can become a national PR disaster. For those companies who don’t make customer service a priority or handle situations the right way, it can cost them dearly.

It’s simple – failure to meet consumers’ expectations can damage brands. According to a recent study from Genesys, with research firm Greenfield Online and Datamonitor/Ovum analysts, U.S. companies lose an estimated $83 billion each year due to lost purchases and customers as a direct result of a poor experience. In fact, 71 percent of consumers have ended a relationship because of a poor customer service experience.

Consumers don’t want to feel like they are not being heard. These days, with the help of social media and other channels, consumers have a much bigger voice. This is something we saw with film director Kevin Smith and his recent Southwest Airlines flight experience. While Kevin has a slightly larger platform than most, he was still able to catapult his unpleasant flight experience to national news.

It is important for brands to set up the proper infrastructure to ensure communication is being trickled all the way down and to the right people. There is nothing worse than consumer-facing employees not being educated about programs or products that are heavily promoted through other disciplines (e.g., ads, POP, email newsletters). Some things to consider when developing a customer service strategy are:

• Ease of implementation
• Employee communications
• Pertinent information distribution across all appropriate channels
• Program-specific reactive responses
• Online conversation monitoring
• Direct-to-consumer communications, if appropriate

Brands should be willing to adapt to the times and be open to change. A plan that was well received for the last 25 years might still be outdated. At the end of the day, the ball is in the brands’ courts. If they choose to put emphasis on evaluating their customer service efforts, it may save them big in the end and win the hearts of consumers across the country.

-- Jessica Lappen, Account Supervisor

There seems to be a trend emerging wherein agencies and clients use new media and Web analytics to catch each other sleeping. It started with the Zappos agency review in July in which one respondent, Ignited, tracked Zappos’ review of its submission and found the company had spent fewer than 15 seconds per page viewing only five of the 25 pages submitted. Right, wrong or otherwise – as usual both sides have their story – the point is that Zappos was “found out” thanks to Google Analytics.

And just yesterday, Marty St. George, senior vice president of marketing and commercial at JetBlue, tweeted the following:

We're pitching our advertising AOR. Curious on digital savvy....first test is how many of the agencies will find me on twitter. #sneaky
10:57 AM Feb 17th from UberTwitter

I would look at these examples as an eye opener for parties on both sides – you better be on top of new media or it’s likely to bite you in the “you-know-what.” The hashtag #sneaky at the end of JetBlue’s tweet gives me a sense of the spirit in which it was done. But, for Ignited, I think it was a legitimate test to see if there was any valuable return on its hours of time invested.

Some follow-up tweets from JetBlue indicate the sneak attack may not have been as fun as initially thought, but it was a great wake-up call to agencies on the types of metrics some clients are beginning to use. No longer should we just view new media as a way to communicate, but realize that they’re also a way to track us, like a bloodhound. Sarbanes-Oxley would be proud – you can run, but you can’t hide.

As someone involved in business development, these tactics initially make me question the authenticity of a relationship we might be about to embark upon. If the client and/or agency is setting up “tests” for us to fail or pass and we don’t even know we’re being tested, it seems sneaky (no hashtag needed) to me – the wrong way to lay the foundation of a trusting relationship. Shouldn’t the quality of our work, the quality of our strategies speak volumes? Isn’t that what they are hiring us for?

The JetBlue example also feels arrogant. But even if I “passed” the test, found the tweet and presumably were as smart as the client, I’d constantly have to wonder what next test was being administered. Would I start to think up some of my own tests to get the upper hand (even if I never told the other party)? Wow, this could get interesting…