Resource Interactive To Host iCitizen™ Client Symposium |
COLUMBUS, OH August 31, 2006 - Leading digital consumer experience agency Resource Interactive is hosting a two-day client symposium this October, featuring several of the nations most recognized experts and innovators in online media, marketing, advertising and economics.
Opening the conference is Chris Anderson, whose book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More is currently #3 on the Wall Street Journal non-fiction bestseller list. Also in the speaker lineup are Advertising Age columnist and NPR cohost of "On the Media" Bob Garfield; Steven Berlin Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good for You; and Ze Frank, popular digital performance artist and blogger.
Resource Interactive president Kelly Mooney will present a sneak preview of the firms next book, Open Branding, due out in 2007.
The invitation-only event focuses on the most empowered and engaged consumer since mass marketing gave way to niche: the iCitizen. A radical evolution of the prosumerthat species of consumer-turned-producer identified by futurist Alvin Toffler in his book The Third Wave, iCitizens have more power to co-opt the tools of cultural production than even Toffler could have imagined, changing fundamentally the role that brands play in our lives.
With access to an increasingly vast array of digital DIY creation and distribution tools, iCtizens:
- self-publish and peer-review, establishing alternative forms of cultural authority.
- form fast communities, tribal affiliations, or smart mobs that circumvent or subvert the one-way messages of Madison Avenue and the mainstream press.
- expect to be part of the value creation of goods and services and to feel engaged in the process rather than managed by it.
Nancy Kramer, founder and CEO of Resource Interactive, said, "Nearly a year in the making, our iCitizen Client Symposium affirms our long-standing commitment to thought leadership in interactive marketing. With groundbreaking research often comes new nomenclature and so we began our planning with a new word, one that would capture our eras focus on the individual and virtual communities instead of the old-style celebrity and the corporation. We then devised original programming that would be of the greatest value and interest to our clients, and organized the event into two chapters: inspiration and application. Were looking forward to taking the inspiration and insights from the first days presentations and panels and applying them to clients specific business challenges in hands-on, intimate workshops on the second day."
The conference (icitizen.resource.com) will take place October 26 at The Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University, and continue October 27 at Resource Interactive headquarters in the Arena District. iCitizen culminates with Resource Interactives 25th anniversary party on Friday night.
About Resource Interactive
Known widely for our revolutionizing consumer insights, Resource Interactive is an Adweek Top Twenty independent interactive agency that helps the world's leading companies plan, create, build, assess, and optimize the digital experience of their customers and other constituencies. Resource Interactive has helped companies such as Wal-Mart, P&G, Restoration Hardware, Apple, Victoria's Secret, Hewlett-Packard, Crutchfield, Bath & Body Works, Limited Brands, Reebok, NetJets, and Kohler use their online channels to drive sales, reduce costs, create community, and deepen brand loyalty.
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Contact: Lara Lebeiko
Marketing Communications Manager
614.621.2888 ph
614.621.2873 fx
llebeiko@resource.com