In our hyper-connected culture of touch screens, smart phones and ironic fashion, the act of trend-spotting has become a science unlike any other.

Trends pulse through many veins of society, from technology and fashion to financial and dietary—trends inform and perpetuate the taste of the masses.  Having the ability to forecast a trend just before it becomes fashionably popular in a given market can mean big successes for an individual idea or even a whole industry.

Why Waste Time on Trendy?
While it may seem like a clichéd act harkening back to high school years spent trying to be the first kid to wear Nike Air Jordans’ or use ICQ messenger, genuine trend spotting is a valuable tool.   The fact is, trends are more than just accidental explosions of popularity; they are reasonably calculable offshoots of human desire. Once you are able to track and foresee trends, there is no limit to the ideas and avenues of profitable innovation that you can seize.

For instance, when the desire for affordable, fast dining outside the home first appeared in the late 1940’s, a few trend-spotters were quick to respond.  Spawning burger and fried chicken stops across America, the fast food nation trend as we know it was conceived, and those originally inspired trend-setters are still pumping out McProfits today.

How Can Trend Spotters Help You?
It boils down to the pattern whereby tracking trends generates inspiration and insight into consumer culture.  And, if you are able to harvest trends before they become mainstreamed and mass produced, not only will you find yourself ahead of the curve, indeed, you can be the innovator of the next successful IPad, American Appareal, Facebook or something even better.

TrendCity
It is in this haze of trends that the TrendCity project becomes obviously necessary.  Ultimately, TrendCity will become the go-to website for groundbreaking trends pertinent to Canadians.  Our website will act as a hub of inspiration for thought leaders and trendsetters in Canada.

By bringing together leading trendsetters we can create the ultimate online community of Canadians to share their insights on the current trends in their area of expertise.  TrendCity members will be able to maximize their networking potentials and feed off the inspiration of other like-minded “Trendies”, while benefiting from exclusive access to groundbreaking trend reports and guest lectures.

TrendCity is currently a work in progress, but we are actively seeking to grow a team of talented Trendies to populate our community.

If you are always ahead of the curve and constantly forecasting future trends (whether it’s science, the arts, design, business, film, technology, education, etc.), send an email to: andi@agentwildfire.com and brag about your trend-talents.

We’re in Montreal this week with our ever-delightful and engaged friends at Infopresse presenting “The Food Industry and Social Media”.

Always enjoy our trips to Montreal and always impressed with the “lean-forward-ness” of the Infopresse audience. April 14th is the date at the Park Hyatt Regency Montreal.

Hopefully we can parlay some of the leanings from our book Wikibrands alongside our command of great social media done well in Food, to educate and trade conversations with an engaged audience.

I’ll be sharing the stage with other fellow foodie/business potentates - Luc Durand from Ipsos Descarie, Pierre-Bernard Dow Blanchet from Taxi and Patrice Resther from Haussmann Conseil to give a full 360 degree view of how to do business in “alimentation” for 2010 and beyond.

Please feel free to chat with us after the session as we have dedicated the afternoon to meeting some of Montreal’s finest digital players, progressive marketeers and engaged business people.

Looking for 5 key potential roles to fill given our expected 2010 activity. If you want to create impact on cool projects from day one, work hard and play hard - we want to hear about from you. :

Word of Mouth Project Leader - (Full Time and Part time, contract) you are the hub that turns our community and word of mouth wheel - having a great intellectual curiosity, penchant for above-and-beyond client service with a capacity for overcoming hurdles and conceptualizing, planning and delivering not just good but awesome stuff that gets noticed and talked about. You love variety, are comfortable working in new environments/situations and also have a discipline for getting the job done. Social media savvy for our clients, socially likable for our partners and socially connected to our influencers are essentials.

Trend-savvy, Lead Tastemaker (Intern) - you have an instinct for what’s next, can intelligently identify new breaking and creative stuff and can write conversationally about all of it - more than just fashion, or gadgets or mashing numbers and research - you drink up culture in full gulps - the interesting fads, the seasonal styles, the cultural trends and long range futures (but please no divas or egomaniacs)., You’re comfortable in helping build aesthetically pleasing print and web stuff and hosting an extended community of Canadian tastemakers and trendspotters

Active, Fitness and Sports Sherpa (Intern) - you can’t sit still on the couch, you have a try anything once attitude to fitness, outdoors, health, play, sport, gear, style and adventure - you are a passionate active-ite, word hard/play hard and have experience in social media, building community and building grassroots events/experience and activation programs. Sponsorship, business development and online content management are also key needs. A perfect passion play for somebody that leads this lifestyle and wants to work in an entrepreneurial environment.

Community Portal Web Developer/Producer - you have a clear understanding and history of building good user experience-driven environments, although you understand the tech and are smart at the code, you actually care about the eventual use of the web environment, understand its connection to affiliated social networks and also put a high premium on design. Oh, and deadlines are important to you. If you’re interested in leading some of the best leading edge work in Canada, this is your job.

Wordpress Expert - you not only know how to develop in Wordpress, you know how to integrate into other platforms, effectively content manage it, have a keen design eye to tailor it and can break it in order to provide the functionality our blogs and websites need. Wordpress and guru have been placed next to your name at some point in your life.

If interested, send along a brief cover letter that grabs our attention and a CV or portfolio to match to: spreadtheword@agentwildfire.com

An invite and referral-only gathering of style-conscious tastemakers, innovation brokers, culture-savvy trendspotters & seriously connected ringleaders who live, work, play & think ahead of the mainstream.

the big idea:
The future is already here, it’s just not widely distributed yet. Less than 4% of the population are true trailblazers of culture - the people that develop incredibly creative or innovative stuff or the people that spot the best stuff first. They are incredible allies for brands trying to build crowdsourced content and creative, sparks for innovation research and seed ambassadors for new launches. TrendCity is the first Canadian-focused network of thousands of these early-adopting people.

elements:
Email newsletter and Insight Blog - exposure among leading Canadian people, places and things
“Wall of Orange” Trendspotter Network - a database of informed early market movers
“Wall of Purple” Tastemaker Network - a hothouse of creative talent and ideasparks
Trend Reports - periodic and customized reports on marketplace and cultural trends
TrendCity Beta Testers - feedback from informed market tastemakers
TrendCity Launching Pad - twice-yearly live event platform for launching products
TrendCity Consulting - workshops and private events on creative ideas and insight on what’s next

benefits:
- superior concept research
- advance testing group
- seeded tastemaker and trendspotter exposure
- innovation stimulus
- seeded and credible ambassadors
- marketplace insight

scope:
- Geography - Canada - Major Cities
- Timing - All year - April and September events, November professional event
- Scale - 5,000 qualified trendspotters/tastemakers

the right partners:
- New launches
- Buzz industries –i.e. entertainment/fashion
- Tech, gadgets, hardware and wireless
- Innovation and insight chasers
- Premium brands and exclusive products
- User-generated content seekers
- Non-traditional exploratory techniques

contact:
Agent Wildfire - Canada’s Word of Mouth Experts www.agentwildfire.com 416-255-4500

Plans for 2010 include 27 events and 4 private executive events across 5 cities – Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary and Ottawa - with membership climbing to 7,000 invited or referred members.

the big idea:
“What would happen if we gathered together the most interesting people across the Canadian business world?” You know those people – the intelligent and crazy smart, the passionate and opinionated, the mavericks and the mavens, the change agents and titans of commerce, with some undefinable trait that makes them extraordinarily interesting.

The League of Kickass (LOK) is that group; a key influencer network of Canadian business people slightly ahead of their time.

elements:
Communing Online – LOK members access a community-based site of their peers, customizing their profile to include videos and photos to share with other members, participating in writing blog posts and discussion forums and inviting other friends and colleagues to join the league

Connecting Live - members are invited to full group events held once every one-four months in their respective cities for inspiring talks and panel discussions by fascinating people at one-of-a-kind venues – Toronto and Vancouver and soon to be Montreal, Ottawa and Calgary.

Exclusive VIP Sessions – intimate dinners/lunches every three months of leading executives of 24-48 people where they can network, collaborate, converse and get inspired in the company of their peers who share their passion.

External Blog, Video and Social Extensions – breaking LOK news, meeting wrap-ups, surveys and interviews with Canada’s top business leaders and guest thought leaders on our dedicated blog & extended out on key social networks.

Industry Segments of Members
- Senior business visionaries and CEOs
- Marketing leaders
- Media newsmakers
- Digital and technology experts
- Communications professionals, agency heads and creative directors
- Designers & architects
- Entrepreneurs and startup founders
- Leading university academics and deans
- Culture and entertainment celebrities
- Strategists and consultants
- Not for profit leaders and government
- Plus an Under 30 sub-community of young talent

the benefits:
- The LOK is one of the only professional networks in Canada to pull leading talent across a wide range of business and creative disciplines to provide sponsor-friendly reach
- The LOK meets regularly offline and online to deliver sponsor-friendly touchpoints:
- The LOK affiliates with the best of the best people, exposes the best ideas and elevates debate and new perspectives to generate sponsor-friendly perception and exposure via:
-Unique venues and event formats
-Great, inspiring speakers and rainmakers
-Passionate, talented members
-Relevant themes and ideas
-And now top sponsors

scope:
- Geography - Canada - Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary and Montreal
- Timing - All year - 25 full member events, 2 under 30 events and 4 private exec. events
- Scale - 7,000 approved and/or referred members

the right partners:
- a forward thinking, innovative or ideas-driven firm
- a business-to-business firm
- a company targeting a business/creative audience
- single event partners -for topic-interested clients
- companies looking for HR enhancement/talent acquisition effort
- a company with an ongoing stream of industry news
- a media company
- launch products/startup companies

urls:
The League of Kickass Content/Blog Site - http://theleagueofkickass.com/
LOKBP Community Site - http://theleagueofkickassbusinesspeople.ning.com/
LOKU30 Community Site - http://theleagueofkickassunder30.ning.com/

contact:
Agent Wildfire - Canada’s Word of Mouth Experts www.agentwildfire.com 416-255-4500

the big idea:
The good stuff on web is still local. And while there are plenty of local media stops that cater to entertainment, music, real estate, dining out, tourist locales…etc., nothing that we have found caters to local active life. Big opportunity. Not only are these people passionate, they are also an incorrigibly social, high income, high educated bunch…and they are waiting to discover your next big thing (i.e. trip, purchase, prized gear, exclusive experience). Generation Go provides the platform to be discovered by these people.

elements:
Community - a targeted influencer community of active people that can be harnessed for variety of benefits
Blog - a local insider blog that surfaces unique neighborhood experiences, events, personalities, sales, getaways and gear
Email Nerwsletter - a periodic content and sponsored email that surfaces the best stuff to get off the couch and …out there
Passport - a seasonally relevant passport pocket guide to the best in the city
Campaign Go-Licious - a concentrated period of grassroots events, promotion and outreach to people who want to get active
Go Events/Experiences - special events that appeal to the competitive, charitable and corporate teams of the city
Go Directory - a local listing of the best active venues in the city

7 Channels of Activity
- adventure
- fitness
- health
- gear and style
- outdoors
- play
- sports

the benefits:
- An extremely valuable grassroots active audience
- Multiple sponsorable touchpoints
- Local activation of campaigns and marketing efforts
- A unique city-based online and live world forum
- Category-exclusive sponsorship opportunities
- Corporate social responsibility for healthy living, outdoors/environment and community participation

scope:
- Geography - Toronto (Vancouver in late 2010 and Montreal in early 2011)
- Timing - All year - with concentrated Spring and Fall activity windows
- Scale - 1000s of influencers exposed, 7 different touchpoints

the right clients:
- an adventurous, fitness or health-seeking target customer
- an active pursuit, vacation or getaway
- a new product or service launch
- a seasonally relevant activity or campaign
- a campaign for improved health, fitness, sustainability or urban renewal
- an upcoming launch party, competition or charity event
- a breakthrough product/product feature

url:
www.gengo.ca

contact:
Agent Wildfire - Canada’s Word of Mouth Experts www.agentwildfire.com 416-255-4500

the big idea:
The web is filled with “dreck”, wouldn’t you want to find the best of the web all in one place, customized to your interest. And wouldn’t you want you brand sitting in or next to that content too. Although global sites exist, there is yet to be an aggregated best of the web for Canadians, that’s The Influencers in the Know. Tune into our curated web, find out what the influencers are reading and discover special announcements. Content also linked to TheInfluencers.ca

the benefits:
- Cutting edge web exposure/sponsorship for innovative brands
- Target selective influencer audiences
- Promote relevant events
- Conduct blogger outreach
- Provide sponsored, seeded content
- Recruit influencer network
- Optimize search engine rankings

scope:
- Geography - National
- Timing - Fourth quarter 2010
- Scale - 1000s of influencers exposed

the right clients:
- an early adopter, passion-driven audience
- a new launch or campaign
- an upcoming event
- a breakthrough product/product feature
- a content rich, taste-appealing web destination

url:
www.theinfluencersintheknow.com

contact:
Agent Wildfire - Canada’s Word of Mouth Experts www.agentwildfire.com 416-255-4500

We recognized that at least initially this prospective client was seeing us as some glorified variant of a CRM firm or perhaps even lower in the food chain - a customer headhunter. Nothing could be further from the point.

Unfortunately, given the lack of exposure for anything that isn’t mass media driven or social media trendy, marketers and industry professionals aren’t getting enough training, coaching or intellectual curiosity to discover the “real world, out there.” Agent Wildfire is trying to change that.

Here’s why you should care.

Fact - Word of mouth is the #1 growth engine in marketing. Don’t take our word for it, take theirs.

Fact - Word of mouth is the #1 thing linked to business growth. Don’t take our word for it, take theirs.

Fact - Word of mouth is growing. It’s more trusted and more beneficial in this economy. Once again, we’ll lean on others to make our arguments for us. But we have a great presentation ourselves if you need back up.

Fact - As much as social media has become the jewel in the digital crown and an important breeding ground for word of mouth contagion and cool stuff, more than 80% of word of mouth happens offline. You need to know how to affect these conversations too. Once again, others will support.

Even for people that overcome their standoffishness, they need to understand what word of mouth marketing and media really is vs. the much more streamlined TV buy process “make commercial, buy media, air in chunks of 30 or 60 seconds”.

Here it is unplugged then. Although we’ve counted up to 29 different types of programs we actually execute with many different audiences, objectives and timelines, the stripped down version of what we do rests on 8 sequential activities that we’ve conveniently put into the acronym WILDFIRE.

What’s the Big, Buzzworthy Idea - does this make me want to get involved?

In a separate post, we have detailed the 36 reasons why people buzz - we develop conversation-inducing themes and stories that tap into these motivations and grab people by the heart, brain or wallet and make them notice, talk about and advocate the program and underlying brand(s). Most agencies don’t focus on the repeatability of a message or longevity of engagement but instead focus on how to convince you as an individuals that the brand is purchasable right there and then. Missed oppportunity - they rent your audiences, we build them.

Influencer outreach and engagement

We find and invite your 6 types of influencers (recruited depending on your objective) and get them enthused about what your doing. They become our front row seeded audience that delivers effective early insight, ambassadorship and content. It’s tough investigative work with a lot of sweat equity. Most agencies and firms in our area, don’t even bother to subscribe a different level of importance on their target population, we do. It involved knowledge of who they are, what motivates them, who do they know, how do they feel important and what keeps them involved.

Laying the groundwork - building the platform, tools and networked extensions

We construct, host and administer the key web platform, tools, widgets, social media, mobile and offline prongs to your community or campaign, ensuring it has the best chance of getting noticed and spotted, rebroadcasted, mashuped and referred. This can take on many shapes but importantly, the technology involved in anything word of mouth is typically less than 20% of the overall equation. These are not templated approaches but require a marriage of a number of talents we call the Unagency.Tech firms and specialists would suggest a “build it and they must come” attitude and with most agencies, the web is an afterthought. We take the middle ground approach.

Deliver an experience - before you ask people to get others excited, they have to get excited themselves

It’s a cardinal WOM rule - what’s in it for them. Does your word of mouth initiative pass the sniff test. People don’t talk about average stuff they want stuff they can use as social currency to pass onto others. Delivering a transforming or immersive experience that make people appraise, reconsider and talk about the brand is what we do well. Although we love the efficiency of the web - we’re one of the only firms in this space that is media-agnostic, and for a lot of brands this means a physical touchpoint is required too. These experiences generally fall into six camps - brand sampling, event/experience, VIP preview/suctomization, special activity based, research advisor based or altruism-based.

Fan the flames of activity - get into the right places with the right motivations

A good percentage of people can drive traffic to a site - that’s the price of admission - we need to stoke something deeper. Revisits and rebroadcast is our business. How do we get people to care so deeply about something that they will be moved to act and involve their social circles. Oh, and do it again and again. Much tougher. Smart use of polls, memes, stories, collaboration work, user generated content, trivia, nomination, graduation, photos, videos, groups, messaging, lists are key factors….essentially answering the question what is the sweetspot between the brand wants and what the member wants.

Interact with the community - staff for dialogue

This neighborhood called word of mouth has many two-way streets. We staff up for the conversation based on either our own hires or extensions of our company called community managers - they stop communities and campaigns from becoming ghost towns. They bridge the role between company and customer and incubate the flow of conversation, buzz, content, recruitment and feedback. Here are the core 15 roles of community managers in programs we manage. In other agencies, this role is virtually non-existent leading to initial focus/interest followed by massive amounts of lapsed and disinterested users.

Research and feedback - getting to the insights and metrics

An important part of any marketing medium, particularly one in its adolescence is measuring what you do. From both the soft qualitative side and the hard quantitative side, we sift through the analytics, poll results, user submissions, referrals, redemptions and social media impressions to generate a sense of what impact we’re creating. Some food for thought here.

Expand the idea - life stage management and 1+1=3

Great communities and campaigns start with a simple idea and extend from there. Once we’ve developed traction on a new initiative, we like to add fuel to the fire. Informed by the research, we usually press our clients to add more features, more integration, more partners, more audiences, more geography and create a bigger inferno to support a growing universe. In particular, communities have a lifespan of their own - many don’t mature for 2-3 years and require constant tweeking, tilling and rotating to match the needs of their audiences at the time.

Simple, right? No.

Whereas we might agree this seems like simple kitchen science - there is an artistry in the details and an advantage in having lived in this world for so long on a dedicated basis.

When you’re looking for a firm in the word of mouth arena and the broader grassroots universe, they need the full body:

A heart - they have to have a passion for this stuff, WOM is for lovers and you’ve either got it or you don’t - ask the practitioner to show them their blog, their social network profiles and that they live in this space outside of the 9-to-5 rat race.

A brain - intelligently knowing how to link to a strategy and knowing where to step and not step is fundamentally important to being a trusted practitioner. Give the WOM suitor a chance - a light worded brief and a few days should be enough to know whether they can come back with strategic brilliance that makes intuitive sense or gimmicky fool’s gold that will be your marketing plan’s orphan child.

Arms and legs - having credibility and a foundation in the word of mouth space, pool of influencers and social media is necessary, plus an ability and capacity to reinvent and make brilliantly captivating and new stuff happen is the lifeblood of a word of mouth enterprise. Ask your WOM suitors what they’ve done to communities and campaigns to stretch dollars, exposure or engagement more than the client could themselves, how broad was their approach in generating offline and online conversations and how they dealt with adversity.

Instincts - knowing what might make a small idea, bigger and a big idea massive is a function of a partner vested in both the client’s business and the real world. Put them on the spot - ask what are there top 10 influences or inspirations in the WOM space - if you hear a lot of humming and hawing - they likely are pretenders and not bonafide WOM pros.

A strong gut - data plays a big role but at some point, information needs to lead to insight and insight needs to be coloured by the judgment of what will delight, surprise and motivate in the real world. When you receive a proposal back, at least one of their ideas should strike a human emotional chord that suggests the idea might be a runaway hit - if not, you are likely receiving the “paint by numbers, today it’s beer, tomorrow it’s soap” type of approach.

Attached you will find the 2009 Buzz Report, an inaugural research study that provides a pulsecheck on Canadian business leader’s response to the new landscape of marketing, media, customer experience and brand-building.

This advance report is based on 300 online survey responses from some of Canada’s top executive marketing, business, digital and communications leaders polled online from late 2008 and first half 2009.

Unique among research reports in Canada, the Buzz Report study takes a complete look at new marketing, media and customer-driven strategies & tactics; not just general macro spending trends or specific social media.

This report was generated by Canada’s leading grassroots marketing, media and research company Agent Wildfire (www.agentwildfire.com) and sent to you as a favoured colleague ahead of widespread release.

Formal release of study results will be launched on August 3, 2009.

Please feel free to share the results of the study with your audience(s).

Key Highlights of the Study:

- 79% of study respondents are optimistic about social media/word of mouth delivering value in their organizations

- 67% expect investment of money, time and resources in social media/word of mouth to grow in the coming year
- “Awareness, publicity and buzz” is the #1 stated objective for initiating social media/word of mouth initiatives
- Social networks, social media, mobile, user generated content and influencer marketing are predicted to have the biggest new media segment growth in the coming years
- 32% believe a conversation worthy idea/concept is the key attribute of word of mouth, the #1 ranked choice
- 38% believe communications/PR is the most accountable owner for social media/word of mouth in an organziation
- Measurement, lack of budget and loss of control were considered the biggest obstacles to adopting social media/word of mouth
- Lack of authenticity, lieing and not creating two-way dialogue were considered the biggest sins of current practitioners
- 83% strongly agree/agree that agencies need to reinvent themselves to stay relevant in this
climate
- 59% believe user generated content/social media is a bigger benefit vs. 25% believe it as a bigger threat to their business
- 52% track content generated from social media and word of mouth, most other measures are tracked by less than half of the respondents polled
- 70% of people do not necessarily agree that Facebook will be the dominant social network in 3 years

If you want to interview the author of the study Sean Moffitt or get supporting assets, graphs or visuals, please send an email to jasmine@agentwildfire.com .