Last week I had the chance to present our Marketing with Meaning concept and hand out copies of my new book, The Next Evolution of Marketing, at the iMedia Brand Summit in San Diego. There were some excellent case studies, including a Dunkin’ Donuts case that I wrote about here on Friday. But today I wanted to share an interesting experiment of my own that shows how meaningful marketing can even be the basis of a 90-second new business pitch.

One of the recurring iMedia events is something that its organizers call “One Minute Matchups.”  It’s essentially a speed-dating concept in which “buyers” sit at tables around a room and “sellers” rotate every minute or two and pitch their product or service. As odd as it may seem, it can actually be very useful. For both buyers and sellers it is a low-investment way to quickly size up whether there is enough interest to merit a follow-up discussion, and both sides get to weed out those that are not a great fit.

In March of this year I first experienced the “One Minute Matchups” concept at iMedia’s Breakthrough conference. In this case, I was a “buyer” and many specialty media vendors and digital services companies rotated to speak with me. I was disappointed, though, that nearly all of the 40 sellers I met with had done zero research on my agency. So most of the first 90 seconds was me answering their question, “What does Bridge Worldwide do?”  Needless to say, I didn’t find any great matches.

But this time was a little bit different. On Thursday evening, just 36 hours before my flight out, I got an email from the folks at iMedia with a list of companies that I would be matched up with. I actually had no idea that my keynote address would afford me this opportunity. As an agency guy at this conference I was to be in the “seller” position, so now it would be my turn to see if I could do a better job of pitching. I huddled with Jonathan Richman, my Director of Business Development (and top blogger over at Dose of Digital). We quickly decided that I had to do something meaningful in my matchups, and likely something related to my keynote topic. We decided that the best thing to do would be to bring each company one or two ideas for how they might practice meaningful marketing. I stayed up until 1 a.m. that night coming up with ideas by using their websites and my gut as a guide.  Then on Friday Jonathan and Carole Amend from our team worked on turning these ideas into blown-up cards with the idea on one side and my contact information on the other.  I picked them up Saturday morning on the way to the airport and they looked great.  The image at the top of the screen is one example (the person from Atkins didn’t show up), and at the bottom you can see the contact info side.

Now, let me pause to say that it’s very, very difficult to sell a full-service digital agency like Bridge Worldwide in only 90 seconds. While brand managers may feel free to “date” specialty service providers, working with a full-service agency is like getting married–as you typically stay with the agency for a long time and make them strategic partners on the core business. Maybe one or two of the marketers in attendance expected to hire an agency sometime soon. My real goal was to leave each person with a positive brand experience with Bridge Worldwide, so that when they are looking for a new i-agency at some future time they remember to give us a call.

It was an interesting experience sharing my ideas at the event.  My time with the first group of about 25 marketers came before I had given my keynote speech, so they had no clue who I was or what I was speaking about. My approach was certainly unlike others that the marketers had experienced. About one-third of them reacted very positively and were appreciative to get something personalized and clever.  The other two-thirds had a hard time figuring out how to respond, mainly because they thought I was selling them a specific idea. So there was some defensiveness (“we already have an agency”) and dismissal (“we tried that once and it didn’t work).  I felt pretty good, though, because I knew my keynote the next day would help connect the dots in their minds.

Sure enough, when I went to the next batch of matchups just minutes after leaving the stage of my keynote address, every marketer I spoke to understood what I was doing. I also changed my talking points a bit to adjust, for example, by starting off with “I’m not selling you an idea; I’m selling you on how we work as an agency partner.” People were overwhelmingly positive and excited to hear the ideas I shared, and a handful promised to reach out on some specific work.

But one of the best things about this approach was that I really enjoyed these one-minute matchups.  The decision to bring a unique idea for everyone forced me to do my homework on the companies, and better prepared me for longer discussions with prospects over meals and cocktails.  The ideas gave me more confidence in sitting down with a stranger for 90 seconds, and I felt great knowing that I would be giving them something worth remembering when they got back to the office later that week.  This approach was more meaningful to me, too.

Part of me thought that I shouldn’t write this blog post and share this idea with the world. I wondered if now everybody else would take the idea and outdo us at the next iMedia show.  But the reality is that most people just don’t bother to make the effort. It’s too easy to stick with the traditional path and “rules” of the game, whether you’re a salesperson or a big brand. But it goes to show that our success is less about what our competitors do, and more about how we take advantage of new opportunities. And as my friend Brian McNamara always said, “If it was easy, anyone could do it.”