This morning at the Marketing Association’s Brainy Breakfast, I heard from two speakers: Tarver Graham of Gladeye, a digital agency, and Shane Bradley from daily-deal website, GrabOne. It was the best brainy breakfast I’ve been to because I took away some confirmations of what I already thought (always a nice feeling) and some other fresh takeaways. This is what it told me…

At the heart of every idea should be simplicity. If you can’t sum the idea up in a sentence, forget about it. In addition, it’s a great idea, especially if you’re using Facebook as your marketing platform, to involve people’s friends during the entry process of a competition, rather than just at the end. We all like to ponder such questions as which friends we would rather go on holiday with, as we saw in the mixandmatcher competition created by Gladeye. Involving this element of social dynamics is crucial. Getting people to comment and like content after it has been created is tricky, and it’s even trickier when less people are involved in the creation of the content. Oh, and a large dose of fun has to be liberally poured over the top. If it ain’t fun, why are we doing it?

With regards to GrabOne, I personally wonder how daily-deal websites will manifest themselves in our lives in a couple of years time. They are, without doubt, a fantastic idea and I’m sure they will get better at targeting people with deals that are relevant to them. That said, once the current buzz is over, I still feel there will be a bit of a backlash at the regularity with which daily-deal websites contact us. Anyway, that’s a debate for a different day. GrabOne has a great thing going on at the moment and the presentation proved that there is a real connection between social media and sales when the business is genuinely compatible. After all, there’s not a lot that’s more sharable than great offers and saving money.