Dave Balter Tech Prom from Apolis Media on Vimeo.

She’s got a gig in a play up the street and had stopped by the restaurant for dinner. Afterward, she shared this from her Twitter account…

Guy Niel, Post390′s GM, picked up the thread on HootSuite, and the restaurant responded with this:

She said something nice in return, this time with a link to Post390′s Twitter account:

And the restaurant responded:

The whole thing took an hour. By morning, Post390′s banana cream pie was in the Boston Globe, and in New York Magazine popular food blog, Grub Street Boston.

There’s so much to be learned about how marketing has changed from this silly little exchange.

First, the spark that ignited this whole episode was banana cream pie worth talking about.  We say this all the time… but your product is your marketing. If it’s not good enough to inspire advocacy, measured by the creation of net promoters, you need to focus on that first. If it is, your marketing should flow organically from that.

Second, listening is no longer optional. There’s a conversation happening on the web that you care about. It might be about you. It’s probably about at least one of your competitors. It’s definitely about the problem your product solves, or you wouldn’t be selling enough of it to care.

Finally, the power of digital media lay in it’s potential to create scalable intimacy. A conversation between a local brand and a genuine celebrity took place in real-time last night, in front of the 90,000 people that followed both. That was inconceivable 10 years ago, but it’s how smart people do digital today.

Kudos to the good folks at Post390 for embracing this model so fully in such a short time. You guys earned what happened last night and this morning, and I’ll be stopping by for some banana cream pie myself a little later today.

Social events have and will continue to play an important role in knitting us all together, which is why I’d like to take a moment to invite you personally to the upcoming TechProm on Thursday, October 20.

Dave Balter’s TechProm is the brainchild of a few of the more interesting characters in the Boston startup ecosystem, including spiritual father and serial entrepreneur Dave Balter, serial diva and Runkeeper Director of Marketing Sarah Hodges, startup vet and Apricot Capital angel Jennifer Lum, DART Boston evangelist and aspiring lothario Cort Johnson, and your truly.

The backstory is pretty straightforward… We were talking one night about how a lot of the cool kids on the scene were probably somewhat less than that back in high school, and somebody hit on the idea that it sure would be fun to have another shot at Prom. Dave agreed to support and lend his name to the gig, and the rest is pretty much history.

There’ll be hors d’oeuvres, dancing, and an open bar from 8:30-1:30 at the Fairmont Copley Plaza, along with a whole bunch of goodies and surprises we’ve lined up for all attendees. Tickets start at an accessible $20, thanks to sponsors including Wayfair, BULLHORN, GSN, BzzAgent, Boston Seed Capital, Holland-Mark and Carbonite. The theme is “Sunglasses at Night,” and you should come in your ’80s Prom best, stag or with a date.

The World Premier of our new promo video appears below… enjoy it, share it with the digerati you want to hang with, and we’ll see you on Thursday, October 20.

Assuming an even split between the $4.99 and $9.99 subscription plans, that means Spotify has established a recurring, sticky, high-growth, ~$16 million annual business in just a few weeks. Pretty impressive, for a bunch of Euro-interlopers in the Land of Jobs.

Boston startup scenesters are everywhere on the service: David Cancel, Chris Selland, Doug Haslam, Gradon Tripp, Jennifer Lum, Jon Pierce, Lee Hower, Mike Langford, Mike Schneider,Michelle McCormack, Mark Watkins, Nathan Burke, Rob Go, Scott Kirsner, and Steve Garfield, just to name a few (my profile is here.)

So what’s the appeal?  Read the rest of my review in Bostinnovation.

Related articles

• Is Spotify’s Growth Impressive? (siriusbuzz.com)
• Century Media Pull Repertoire From Spotify (bravewords.com)
• The Spotify Effect (seattleweekly.com)
• Report: 1.4 million Spotify users in US, with many paying (digitaltrends.com)
• Pandora vs. Spotify (testingtruechange.com)
• Spotify reported to have 175,000 paid-up Americans, valued at $1.1 beeellion (engadget.com)
• Spotify Already Has 1.4 Million U.S. Users, But Will That Growth Continue? (nytimes.com)
• What is Spotify? (contested.wordpress.com)

The constant winner in this space? Mobile apps. Gartner estimates mobile app store revenues will hit $15billion in 2011. A market that didn’t even exist 5 years ago. And now, just as agencies have established their mobile app divisions to help eager marketers take advantage of this emerging medium… whap! The DIY app market is here.

At Holland-Mark, we have leveraged a couple of the DIY mobile platforms (Mobile Roadie and AppMakr) to help our clients go to market with a custom app faster than was even possible a year ago and at a fraction of the cost. These DIY platforms have strengths and weaknesses depending on your objectives but most provide reasonable flexibility for customization with a little imagination.

Our latest mobile app was developed with Boston magazine, using the Mobile Roadie platform, exclusively for last nights Best of Boston 2011 Party attendees. Allowing Boston magazine to take their party beyond the physical event, this app supported interactive discussions, photos and comments, scheduled push notifications, and a native QR code reader to connect users with event sponsors. After the event it serves as a journal for everything users experienced and all the things they missed.

The event was invitation only, but the app is Free. Download for iPhone, Android or Blackberry.

Related articles

• What’s a loyal mobile app user and how much do they cost? (gigaom.com)
• How to Build an iPhone App Without Hiring a Developer (drayspencer.wordpress.com)

We chose “Social Media for CEOs” as the topic for our first event, and Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith opened the festivities with a few personal thoughts on the need to overcome one’s own cynicism and continually “Innovate Yourself.” Scott was also kind enough to share the story of personal growth that came from his successful bout with cancer many years ago, and it set just the right tone in getting an initially skeptical crowd to open up to some new ideas.

After that we started through the deck below, though we never made it through given the steady stream of questions, anecdotes, and other personal insights from the audience. In the end we were glad to stimulate that kind of dialog among a group of smart people just trying to figure this stuff out, and taking comfort in the fact other smart people were still struggling to do the same.

Anyway you can see the slides yourself here, please consider sharing them with you CEO if he’s someone you’re trying to get on board with the program.

Be sure and subscribe to the blog at upper right… I’ll be posting a special eBook we made for the event later, title “7 Habits of Highly Effective CEO Tweeters.”

It was a 101-type session, reinforcing the fundamentals of social media for business:

• It’s about building relationships,
• It starts with the delivery of content worthy of your target’s attention,
• It continues with an effort to help and connect people,
• Doing so builds social equity,
• That same social equity becomes an asset you can leverage in ways that deliver tangible business results.

Some entertaining tidbits and anecdotes were shared along the way, conducted beautifully by the masterful and golden voiced Anthony Silva.

Click below for video of the event, and please let me know what you think.

Related articles

• Social Media Day 2011 (mcnakblog.com)
• Social Media: a “Mission Critical” Solution for your Contact Center (avaya.com)
• Does Social Media Shape Our Lives More Than God Does? (godspace.wordpress.com)
• Happy Social Media Day – June 30th (projectmanagementessentials.wordpress.com)

I learned a lot at the event, and many of the nuggets from it were captured in the steady tweetstream to the #ack2011 hashtag. A few highlights for me:

• “A billion dollar valuation is not cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars in revenue.”
• “It’s easy to start a company. It’s hard to build a business.”
• “Be passionate. But not religious.”
• “There’s more innovation happening at big companies than at small companies. They’re just bad at bringing it to market.”
• “IPO investment bankers are all pretty much all alike. Pick the one you like the best personally, because you’re going to be spending a lot of time with him.”
• “Don’t stare at the other guy. Stare at the problem. Or the customer.”
• “There is no such thing as permanent human disability. Only limitations of the technology to overcome it.”
• “Don’t make the first thing when you start a company raising money, find a way to make progress every day.”

On and on and on. And the offline conversations were sometimes even more engaging and valuable than what was happening onstage.

What I found really exciting, though, was the sense that the walls were coming down in Boston.

I had lunch on Friday at a table of people that wouldn’t have come together 10 years ago, let alone 20. Established power-brokers and up-and-comers. The accomplished, and the accomplishing. Guys known by name at the front desk of the White Elephant, and others who pocketed dinner rolls because they’re still not taking cash out of their businesses.

The club of people who make stuff happen in this town was closed and not accepting applications for a long time. The people in it did well, in politics and in business, and did good for the city when it served their interests. Things were “fine.”

But the 9 zillionth time we asked what Silicon Valley got right and 128 got wrong, the idea occurred to somebody that the two most important factors of production – capital and talent – might do better if they got to know each other on a first-name basis.

There seems to be a considered effort underway right now to break down the barriers to innovation and commerce. I feel it from the NEVCA, in initiatives like CriticalMass. It’s behind the Globe’s protection of the Boston World Partnership. Even Mullen’s advocacy for The Next Great Generation blog feels, in a way, like the guys who made it helping the guys still trying to do so… not out of charity, but out of the sense that we’re all in this together now.

We all know Ideas and Passion eventually need Power and Money to sustain themselves. Lately we seem more attuned to the fact that the reverse is also true.

Another conference nugget:

• “Make the pie big enough, and everyone will be happy.”

Indeed.