Converse Digital

Seventeen years ago, we tried something that felt pretty crazy at the time.

Instead of treating Social as a highlight reel, we turned Mardi Gras into a weeklong research study.

We live tweeted the parades. We invited a handful of influencers. Later, we strapped an early livestream “backpack” to a blogger, put him on a float and broadcast his entire ride while he answered questions from viewers in real time.

But behind the fun, there was a simple question:

Can Social actually change brand perception in a measurable way?

Before we started, we asked people what they thought of when they heard “Mardi Gras.” Crazy. Flashing. Beer. Family. Food. Tailgating. Ladders. New Orleans. Church as a control.

Then we spent days simply showing the side of Mardi Gras most people never see unless they get off Bourbon Street. Kids on ladders. Families staking out the same spot year after year. Grills. Coolers. Friends.

Afterwards, we ran the same survey.

Crazy dropped. Flashing dropped sharply. Family and Food rose. Ladders and Tailgating soared. The mental model of Mardi Gras shifted from late night spectacle to family tailgate.

In 2010, we went a step further and segmented the data.

We expected people who had already been to Mardi Gras to be “locked in” on their perception.

Instead, we found that thoughtful, sustained Social exposure shifted their perceptions too, often more than it did for people who had never attended.

For agency owners and marketing leaders, the lesson is powerful:

Social is not just an awareness driver. Done well, it can be a disciplined tool for managing how people connect specific ideas and attributes to your company, even when they have years of prior experience.

If you are not using Social this way, you are leaving a lot of brand equity on the table.

We unpack the full story and results in our latest post. You will find a link in the comments.

Every agency sales deck says it’s “strategic.”

But the real test of strategy is how you show up in a sales discovery call.

Are you just asking checklist questions? Or helping your prospect discover something unexpected about their situation?

The agencies that win don’t just talk services. They imagine smarter futures—and let the silence do the selling.

Here’s one idea we loved from this article: when your insight truly lands, you'll hear it. Not in applause… in thoughtful silence.

Because the best buying happens when they’re thinking, not talking.

If your discovery calls aren’t creating those moments, it may be time to rethink the goal.

Full article link in the comments.

If your LinkedIn strategy is still built around “going viral,” you are playing the wrong game.

LinkedIn has quietly changed what it rewards. The platform is less interested in surface level popularity and much more interested in relevance and real conversation.

Here is what we are seeing:

Posts written to impress everyone usually impress no one. They rack up likes, but very few thoughtful comments, and almost no real business outcomes.

Posts written for a specific professional context behave differently. When you speak clearly to the problems and questions your ideal buyers have, they lean in. They comment with substance. They come back to future posts because they recognize you as part of their circle.

That is what LinkedIn is starting to notice. It is looking at who engages, what they say, and how often they come back. Over time, that behavior creates a kind of “map” of what the network believes you are an authority on.

As marketing leaders and agency owners, this should change how we brief and measure content. Less “How many views did we get?” and more “Did the right people choose to talk to us publicly about this?”

We broke down the shift and shared practical steps to adapt your approach. You can grab the entire article here https://tny.app/1xsq4db0

If you’re writing proposals without first building a “yellow brick road” for the client’s brain, you’re not pitching — you’re forcing them to do your job.

Instead, learn how to build your sales pitch so that it reduces cognitive load, and magically, you start winning more deals.

Grab a link to listen to the entire podcast via the first comment.

The most dangerous moment in a sales pitch isn’t when you present your big idea.

It’s the moment after you leave the room… when your buyer tries to replay your argument from memory to a boss or a buying committee.

If they can’t remember your story clearly — you lose.

I recently joined Mike Lander on his B2B Sales Club podcast to talk about overcoming that exact problem: how to pitch in a way the human brain can easily process, remember, and then retell to others.

Here are a few of the big ideas we unpacked together.

𝟏. 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬. It’s about reducing risk. Agencies and consultants love to think they’re selling strategy, creativity, or capabilities.

You’re not.

You’re selling the promise of an outcome and the sense that choosing you is the lowest-risk option.

Once you accept that, you start building pitches differently. You stop talking about what you do and start talking about why you’re the safest bet to get them where they need to go.

2. If you’re in the room, the question is no longer “Can they do this?

It’s:
- Do I trust these people?
- Do I believe they really understand our unique problem?
- Can I imagine working with them every week for the next 2–3 years?

Winning at this stage has far less to do with your credentials and far more to do with how you structure the conversation, how you listen, and whether you come across as human and trustworthy.

3. Build a Yellow Brick Road, not a firehose.

Most pitches are what I call “show up and throw up.”

You show up and dump everything you know in whatever order it pops into your head. The audience’s brain has to do all the work to organize your argument.

That’s a recipe for high cognitive load — which means your prospect is so busy processing your information that they don’t have much mental capacity left to remember it.

The alternative is to build a Yellow Brick Road:

- Each idea is a brick.
- Bricks are placed close enough together that each step feels natural, logical, and safe.
- By the time you get to your “big recommendation,” it already feels inevitable.

Done right, when you finally deliver your conclusion, the client is already there with you: “Of course. That makes perfect sense.”

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐝𝐨 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐰

1. Go in with a clear *plan* for what you want to accomplish — not just a set of slides or a mental checklist.

2. Write out your argument as if you had to present it start-to-finish, even if it’s “just a coffee.” Force yourself to see the Yellow Brick Road on paper before you walk it in the room.

3. In the meeting, talk less and listen more. Be comfortable with silence. Ask “what” and “how” questions. And pay as much attention to what isn’t said as to what is.

Do just those three things, and you’ll already stand out from most of your competitors.

If you want to go deeper into any of this, the entire conversation with Mike covers a ton of ground. Grab it here:

Here is the uncomfortable truth about many conferences:

The value is all about how attendees answer two questions:

Did I meet the right people?
Were the sessions worth my time?

Which sucks for the meeting planners because so much of what goes into those two answers is out of the MP's control. Or is it?

We created a new 45-minute webinar, “Boost Conference Attendee Delight,” with clarity expert Steve Woodruff to help conference and event planners flip that script.

Steve will show you how to run an interactive PreNote before the first keynote so attendees arrive with a sharp “Memory Dart” that makes introducing themselves simple and compelling. Networking becomes energizing instead of awkward.

Then Tom will walk through the Perfect Pitch approach so your speakers and sponsors can design talks that are clear, story-driven, and built for learning, not pitching.

You will also get Tom’s One Page Perfect Presentation Planning Guide and your own personalized introductory Memory Dart.

If you are planning a conference and want it to be the event people talk about and refuse to miss, grab the registration details in the comments.