Even those wary of praising Toronto would be hard-pressed to deny that Toronto sells; if you want Canadians to buy your products, this is the place to be.
It’s no surprise, then, that the city played host to Dx3 last week. Billed as Canada’s “first and only digital expo dedicated to all things digital,” Dx3 brought together marketers from across Canada to sell, schmooze and trade intel. Part digital marketing salon, part FanExpo for social media fanboys, Dx3 was like summer camp for Toronto’s digital technophiles.
The conference-cum-trade show featured some of Canada’s most advanced digital companies, including Trendhunter, Microsoft and Radian6. Speakers included some of the biggest corporate Twitter personalities, giving advice on everything from digital marketing strategy to SEO to metrics for dummies.
Still, the trade show itself left something to be desired. In a bit of marketing irony, most of the trade show floor’s smaller companies blended together into an undifferentiated mass. For the small shops setting up beside Linkedin and Facebook, the David vs. Goliath world of big tech must have seemed daunting.
But perhaps, in a crowded digital marketplace, it’s more about culture than service, about performance than product. Maybe it’s even a little about gimmicks. Toronto’sBNOTIONS came with a platoon of developers and a wrestling ring in tow. No, really. An actual wrestling ring.
Bypassing the standard trade show ‘come-speak-to-our-reps’ approach, they opted to set up a full-sized ring filled with a team of developers engaged in a 48-hour hackathon. Channeling the hacking competition scene from The Social Network, this group of rowdy coders was crowded around a few small tables within the ring, making literal the marketing war for attention while also showcasing a team that has fun, works fast and produces a knockout product.
BNOTIONS vice-president, Elliot Lazor, explains that the company is all about “technology and enthusiasm.” According to Lazor, BNOTIONS is “in the business of making our clients feel good.” Amid the excitement, though, the product they were creating was also interesting: a Linkedin-integrated program called Skillodex that allows users to continually track and measure their professional skills. The program is now live (in Beta form) for anyone to try.
Aside from their innovative approach to trade show marketing, BNOTIONS is building an impressive client and partner roster for their work creating social, mobile and web applications, working with the likes of Quiznos, CBC, Oprah Winfrey Network, and more. And unlike much of the polished elevator-pitch marketing with which Dx3 was brimming, BNOTIONS offered something else to prospective clients: a passion for their craft and a public forum to show exactly what they do every day. In a lesson to any startup with slim budgets for self-promotion, BNOTIONS shows that the simplest way to stand out from the crowd and shake-up a sleepy trade show floor is to make your service synonymous with its expression. Oh, also: have a good time.
Kiel Hume is interested in hacking culture and lots more. He also writes for Toronto Standard on occasion. Follow him on Twitter at @kielculture.
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