You may (or may not) know that I live a double-life. While I’ve been designing effective presentations for years now, my full-time profession is within the marketing world as Director of Communications for Story Worldwide—a digital brand storytelling agency. I actually got my start designing effective presentations while in the marketing world, and it grew into this blog and a full-fledged business.

So if you’re a fan my musings, you’ve noticed that I don’t simply write about effective presentations. I discuss where presentations, marketing, storytelling and social media (all passions of mine) converge. That is why I’m excited to tell you about a one-day event Story is hosting called the Post-Advertising Summit, taking place in the heart of New York City on March 29th, 2012.

The idea of Post-Advertising is this:

Traditional advertising is dead. While saying that is a bit tongue-in-cheek, I think we’d all agree that we’ve learned how to effectively tune out intrusive messaging. We ignore billboards, we fast-forward over commercials, filter against spam, have nearly eliminated telemarketing and immediately throw out direct mail. The marketing landscape, like the presentation landscape, has changed, and the only messages audiences see or hear are those they choose to see or hear.

So the question is, how do you engage audiences? How do you get positive attention? By telling great stories.

The Summit aims to bring together the country’s best storytellers and influential practitioners of content marketing, social media, entertainment, journalism and more to collaborate on how creating brand stories will shape the future of information and entertainment.

The day is split up in two halves: The first half focuses on the Future of Information with a keynote presentation by Simon Dumenco (Advertising Age), a panel discussion hosted by Mark Schaefer (Author, Return on Influence) and concluding with a workshop moderated by Joe Pulizzi (Content Marketing Institute) where the attendees will roll up their sleeves and not only learn how to unearth a brand’s story platform but put it into practice by creating a real piece of useful content, like a content site or an iPad application.

The afternoon will address the Future of Entertainment, with a panel discussion hosted by Shira Lazar (What’s Trending) followed by another workshop, this time hosted by Randy Irwin (VOTIV) and focusing on a creating a piece of entertaining content, like a viral film, a song or a game (just imagine if Dole had created Fruit Ninja or if Green Giant had created Farmville).

What’s So Different About This Event?

My role in helping plan this event was to make sure that at every turn, this event would right the wrongs of all the conferences I’ve been to. My conference attendance was drastically reduced in 2011 because I was sick of the same thing over and over again: Listen to a bunch of thinly veiled sales pitches (with bad PowerPoints), gather a few cards and go home not really having learned or accomplished anything.

In order to ensure that attendees actually come away with valuable NEW information, the Summit will expose Story’s techniques in unearthing brand stories so that attendees can learn how to do the same for their own brand(s). And to ensure that attendees aren’t just passive onlookers, the panels and workshops will fully engage the audience. Particularly in the workshop, audience members will be expected to contribute in the process of creating a piece of content.

I really hope you can join me in New York City on March 29th. If you’d like more information including a full schedule, speaker bios, session descriptions and more, check out the site here.

I’m also offering my readers $150 off the registration price by using the code PA (yes, just two letters, but case sensitive). But hurry – the Early-Bird price of $395 ($245 with the discount) expires on 2/29.