Here were the in-jokes and viral videos we spend our days LOLing at, made flesh. From the guy with the boombox rickrolling us all in person as we waited in line, to Brad O’Farrell (founder of playhimoffkeyboardcat.com) dressed as Keyboard Cat and lugging a Casio, it was a little like Disneyland for geeks—and I mean that in the absolute best way possible. Because ROFLcon is an event for insiders, for those of us who have been poking around the web since long before ad agencies realized there was any potential there. Those of us who came of age in the era of All Your Base Are Belong To Us. And, in my case, those of us who have been trying to reconcile a career in digital advertising with a passion for the digital underground.

ROFLcon has been described as “SXSW for web memes” and it’s an apt description. All weekend I felt like this is what SXSW must have been like before the MBAs showed up. Every so often you’d hear an offhand comment about “the marketers”, as if we ad types were some sort of alien species that has no overlap with the geek core audience. Not necessarily true, but online marketers could learn a lot by stepping back and listening to the indigenous peoples of the Internet. Here are a few things I was reminded of at ROFLcon:

• Web subculture started because of marginalization. Alienated people reached out to find others of their kind and the first social networks were born. The Social Web is not new, and advertising didn’t invent it. The Internet is inherently social and has been since the first emails were exchanged.
• Content has been going viral since the Internet began. As marketers, we like to think a good idea is all it takes to makes something shareworthy. In fact, delivery mechanism (the network) is as essential to viral success as the nature of the content.
• Web culture is about permissiveness. Copyrights, when they exist at all, are often gleefully violated. Content is co-opted, remixed and repurposed.  If brands want to play, they need to loosen the reigns and get over the sanctity of brand standards. It’s okay to let people play.
• The foibles of others make for great entertainment. Being relentlessly positive doesn’t always work and it’s okay to poke gentle fun at human failure.
• Even the most carefully designed and vetted project can take on its own life once it gets into the hands of users. Be flexible and don’t be afraid to laugh at yourself or your efforts—no one wins over the crowd by getting defensive.

As digital marketers, we are playing in someone else’s house. The party has been raging for more than a decade without us and we should be eternally grateful we’ve been allowed in at all.  If we want to be trusted as content providers we need to know our web culture and history and respect those who preceded us. The Internet has evolved wildly since its inception and will continue to do so, but when we know where it all comes from it’s a little easier to understand how we got where we are. And that makes it easier to understand what works in the space.

Which brings me back to the Media Lab at MIT, where I watched artists battle it out in a SuperArtFight, covering giant canvases with illustrations of memes. No one had to explain the jokes—we all got them faster than the artists could draw. And that’s exactly why I was proud to sacrifice my late spring tan and frolic with the geeks I’m happy to call my own.

Dinesh Gopinath

Mullen announced today that Dinesh Gopinath, Ph.D., has joined the agency as executive vice president, director of strategic analytics. Gopinath, who was selected after a review of 35 candidates, will lead the agency’s analytics practice, which plays a key role in modeling, predicting and optimizing communications strategies across a wide range of client businesses. Gopinath comes to Mullen from ChoiceStream, Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., where he was chief solutions officer and active in using data for precision communications targeting and more personalized forms of communications. He has developed 1-to-1 personalization technology for clients including Zappos, Overstock, Borders, MTV, Yahoo! and AOL.

“In the hiring of Dinesh, we’re looking to further enhance our competitive advantage in gleaning data-driven insight,” said Stephen Hahn-Griffiths, chief strategy officer at Mullen. “Dinesh will provide an added edge to our precision targeting capabilities – in customer relationship management, digital, social media and beyond. He is a strategic and data analytics thought leader.”

“I‘m excited to join Mullen, focusing on the ROI of marketing and advertising while striking the right balance between short-term and long-term client business goals,” said Gopinath. “The timing is perfect,” Gopinath added. “The advertising industry is at a strategic inflection point dealing with the complexities of audience fragmentation, media proliferation, brand multiplicity, emergence of new technologies and the coalescence of advertising, marketing and selling.”

Gopinath had been with ChoiceStream since 2002, and some of his recent work there was in the development of personalized advertising and recommendation technology designed for so-called “advanced-TV” platforms. Previously, he was a principal with Oliver Wyman (formerly Mercer Management Consulting) and was at US West Advanced Technologies (Qwest).

Gopinath has a Ph.D. and an M.S. degree from MIT. His undergraduate studies were at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, India.