Well it turns out I’m one of the last jokers still sitting around the office. Virtually everyone sending me emails is already on the ground in Phoenix or otherwise en route to AIM 2012 – Customer First and my Twitter feed has gone #aimconf turbo. The conference kicks off tomorrow at the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown with our AIM 101 late bloomer bootcamp and rolls for two-and-half days, 18 sessions, and total networking overdrive until Friday afternoon’s keynote-capping session delivered by former Nordstrom head of social media Shauna Causey.

If for any reason you get that road trip feeling in the next 24 hours and want to head down to Arizona, AIM has limited walk-up registrations still available. We’re even going to interview the very last person to register for AIM 2012 and feature them here on the blog.

If you couldn’t make it to AIM this year (we’re going to miss you, really), check back here soon for news re-caps of all of the AIM 2012 sessions, conference and links to the most current AIM coverage elsewhere on the multifamily web.

Thanks to all of our sponsors, partners, producers, speakers, moderators and most importantly all of the 500 or so attendees coming to AIM this year — you truly make AIM the success that we hope each and every year it will be.

Now let’s do this.

Mobile Persuasion Innovation Project:
Working in teams, dream up a new application that could run on mobile phones of the future. You will create a prototype – probably a simple one – and test it with users.

That was the assignment handed out by BJ Fogg at the Stanford Persuasion Technology Lab during “How to Design the Future” week back in 2006, and students (including future Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger) busily got to work building their futuristic phone apps.

The germ of the Krieger team idea to build a photo-sharing application led to Instagram, which sold to Facebook on April 9 for $1 billion.

Are you looking for $1 billion dollar marketing ideas? Come see BJ Fogg keynote on mobile persuasion at AIM 2012, where he’ll show how mobile technology can influence the most wanted behaviors in apartment customers and residents. As a bonus, Fogg will analyze real-world mobile apps submitted for review (and we’re talking multifamily ones).

Don’t miss out on Fogg’s presentation: It’s the last week to register for AIM 2012.

Believe it or not, counterfeiters still fool their victims by doctoring currency with ingredients as simple as green glitter. This National Geographic video shows how the U.S. Secret Service keeps up with crooks trying to pass off bogus bills as the real McCoy.

As multifamily marketers have evolved into online arenas for communicating with both prospects and residents, it has become equally as important in the apartment biz to be able to tell which kinds of comments and reviews out on the net are authentic, and which ones are just BS.

“They’re out there,” says Korman Residential director of marketing Aaron Helfman of fly-by-night firms that will post bogus information to the Internet about a company, and then turn around and offer their services to improve your online reputation. Helfman, who will present alongside Jamie Gorski of the Bozzuto Group on Reputation Management at the 2012 AIM Conference, says smaller, unincorporated firms can be particularly susceptible to reputation management swindling.

“These firms will call up operators and purport to help you claim or re-claim your identity online and improve your online reputation,” Helfman says. “When in reality they may have played a direct role in posting negative information in the first place. That is going on. That’s happening.”

Also happening is a bit of poetic license on the part of apartment marketers themselves, who sometimes cannot resist posting their own “anonymous” positive reviews on Facebook or elsewhere online in order to boost their reputation, a strategy that Korman discourages.

“It’s pretty clear to [consumers] when a review has been written by the staff versus one that has been written by a current customer,” Helfman says. “If it is industry language with immaculate grammar and references to how wonderful the experience and interaction with leasing agents are its most likely not from a current resident and likely an inside job.”

Want to know more about next-generation tactics to better manage your company reputation online? There’s still time to register for AIM 2012 and let Helfman and Gorski get you beyond listening with proven strategies for reclaiming your online identity. For real.

Editor’s Note: Pro-active Reputation Management featuring Korman Residential director of marketing Aaron Helfman; Bozutto Group senior vice president, corporate marketing Jamie Gorski and moderated by Multifamily Solutions president Dennis Smiile is a day-one session at AIM 2012 scheduled for 4:30pm – 5:30pm on April 25.

Speaking at AIM 2012 (left to right) Judy Bellack, Dennis Cogbill, John Kobs and Dennis Smillie

I’ve been talking to quite a few reporters and editors in the apartment trade media over the past week about PRIMEDIA’s announcement that it plans to purchase Rent.com from eBay. “So what’s next?” they ask, or, even more pointedly: “What does all of this mean—if anything—to apartment operators and marketers?”

Perhaps the more critical question that needs to be asked is what does ILS consolidation, and really the total evolution of “first-look” online apartment marketing, mean to the customer? By “first-look” I mean exactly that: what is the first thing a prospect sees in the lifecycle that eventually ends with them moving their furniture into an apartment unit (and hopefully renewing at the end of their lease expiration)? What is the beginning of the customer experience?

At AIM 2012 – Customer First, you’ll hear from a panel of top experts who are on the front lines of first-look customer experience. Judy Bellack, Dennis Cogbill and John Kobs will speak on “What Prospects See When Visiting an ILS,” a blockbuster discussion, to be moderated by Dennis Smillie, that will survey best-in-class opportunities for enhancing multifamily’s presence in the first-look customer experience.

It’s the perfect opportunity to catch multifamily marketing experts and get exclusive insight into an industry flash point in the making. If the deal happens to close between now and AIM, attendees will again have a first-look into online multifamily marketing trends in the making. Either way I’d personally wager the panel will be another tour-de-force apartment marketing presentation—we’ve got 18 of them prepared for you at AIM, not to mention three days of world-class multifamily networking.

Don’t miss out: Register for AIM 2012 – Customer First.

Can the apartment industry increase customer engagement and sales by better adapting to (maybe even warmly embracing) ratings and review sites? Great video clip here from Zero Moment of Truth says it can. The clip says it’s simply imperative to engage with the online review of your products and services and even more critical to react to the customer experience in order to claim any input or control over your online reputation.

In the most honest way I can put it, the multifamily industry has been wrestling with ratings and review sites for some time, but I have a feeling all of that is about to change.

Consider RentWiki’s announcement yesterday regarding its name change to RentAdvisor and the firm’s move to establish a baseline online ratings and reviews score for clients, ostensibly to measure and improve that score. “In the past 18 months we’ve worked directly with thousands of renters,” said Robert Turnbull, president and co-founder of the company. “We’ve learned a few things: First, ratings and reviews have a much bigger influence on the renter’s decision to visit an apartment community than anyone realizes. Second, what the Apartment Industry needs is a way to proactively tackle the apartment reviews and ratings proliferating the Internet.”

At AIM, we’ve been working overtime to confirm an industry-first power panel of the top ratings and review sites, and are pleased to announce that executive representatives from ApartmentRatings.com, Google, and Yelp will kick-off the 2012 conference. This historical expert panel will offer attendee exposure to their methods and models, discuss the collaborative opportunity inherent in customer review and showcase how next-generation businesses are leveraging third-party review sites as a top marketing and customer interaction channel.

Can AIM help to validate the idea that ratings and review sites generate traffic and offer an arena for positively and profitably engaging with new and existing customers? You be the judge. Register for AIM 2012 – Customer First. April 25-27.

Note: OVERFLOW HOTEL: The Sheraton AIM room block has sold out. We’ve booked additional rooms at the Westin Phoenix 2 blocks away at the same $199 rate. That room block will be available through April 9 or until sold out, so be sure you’ve got your lodging in place. Use the link below or call 866-837-4213 and ask for the AIM 2012 conference rate:

WESTIN PHOENIX DOWNTOWN
333 N. Central Ave, Phoenix, AZ 85004 https://www.starwoodmeeting.com/Book/aim2012annualconference

In 2007, Dr. B.J. Fogg’s 75 students at the Stanford University Persuasive Technology Lab were tasked with building Facebook apps in class.  Just ten weeks later, the class projects had already generated 16 million app users, $1 million in advertising revenue and several immediate dropouts who quickly turned Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

Fogg is speaking at AIM 2012 on engaging customers with mobile technology and we’re looking for three bold attendees to submit mobile apps related to renting for his onstage review and feedback.

If you are interested, please email me to volunteer your app and yourself.  We’ll pick up to three apps to include in his keynote session. Too bold for you? It’s okay to suggest someone else’s app as well.  Vendor or management company, Android or Apple – just send them in to me at conference@jtimedia.com.

B.J. is the author or editor of three books on the uses of technology to create engagement and change (with a fourth on the way.)  Persuasive Technology, Mobile Persuasion and Texting 4 Health are all in print and available at Amazon.

Follow B.J. on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/bjfogg.

Hope to see your app at AIM.

In a scathing editorial published today in the New York Times, Goldman Sachs executive director Greg Smith publically tendered his resignation, citing a loss of culture and total lack of customer focus as his primary reason for leaving the 143-year-old financial services firm.

Apparently not content to leave without the last word, Smith railed on his employer, offering an insider look into the highest levels at Goldman Sachs, where customers are referred to as “Muppets” and employees are rewarded for bringing in profit regardless of whether or not products or services are in the best interest of the client.

“It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you,” Smith writes in the Times, going out of his way to name current Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein and president Gary D. Cohn as culprits in the loss of culture and customer focus. “Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them.”

Smith’s message on the importance of integrity as part of a broader customer-first strategy shows just how much the customer experience has become integral to the success or failure of 21^st Century businesses. It’s no different in multifamily, and we hope at AIM 2012 – Customer First to impress upon our sponsors, speakers and attendees alike the critical importance that customer focus plays in everything.

As progressive apartment Internet marketers, we’re front and center participants in the customer experience, a place where Smith says businesses have the opportunity—if not the obligation—to get to know their customers and what motivates them, to learn how our customers define success and what we can do to help them get there.

Smith’s resignation letter is also evidence of a new 21^st century business truth: that brand, messaging and reputation are increasingly forged and forwarded in an online public arena, a place where Smith chooses to say “I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist.”

Think Customer First. Register now for AIM 2012.

One of the coolest things about being involved in planning the AIM conference for the first time is witnessing the turbocharged attitude from everyone involved. As official speaker packets are emailed this week, I’m getting cc:d on emails between moderators and presenters and I’m blown away by the excitement, attention to detail, and passion everyone is pouring into their panel presentations.

Take Jamie Gorski, senior vice president of the Bozutto Group, who will present during the AIM 2012 general session on Proactive Reputation Management with Korman Residential director of marketing Aaron Helfman and moderator Dennis Smillie from Multifamily Solutions.

Not only is Gorski firing off excited session idea emails during a train ride up to New York City, but all of the sudden we’re all getting emails from Bozutto director of interactive marketing Matthew Kilmurry too.

Kilmurry just happens to be on the same train with Gorski, and immediately they are cross-pollinating ideas. Kilmurry is shooting emails off to his fellow Tactics in New Construction Lease Up session partners Kate Good and moderator Jim Kjolhede. Good fires back that she can’t wait. Kjolhede jumps in with a “Rock and Roll!”

All of the sudden I’m reading all of this and wondering if email is still a robust, social marketing medium when it occurs to me: Karen Rice from Constant Contact and an AIM 2012 panel probing customer experiences within social media are both going to address that very question. Now I can’t wait.

The social networking power of email (and how to leverage it) is just one of the literally hundreds of strategies that Internet marketing thought leaders, best in class multifamily operators, technologists and customer service savants will delve into April 25-27 down in Phoenix, and we’re psyched to tell you about all of our sessions and speakers over the next several weeks.

We’re obviously not the only ones who are excited. The Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel reported this week that the AIM 2012 hotel block is nearly 70 percent sold, promising one of the biggest and best AIM conference ever.

Make sure you’re onsite again this year for all the action—lock yourself in and register today. Hope to see you there!

Number 10: Wednesday February 29, is Leap Day, which only comes around once every four years. That’s an extra day of early registration discount at AIM. Until midnight tomorrow, register on the AIM site at the early bird rate and save $100.

Number 9: With the $100 you save, you’ll want to book a spa treatment right away, or get the best tickets available to the Diamondbacks Phillies game the night before the conference. That stuff goes fast when a kick-ass conference is in town.

Number 8: Three keynotes, 14 sessions and two-and-half days of unbeatable programming and networking.

Number 7:  Live Mobile App R&D. Keynote presenter Dr. BJ Fogg, director of the the Stanford University Persuasive Technology Lab plans to review and critique multifamily mobile apps to show how mobile can be used to influence positive user behaviors. Want your app reviewed? Email me.

Number 6: Because your peers can’t be wrong. Shamelessly we submit for your approval a testimonial pulled directly from last year’s attendee survey: “AIM is not to be missed if you are looking for a hyper intensive setting to sharpen your marketing knowledge. You are immersed in 3 days of innovation and surrounded by the most influential pace setters in multifamily.”

Number 5: Did we mention you’ll save $100 with early bird registration through the end of the day on February 29? Why don’t you splurge on some serious networking at the District America Kitchen & Wine Bar onsite?

Number 4: Because AIM is a 10. According to the 2011 attendee survey, most AIM attendees on a scale of one to 10 consider the value of AIM for the money paid to be (you guessed it) a 10.

Number 3: No, really, because your peers can’t be wrong. From last year’s attendee survey: “AIM is by far the most progressive and thought-provoking multifamily conference. It never fails to challenge conventional wisdom and there are always plenty of takeaways to put in play immediately. I mark this in my calendar every year!”

Number 2: Do you really want to risk being left behind? Over 38 percent of AIM attendees decide to attend at the conclusion of the previous year’s conference. Catch up, man.

Number 1: AIM 2012 – Customer First will challenge you to succeed by reinventing your approach to the customer experience. From social media to new construction to mobile and email marketing, ILSs, predictive analytics and more, we’re out to prove what counts to apartment residents and prospects.

Don’t be counted out. Register today for AIM 2012 – Customer First. Then kickback, relax, watch the top 10 Jordan dunks of all time, and be glad I didn’t embed the top 10 MMA takedowns.

With almost all of the programming for AIM 2012 – Customer First finalized, one trend has remained consistent across all of our educational sessions, presentations, and speaker selections: we’re making a huge attempt to eliminate the guesswork behind multifamily Internet marketing. Put more simply, we’ve asked all of our presenters this year for a prove-out, to show attendees how they know what they know.

From sessions on post-recession strategies for managing new construction lease-ups to how to judge the best ILS customer experience to tactics for influencing consumer behavior through compelling design in mobile technologies, we’re expecting presenters to check gut-metrics and anecdotal evidence at the door and come with the facts that have influenced real-life strategic and tactical business investments.

We’ll critique attendee mobile apps on stage, survey and crowd-source conference intelligence and group-think in real-time, and showcase innovative marketing campaigns that have launched to success in real-world markets, all with the intention of proving out all of the strategies and ideas you’ll hear this April 25-27 at AIM in Phoenix.

Because there’s really no reason to embark on an apartment Internet marketing platform just because you think it will work.

Don’t base your business on gut-check. Register to attend AIM 2012 – Customer First by March 1 and save $100.