I was in Memphis on Thursday to take part in a very cool Launch Memphis event. We were told that the audience would be hip to the market and the various tools and that the hope was to stretch their minds beyond the obvious. This sounded great to me and it was fun to see that both myself and the other presenter Adrian Ho avoided any talk of tools, sites or tweets.

My presentation is below and as is usual for my style the slides only do so much on their own without me speaking to them. One fun thing was that there were no speakers so my video of Brooklyn Hilary played without sound, but it still worked because her passion came through the silence.

The point of my presentation was that I think people need to realize that we are all passionate about a lot of different things, but when you ask people "what is your passion?" very few mention any brand or product. Companies have a huge opportunity to fuel that passion at and enable their fans to begin talking, sharing and recommending their products.

I wanted to highlight that companies that want to get into using social media as part of their marketing initiatives need to begin thinking about leveraging passion in their campaigns. After giving what I think are the key components needed for success I wanted to showcase some people that I think are doing it right. I highlighted the Fiesta Movement that is happening now as one that has gotten my attention and so far is doing things right. I also wanted to showcase an example that doesn't have Ford's budget so I showcased independent authors Scott Sigler and JC Hutchins and what they have done with their fans.

I got asked a lot of solid questions and hope that my answers delivered. This is a concept that I haven't been able to stop thinking about and I have a feeling I'll be writing a lot more about passion in the coming months.

Have you seen other good examples (big or small) of brands leveraging passions? I'd love to hear them.