advergirl

iCitizen Wrapup from Columbus

iCitizen Video from Mark Hillman on Vimeo.

Day 2 of iCitizen kicked off with a slightly homespun look at what exactly we've gotten ourselves into here!? Check out Mark's video of an apparent 'conference crasher' trying to take it all in above.

Casual chats with hosts of the social media cafe (featuring lattes and laptops loaded with dummy accounts and personal tours of all the hottest social apps) reminded us just how new all this really is: Digital-savvy marketers had been sneaking out mid-presentation during Day 1 to ask just what the presenters and audience were talking about. What is Twitter? Lemonade? Kaboodle? And, importantly, can I check my email before I go back in??

Over in the blogger bailiwick*, Holly, Karen, David and I were doing about what you'd expect: taking ourselves too seriously, engaging in a little snark, and representing real iCitizens amongst all the talk about people like us...

See pics from iCitizen
Read Karen's live blog
See the Twitter stream

(*gross misuse of a word for the sake of alliteration)

Onto coverage of today's presenters:

Doc Searls—Harvard Fellow at the Berkman Center, Coauthor, The Cluetrain Manifesto

Jump back 5 years. If around that time, someone had started talking about carrying all your music, pictures, and movies on a device that both fit in your pocket and worked as a cell phone, limited-use computer and general personal planner.... well, that person would probably have received a similar response to what Doc Searls got at iCitizen today: sounds intriguing, but what, what?

Doc talked about "vendor relationship manangement." It's what's needed when the "attention economy" makes a decision to act or buy and - thus - becomes the "intention economy." And, has something to do with using your data & personal and logical preferences to define rather than accommodate how you'll buy / share your information / relate to the companies you do business with. Everything from owning your own healthcare data to setting your own privacy expectations to pre-defining how much you'll pay for the exact thing that you really want.

I mentioned the response to a theoretical iPhone 5 years ago because what hangs in the balance for Doc's theory is what "thing" will make his idea concrete and easy vs. wildly theoretical and seeming like a massive-new-responsibility-and-time-investment-this-convenience-girl- wants-nothing-in-the-world-to-do-with.

Check out Andrea's coverage for more background.

Twittering:

• Doc calls Web "the Net." Love the anachronisms when digital adopters talk 'what's coming'


• Doc talks about approach - "we list all the things we think are true that no one's talking about" So us.


• Key driver of open source, not just anyone can create and use, but anyone can IMPROVE IT.


• Attention economy has evolved to intention economy on the live Web ... what you get when a customers mind is made up.


• Attention economy until point of decision then intention economy. Using car rental as example of industry without intention.


• What could car rental do if it knew customer intention. If it stopped "trap and hold" tactics like "car you want or similar"


• Want to express logical and personal preferences, like no ads when calling tech support or will pay for faster service


• Doc's point seems to be: smartest people about the right experience are your customers, not your employees or competitiros.


• Doc pokes at a big box retailer for saying they want to "own the customer." Another term for owning humans? Slavery. Why do we talk that way? Because we're too busy talking to ourselves and not our customers.


• Doc must be part of RenGen. So far referenced Rousseau, Whitman, Marx ... waiting for the test at this point


• Doc unfinished biz of Cluetrain is Vendor Relationship Mgt - control by customers who are in free markets & engaging with vendors


• VRM is not necessarily social because social makes assumption we have power in numbers. We have power as individuals, not from vendors who want to leverage our mass.


• In identity world, cards /prices/ rels not issued to you. You issue your own card / intention / "RFP" http://snurl.com/29x75


• Doc's VRM sounds way hard. I don't want to manage my relationship with Target or write a RFP for a blender. I don't have an acquisition dept.


• In simplest form, Doc's ideas seem like convenience of Canada's Airmiles. www.airmiles.ca - all data in one place for one purpose / reward


• Bigger than that Doc's approach seems so high engagement and limited in audience ... but says something will come along to make it simple


• Kind of scares me that I can't get on board with this. Newest ideas coming from oldest guy in room. 30-somethings snarking.

Doc is joined by a panel talking about personal data portability:

Rooley Eliezerov—President and Cofounder, Gigya
Bill Washburn—Executive Director, Open ID
Kelly O'Neill—Commerce Product Marketing Director, ATG

Twittering:

• Aside: Can I say how impressed I am by how many women are speaking at iCitizen? Largely due to Resource's leaders, but clients, too


• Reality check from   Kelly: It's important to understand your purchase process and how much engagement / consideration / relationship it will support


• Bill: OpenID is a movement that comes out of the idea that there's far too much pain around user name / password pairs.


• Bill: OpenID can also potentially insure that you're not a machine / spam, creates access


• Bill: Bigger issue than people who don't have access to the Internet is people who choose not to access. They think of it as just a big arcade. We need to build trust.


• Doc: Any attempt to regulate things we don't understand is dangerous


• Cool Deborah Schultz just showed up with a powerstrip and a laptop. Love the community power share.

Panel: Have Phone, Will Travel Panel
John Harrobin—SVP of Marketing and Digital Media, Verizon
Will Hodgman—CEO, M:Metrics
Riccardo Spina—Senior Director of Digital Media, Integrated Marketing, Wal-Mart

After the fact, I noticed that there had been no discussion of proximity SMS marketing among this group... would have been interesting to talk about that sort of push / experience content in terms of iCitizen engagement.

Twittering:

• John launched cellfire. Waiting for that channel to get big. But, might not work wth expectations retail has for coupons (they assume medium impressions, low redemption ... what happens to the bottom line when coupons get convenient?)


• Wal-Mart guy is unexpectedly chic. Great lime-rimmed glasses and matching polo. Stripey socks? Of course. (Direct tweet revealed: he's a former Resource creative director ... no wonder the on-brand gear)


• Will says used to buy "FSIs and yidda-yadda, hooda-hooda." Reeeeeally?


• Riccardo talking about Wal-Mart secret item holiday event. Tested before, on, after Black Friday. Clues via text.


• Riccardo: Mobile initiative ran under radar until WSJ picked it up then a little top-down panic about what did we do?


• Riccardo: People find what they need


• John: Think about text messaging. You only have 160 characters. Have to triple tap to get a letter. And you have to pay for it. If you were to put that through any market research industry, they would say that would never succeed. Today our customers exchange 150 billion messages a year. People tried it and we made it addictive.

Listening to Riccardo reminds me to get back to the argument that, for retailers, you don't have to wait to adopt technology until it's ubiquitous. Tools (like RSS, text) don't have to be for EVERYONE. Rather, they cost-effectively reach people already using them and build relevancy and personalization.

Avinash Kaushik—Analytics Evangelist, Google

Avinash talked about metrics beyond / before the purchase. Calls them "microconversions" - all those valuable behaviors consumers exhibit - and that we should support and track - that aren't buying.

He's one of those presenters who makes everyone giggle and poke their neighbor and generally remember the clever phrasings as much as the content. So, if this Twittering isn't as meaty, don't count it against the presenter, attribute it to my general tendency toward shiny object syndrome.

Twittering:

• Avinash calls online marketing faith-based behavior. Because we have all this data, but don’t understand the ‘whys’


• Google analytics uses indexes and visual intelligence ... clarity without "thinking"


• Online buying isn't "one night stand" - takes 3, 4, more visits to make a purchase


• Just takes fundemental Qs to uncover insights
  • Why are you here
  
  
  • Were you able to complete task you came here to do
  
  
  • If not, why not?


• Example: a pharma site had 90% bounce rate. The call to action and content was perfectly aimed at "buy." But the actual reason people visited was research: where is the product made, how much does it cost, etc. They bounced because they couldn't find what they wanted


• Most decisions made by HIPPOs – highest paid person's opinion. Furthest removed from customer


• All the tools I showed you today are free. The insignts have to come from you.


• Personalization is identifying insights and needs among microsegments

Last panel: Who Keeps Moving the Goalpost? Identifying relevant metrics...
Dr. Robert Leone—Professor, Texas Christian University
Pete Blackshaw—CMO, Nielsen Online
Steve Kahn—VP of Internet Marketing, DSW
Paul Horstmeier—VP of HP.com, Hewlett-Packard

Twittering:

• Paul: I've seen metrics so abused by marketers; I think we do ourselves a huge disservice


• Surprised to hear from retailers that there are people in their organizations who should want online metrics, but don't. Isn't retail addicted to numbers of just about any kind?


• Paul: Challenge is metrics to analytics to consulting. Translate it to something stakeholders would care about. Relevance.


• Dr Bob: Social media is silver bullet. Something in all the metrics talk made me miss what we're shooting...


• Dr Bob: Every media writer has a cheat sheet of bloggers they use to inform coverage. Creates echoing effect. How do all connect?

To wrapup:

Thank you to Holly, Nancy, Kelly and the whole Resource crew for doing / showing (not just telling) by including real iCitizens in the conference. For me, it was a great opportunity to be in a room with savvy marketers from truly ubiquitous consumer brands who get that this "social media" phenom has reached critical mass and is an essential part of reputation management and marketing (not just the stuff of "geeks".)

Oh, and can I say - AWESOME how many people read and recognize Advergirl. Who knew everyone from the team at Resource to an exec at Coke would haunt these pages? Love that!

Finally, in closing, I can only say one thing: let's all please come together and find examples of iCitizen impact BEYOND JEFF JARVIS! David Griner got Jarvis Bingo today when he was the first to hear the FOURTH speaker lean on the Dell Hell story.

Advergirl out.

iCitizen: Call to open your brand

I camped out on a sideline couch today at Resource Interactive's iCitizen symposium with Holly Davis and David Griner to watch the story of open brands unfold.

Nancy Kramer kicked off the day with our shared win: social media is now accepted by the C-suite.

But as the speakers and audience questions progressed, it became clear that despite support from CEOs and consumers alike, the bigger questions still remained: who to talk to, how to do it and what to expect.

Below, take a look at today’s agenda and a transcript of my live “Twitter coverage.” I’ve added in a few extra stories and comments as well.

But, first, it would be great to have all of you talk about this open imperative from the perspective of the people who live it and power it. If you’re looking for blog subjects over the next few days, I’d love it if you’d tackle one of these:

• What brands do you find yourself routinely talking about and why?


• How are the things you talk about online different than the things you talk about offline?


• What are the biggest misses by companies trying out the social Web –or offending the social Web- in the last year?


• What do you wish brands would do to engage you (whether that means use your ideas, reward you, inform you, etc.

Read more about iCitizen on the collected tweme or on the live blog.

Onto the coverage.

Opening Remarks: Nancy Kramer—CEO and Founder, Resource Interactive      

Twitter:

• Glam president Nancy Kramer is kicking off.


• Visualization guy is scribbling a conversation map in real time. Lots of Sharpie


• Perfectly branded space. Every detail. Down to literally laying new carpet to match conference brand. http://tinyurl.com/6zk6y5


• Seriously. Weird jokester guitar comedian singing 'thanks to the Internet' song. Totally need more coffee

iTalk: Kelly Mooney—President and CXO, Resource Interactive

• Mooney asks one of the big questions we all struggle with when dissecting online trends: "how the heck did that happen?"


• Would take 412.3 years to view all the material on YouTube. Don't give up, though, boys.


• Thinking about idea of "share unprecendented" in the context of Jill Bolte Taylor's TED speech. Tricky. http://snurl.com/29r7i


• Mooney calls Al Gore iCitizen. Opening the conversation. Affirms Wal-Mart for accepting criticism on environmental responsibility, too (theirs and their customers')


• Talking about "love triangle." New relationship model with brand, community and consumers making up the points


• Mooney says anecdotal examples are most powerful. Not sure I agree. Can quickly be written off as exceptions, "geeks," not rule


• Ubiquitous Jaffe up next. Looking forward to hearing first hand...

Keynote: Joseph Jaffe—Author, Join the Conversation

Twitter:

• CNN strategically uses iCitizens - not for authenticity or depth - but to get video / events / moments first.


• Jaffe calls old way "Spray and pray" ... definitely my favorite handle for one-to-many marketing


• "Targeted has become targeter." iCitizens capable of getting millions of impressions about your brand.


• re: TMobile Sucks - Conversations is between 2 or more sides. W/o debate, intensity, it's just choir preaching to each other


• Jaffe's called out Kodak's "winds of change" as listening and responding relevantly to what iCitizens say http://snurl.com/29rgr


• Three rules = humanity, humility, & humor


• "A lot of change in corporations is rogue today." Makes me think of Blue Shirt Nation's first server hidden under a desk.


• Jaffe as if speaking to most agencies I've worked at says: Don't cheat in social media, you'll be found out.


• Biggest risk we can take today is spending $4 million on a campaign no one notices


• Retweeting @hdavis: Are you in the campaign or commitment business? Are you willing to commit to customers for life?


• Jeff Jarvis, you're a powerhouse, but, really, the world needs some new examples already! (Seriously old Jeff Jarvis circa Dell Hell 05 was trotted out by no fewer than three presenters today!)

More stories:

• Jaffe talked a lot about the "T-Mobile sucks" revolt. Remember the story. T-mobile claimed they own trademark on the color magenta and issued a cease & desist letter to engadget. In response, many bloggers displayed "T-mobile sucks" magenta badges. As ridiculous as the company was, Jaffe was also self aware that bloggers were essentially preaching to the choir ...saying the same messages again and again rather than creating new messages or engaging in real debate. Love the practical analysis.

Panel: And Community Makes Three

Adam Brown—Director, Digital Communications, The Coca-Cola Company
Jan Valentic—SVP of Marketing, The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company
Stan Joosten—Innovation Manager, Holistic Consumer Communication, Procter & Gamble

Twittering:

• Couple cool things from over the break. Jim Oswald visualizing the live conversation http://snurl.com/29rv1


• Friend Marti teaching social tools in the social media cafe http://snurl.com/29rv9


• Doc Searls: Any question based on fear is the wrong question.


• Stan: When we talk open it's a mindset, but marketers want the 10 steps to do it. Really need to create mindset, not follow recipe


• Jan / Scotts: Always been a conversation in our industry. Storytelling from individual to individual Neighbors, garden clubs, hardware store.


• Stan: When you have a brand that has a point of view, you have to build in that there's a counter point of view. And build a conversation around that. Something that we're not very good at anticipating yet. But, it's going to happen. Have to plan for it.


• Jan: There is going to be negative talk about your brand. It's what you do about it. Own up to it. Address it.


• Q from audience: How are you mobilizing your staff. Adam: Step 1, get legal to sign off


• To get our execs blogging we're talking about doing more manageable limited engagement. Two week topics that start a conversation, but set expectations that they'll be an end date

More stories:

• Adam said that after legal signed off on getting involved in the conversation the next step was to get the executives comfortable with employees engaging social media. To do that, they started with existing, approved company spokespeople. Sounds kind of scary, right? A PR person on myspace...
  
  But, Adam's group went farther. Hand selected spokespeople who would both be comfortable with the medium and uniquely close to whatever culture or issues needed response. Plus, they're all getting their feet wet with their own blogs, social accounts, etc.

Marsha Collier—Author, over 15 books on eBay

Twittering:

• Salads with flowers and Marsha Collier talking eBay... it's an iCitizen lunch


• I'm an iCitizen and i'm not in my 20s. In fact i have a daughter in her 20s


• For the people who read my books, i'm a gateway drug to the internet


• I would never work for eBay because someone would tell me what i could say. It's about integrity.


• Hard for you to hear, but not everyone is on the internet


• Some people tweet too much. Hmmm. Feeling a hint of personal relevance

Keynote: Duncan Watts—Principal Research Scientist, Yahoo! Research

• One in ten Americans tells the other 9 how to vote, where to eat, what to buy (Keller and Berry, 2003)


• Wonderful American story, we have super heroes and free lunches


• Every day every hipster has to get out of bed & decide what faded retro t-shirt to wear and most of the time no one cares. Why did hush puppies take off and other hipster picks didn't? Not simple formula of cause and effect.


• Multiplier effect isn't one holy grail opinion leader, it's many relationships and influence-able groups


• "Unpredictability only increasing." Some in room clearly uncomfortable. Looking for actionable advice, not worst fears!


• Great Duncan point - measurable ROI happens way before rapid viral. Set expectations for success vs. tipping point.


• Tsk. Tsk. Reference to Ohio "cow tipping" - doesn't match up with vibrant, cultural Columbus


• Distracted by Jim Oswald's visualizing of conversation .. sort of cross between sharpie stenography and graffiti tagging


• Retweeting @jaffejuice: New Yahoo research has central hypothesis: people assume more in common with their friends than actually exists...


• Great audience Q: How will we define friend when we're connected to so many people?


• More Yahoo development - how to differentiate types of ties on FB. Better view of relevant social networks... Overlapping networks of real friends and strangers with overlapping interests. Different relevant networks for different questions
  

More stories

• The most important thing is getting extremely good at understanding what's already happening and moving resources to take advantage ... Take the Gap. Every season they put out several colors of T-Shirts. When they find out that the orange one is selling like crazy, they don't ask why orange, they move resources to quickly put out more orange.

iTalk: Steve Knox—CEO, Tremor (WOM at P&G)

Twittering:

• Man after my own heart, reason most WOM fails is that the message isn't simple. When we talk to our friends, we want simple


• Buzz marketing is danger zone. Office Max made 100 million elves, but same store sales dropped 7%


• Whole industry is built backwards. Lots of people want to build you a viral video, throw them out of your office


• If it isn't a disruptive message attached to the foundation of the brand, it's just more elves


• All of our data about real advocacy today is face-to-face conversations, not online


• Lots of talk of tampons

More from Steve:

What's the right message? There are two factors:

• Advocacy: Do I care enough about your brand to talk about it?


• Amplification: Have you made it easy for me to talk about?

#2 is where most WOM dies. Message needs to be simple. The things you talk about with your friends are always simple.

Panel: What Consumers Can Do
Sam Decker—CMO, Bazaarvoice
Tim Smith—Chief Strategy Officer, Lemonade, Inc.
Manish Chandra—CEO, Kaboodle
Adam Weinroth—Director of Product Marketing, Pluck

Twitter:

• Manish: We measure velocity of engagement by the volume of products being added, volume recently added, & traffic back to site


• Pluck: How many people who come to your site do something social … rate of contribution is a key metric


• Sam: “Start metrics with the P&L, where it’s important to CEO, move out from there.” Really?


• Tom: Lemonade users are highly sophisticated. Using stands as side business. Have high expectation, low patience.


• Adoption has really been fast paced. Only a few years ago, I’d be in a meeting and first Q was: what is a blog??


• Adam: Reward not just quantity but content. Elevate / spotlight their voice. 


• Manish: Sweepstakes / campaigns incent specific behaviors vs. ongoing rewards that can become negative to site


• Manish: Lifestyle shopping is much more discovery and emotionally oriented. Comparing handbags is much different than cameras.

iTalk: Tom Venable—EVP, InnoCentive

Twitter:

• Innocentive clients are reaching out to creative minds to fast-track R&D and product development


• Natural problem solvers want to create solutions. Open innovation. Awarding winning solutions. (Sample prizes: Asari X, DARP)


• There are a finite number of resources in your company. They're smart, know your industry, but they’re finite. There are millions of other people who could help


• Generation coming up now is going to find a way to make a living on their own terms, using the Web


• Humana currently has a challenge out to identify ways to improve healthcare in the U.S. 2000 solvers responding


• Other end of spectrum, statistical methods for software something-something


• Ah ha moment is when you realize how many projects are stuck in the pipeline w/ no R&D budget to solve

Other notes:

Great examples of the Innocentive model:

• Concrete guy solves decades old oil problem:
  
  20 years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, there was stil a lot of oil on the ocean floor. The problem was that Exxon couldn’t figure out how to separate frozen oil from water. So, they worked with Innocentive to put out an open call for a solution.
  
  An Illinois chemists from the concrete industry saw the problem and quickly scribbled an idea on the back of a napkin. He sent that scan in with a half-page write up about a certain kind of oscillator working at s certain speed and solved the problem Exxon had been wrestling with for 20 years. Their engineers had a conference call with the chemist to discuss and "you could hear the collective duh!"
• Hippie keeps $100 million of product on the market
  
  Another client needed to replace an art restoration chemical that was being phased out by EPA. They couldn't find a solution internally and were about to pull $100 million of product to stay in compliance.
  
  They farmed the problem out over the same network and a 20 year old chemist who used tie die t-shirts at the kitchen table with his mother applied that their color preserving solution to the art restoration chemical and saved the product. 

One thing I love about how Tom described "how to make it work." You have to change your perceived career role / value from problem solver to solution finder.

Crisis Communications and Social Media

Last week on Twitter, David Thulin wondered:

"who will first fully use the power of interactive Social Media to handle a large corporate crisis"

Great question. Followed quickly by - how?

If you haven't already written social media into your crisis plans, here are a couple of ideas on the how:

• Find the windows. Before the story is written, it is Twittered, or posted or boarded.
  
  If the issue is a big one, our impatient, chatty online talk leaders won't start with a long-form blog post or a call to their editors, they'll test the waters. See what other people know. Show a few of their cards. These short-form - what the heck is going on(?) - snips are a window into how your story is being told and who is telling it.
  
  For most consumer products, Twitter is an easy entry into that chat. Simple tools like Tweetscan let you search (on demand or all the time) your brand by name, product, etc. Have an all-common-nouns name? You may have to follow your brand followers by setting up a Twitter account and listening to people already talking about your industry or easier-named competitors.
  
  (If you're building a case for a champion, Billy's got lots of Twitter basics over on B&A's blog)
  
  For B2B products, the medium changes with the industry. A lot of IT gurus, for example, still use closed boards - ones that will be completely worth the registration fees for you to listen in on.


• Empower trustees of the brand. Ok, you've found someone tweeting about about The Crisis. What now?
  
  Luckily, you've prepared in advance by tagging 3 - 4 storytellers within your organization. Their actual job titles don't matter. You're looking for savvy users of the very technologies you're targeting (online communities, blogs, etc.) who are passionate about the brand and have excellent judgment.
  
  This online response team is tasked with three things: (1) understanding the shared brand story (what we stand for, who we are, who we serve), (2) understanding the current crisis or issue (knowing how to get the briefing and what questions to ask), and (3) using their best judgment to engage online talk leaders.
  
  Once activated, their job is to talk to people who are already talking about the crisis or who are likely to. Ask questions, share perspectives, talk to real people like real people. Yes, you can quote me.
  
  Way too scary? Another option is to engage people just to drive to a more controlled event. Maybe your product development leader or CEO is willing to field questions from customers, bloggers, other conversation media makers. Use the response team to drive people to that call / webcast / chat room.



• Create a credible voice. If the crisis is significant, eventually someone is going to have to talk to the masses without the filter of traditional media. The chef-ed up quotes in press releases and no comments are going to need to be replaced with a genuine interaction with a credible leader.
  
  There are easy ways to do this. And hard ways. A hard way is propping up your already beleaguered chief spokesperson to talk to a bunch of people she may consider ankle biters and watch the recriminations flow.
  
  An easier way is to already have a credible voice in social media. Newsgator is the latest brand (following Comcast, Southwest, etc.) to use a social media persona to interact with real customers. Say you tweet about wanting a Newsgator widget. Newsgator will track you down and find out what kind to inform their market-driven product development.
  
  Or, looking at it in a more traditional way - support a chief blogger (or committee of bloggers). Someone already ensconced in talking about the company and to the customer long before a crisis hits.
  
  Lauryn spotted this AdWeek article with some great corporate blogger examples.


• And, don't forget the golden rules: Don't lie (actual lies, fake email accounts, faux online personas, etc.). Don't send press releases (you wouldn't believe how many of those I actually receive). We're people. You are, too.

Follow David @DavidThulin
Follow Advergirl @Leighhouse
Follow Lauryn @LaurynByrdy

It should always be...

This EASY to use a press room:

The media room for Andy Beal's Radically Transparent offers enough content to power six news articles, four custom reviews, a buying decision and an ongoing relationship.

All in one place. All super easy to navigate.

This FUN to watch a branded video:

AKQA and Cake really fundamentally get it. It being social media and brands. You have to be able to take liberties - with yourself, your culture and your customers. You have to be able to delight and entertain and be completely different than a 30 second spot.

Little escapes the snark of this video from Pot Noodle. A piece that 200,000 people have already watched this month.

This PERSONAL to watch a recruitment video:

When Molly posted this video on Twitter, I had to ask her if it was sanctioned or organic ... the very simple delivery is so brimming with personality and conversation that I couldn't imagine it making it through any agency's self-marketing process.

But, somehow it did.

And, the simplicity of it - from an agency that COULD do anything - might just make it even more compelling.

This SIMPLE to share information:

Speaking of Twitter, I've been logged on for the past two days reading some of your favorite bloggers cover Ad Age's Digital Marketing summit in real time.

The posts include verbatims, analysis and a little argument. It's addictive.

This OPTIMISTIC to profile an audience:

After it sat for months on my teetering bedside stack of good intentions, I've finally picked up RenGen and dug in. Definitely my favorite industry book of this year... as much for its optimism as its smarts and illustrative examples.

Martin connects the dots from our creative and intellectual selves to a theory of renaissance that will define a generation.

No one reads copy

Before America's ad writers go on strike from this Web site, I should probably say that I'm kidding about no one reading copy, but, check out this game changing stat of the moment:

8 in 10 Internet users also do some offline activity while online

They shift focus, blur focus, multitask.

Their attention is widely divided from Ugly Betty to the latest Jodi Picoult pageturner to your client's Web site.

Seeing the big numbers is great reminder of just how important the experience is online. Of how important it is to concept the visit upfront, long before copy is written or a pixel is placed.

Check out the details on eMarketer:

Why blogs? Ask, Stella Artois

Full disclosure: I recently received a press kit from Stella Artois about the upcoming unveiling of their cinematic Web site ‘La Bouteille':

I’m super excited about this for two reasons:

As a blogger: A cinematic Web site? I love to play with shiny new Web things. Of course, I’m going to go check out the launch later this month and if it’s even mildly engaging, chatter about it like crazy in this space.

As a marketer / advertiser: I love to see traditional marketing organizations and agencies really “getting” what bloggers can bring to the table. Yeah, sure, Sony and BK have been doing it forever, but broader strategic adoption seemed to be stalled until this year.

Apropos of budgeting season, I’ll write a full business case for investing in blogging next month, but, until then, here are my top 5:

1. SEO: There is no cheaper, faster way to get solid organic search engine optimization than riding the coattails of the mega-servers at the top of the blogging service pyramid.
   
   
2. Low-hanging fruit: So, you want to talk to the advertising reporter at the New York Times. It will cost you and he’s got a lot of heavy hitters on his tail - but, yeah, you can do that.
   
   Or, you can invest half the money and talk to a couple of hundred bloggers – who by-and-large are pre-disposed to early adoption, curiosity about new products and general buzziness.


3. Share of voice: You’ve likely seen this Yahoo! Pyramid, representing "phases of value creation" at Yahoo! Groups as outlined a year ago by the company's head of technology development.
   
   Short-story: A very few people online are creating content. A larger number are aggregating it into ‘did you see’ posts. And the rest are, well, checking it out.
   
   Pair that with the recent report about the number of technology reporters who CITE BLOGGERS AS SOURCES. Not as man-on-the-street interviews, but as credible industry sources. It’s 67% of technology reporters. 67%.
   
   And, you start to see what we’re looking at: A small, vocal group of ProAms has been awarded a lot of authority – through Web behavior, RSS feeds, media attention and SEO - with little more than an interest in publishing.
   
   
4. On-demand delivery: Why wait for someone to find your Web site or read a review about your new product? Talk them into signing up for your feed once and deliver the content wherever they dine on feeds.


5. Changes in consumer behavior: Online ‘pre-shopping’ behavior and the emerging credibility and impact of user-generated consumer reviews has changed the offline game. Having people – real people, like bloggers, commenters, etc. – talk about your product / service / etc. has become hugely important as consumers go online in droves to ‘try on’ brands before going offline to buy.

Making ad consumption easier...

Check out fabulous new aggregator: Ad Feed

Really nice interface + good selection of content  - definitely making my jam-packed Newsgator file seem a lot less interesting.

(even though the 'Girl receives no billing! ... serves me right for inconsistent posting. If there's one thing AdMom always told me, it's 'the first rule of good blogging is consistent posting')

Maybe it is a conversation afterall ...

Very interesting news from the Pew Internet & American Life Project:

"35% of all Internet users have posted one or more of four types of content to the internet: having one's own blog; having one's own webpage; working on a blog or webpage for work or a group; or sharing self-created content such as a story, artwork, or video."

The numbers are even higher when you limit to homes with broadband (42%) or adults under 30 (51%).

The stories about the 1% rule really had me worried about the future of user-generated content on the Web, but this research definitely hints at a larger conversation going on out there... (well, right here really)

ClickZ story
PDF Report

Found at: Emergence Marketing

Hill | Holiday: Abandonning the corporate Web site for a blog.

Check out this great find from AdPulp:

Hill / Holiday has replaced their corporate Web site with a Flash banner and a blog. What's more, it looks like not all the contributors are staffers. I haven't read enough to be 100% sure yet, but I think I love it -

About the blog:
Yep, we've read all the headlines, digested all the stats. The foundations of mid-20th century marketing are eroding all around us. So what are we going to do about it? Discuss.
http://www.hhcc.com/

Edelman's Blogging Blunder or Bloggers Edelman Blunder?

Hmm, what does it mean when your boss sends you (a known blogger) an article that includes the phrase "most of us know bloggers need to be watched"?

Not much of a conspiracy it turns out - just another great story about what happens when BDAs (big dumb agencies) and even bigger clients (Wal-Mart in this case) rush into word-of-mouse media with all the customization and audience awareness of a big clunky direct mail campaign.

This time - Edelman PR gurus appealed to blogger egos with an offer of exclusive access to PR-generated "news stories" about Wal-Mart.

Interestingly, the Motley Fool criticizes bloggers for the ethical lapse of just repeating the company line verbatim and - in doing so - dinging their own credibility. And, the New York Times questions why bloggers didn't cite the source in their praise of Wal-Mart.

These PR tactics may make the hiring companyies look sneaky and under-handed, but the media is holding bloggers accountable, too. Turns out playing online in your jammies requires social responsibility.

In other blogging faux pas news - Bob Lutz of GM is being criticized on the Web for calling for customer feedback and then not responding to it.

No question - it's hard to do everything right in this new customer-focused conversation marketing.

Question: We've seen a number of these heavy handed blog strategies go bad lately. Do agencies who blog (like the fabulous Hill & Knowlton writers) have a better pulse on bloggers than agencies who just stick to their clunky Flash Web sites?

What do you think?

Two new ways blogs WILL IMPACT YOUR BRAND

Launched February 28: A new 'brand blog network' called 2TalkAbout.com gives consumers the opportunity to discuss their favorite brands. Users can post comments, opinions, photographs, etc.

The first brand discussion to go live is 2TalkAbout Honda, which is being actively supported by Honda.

John Goodbody, web site manager for Honda UK, said: "Now there's a blog site where consumers can discuss their Honda experiences with others, or get useful insights into Honda ownership. We encourage our customers to interact."

Coming soon: Toshiba Corp. of Japan has developed a quick way for consumers to gauge the latest blog buzz on products they’re considering to purchase in-store.

By taking a pic of the product's bar code with their camera phone and picture messaging that to Toshiba, consumers can get an immediate analysis from a targeted blog search.

Read more from Hill and Knowlton's TecHKnow.

Amazon.com going contextual

Bloggers and webbies will soon have another choice to monetize their sites.

Amazon is entering the contextual advertising sector with an offering similar to Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network, and the 3rd tier engines. Amazon is testing their program on an invite only basis and will be advertising their own products as well as offering an Adsense-like network, poised to open up the contextual ad market.

State of the Blogosphere

"It is literally impossible to read everything that is relevant to an issue or subject, and a new challenge has presented itself - how to make sense out of this monstrous conversation, and how to find the most interesting and authoritative information out there."

David Sifry, founder and CEO of Technorati,
on his State of the Blogosphere

 

Highlights:

• We are currently seeing about 30,000 - 40,000 new weblogs being created each day, depending on the day.
• Compared to the past, this is well over double the rate of change in October, when there were about 15,000 new weblogs created each day.
• The remarkable growth over the past 3 months can be attributed to the increase in new, mainstream services such as MSN Spaces, and in increases of use of services like Blogger, AOL Journals, and LiveJournal. In addition, services outside the United States have been taking off, including a number of media sites promoting blogging, such as Le Monde in France.
• Part of the growth of new weblogs created each day is due to an increase in spam blogs - fake blogs that are created by robots in order to foster link farms, attempted search engine optimization, or drive traffic through to advertising or affiliate sites.
• On average, Technorati is tracking about 500,000 posts per day, which is about 5.8 posts per second. In October 2004, we were seeing about 400,000 posts per day.

This is Part 1 and 2 of an ongoing series ... keep an eye on his site for updates...

RSS: Yes, now

For most agencies and clients, email marketing still has a strong hold on interactive communications. In many cases RSS (which some of us rely on daily ... um, hourly) hasn't even really hit the radar.

With email marketing maturing and declining quickly, many savvy marketers are looking to RSS as the next logical opt in communication - and, as a huge proponent, I want to help get the word out.

Here's a great new article on the subject, chock full of plenty of plain-spoken rationale to start to move clients toward adoption. And, below is a super quick primer on just what we're talking about -

Email Morphs Into A Feed: The Progression from Email to RSS Content Distribution & Marketing

RSS [Real Simple Syndication] lets users (also known as people) choose what content they want and where they want to get it. They can look at information when they have the time or desire to do so, rather than planning to get back to yet another message in their crowded inbox.

The most ubiquitous users of RSS are bloggers. But, RSS – or the ability to subscribe to content – can been enabled on most any database-driven Web property.

There are generally three ways to read RSS-enabled content

• Visit the web page
• Use an online new aggregator [Users simply create an account, and then start subscribing to feeds. They can come back to that single portal page at any time and see all the latest updates on the sites they subscribe to]
• Download a reader. [Users also have the option to download a news aggregator, an RSS reader, that delivers the content right to their desktop or inbox. Newsgator, for example, is a popular RSS, which runs in Microsoft Outlook.]

And, with the correct administration, RSS can also be set up to power email – enabling users to subscribe to email updates daily, weekly or monthly.               

Many cell phone companies, free email providers and others are also starting to integrate RSS readers in their products.

If you haven't already, click through and read the article.

Blogs beat New York Times in 6 / 8 Searches

Back in 2002, the very patient Dave Winer of Scripting News and Martin Nisenholtz of the New York Times made a Long Bet about the authority of weblogs versus that of NY Times in Google.

The bet: In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times' Web site.

Jason Kottke at kottke.org checked in to see how each side was doing in 2005. Eight news stories were selected and an appropriate Google keyword search was chosen for each one of them.

Top results from 1) "traditional" media, 2) citizen media, 3) blogs, and 4) nytimes.com  were tallied and an "actual" winner (blogs vs. nytimes.com) and an "in-spirit" winner (any traditional media source vs. any citizen media source) were calculated.

For eight top news stories of 2005, blogs were listed in Google search results before the Times six times, the Times only twice.

See all the results.