360DigitalInfluence

From Meetup.com

During the WOMMA Summit in Las Vegas last week, I attended a session with American Express OPEN to learn about their nation-wide Meetups geared toward bringing small business owners together to learn, share and grow.

With over 7 million registered users, American Express OPEN Forum is an online “trading post” bringing together small business owners to share advice, insights and ideas to facilitate the types of connections needed to re-energize the economy. Of course, the more small businesses grow, the better American Express fares, too.

Despite featuring content by Guy Kawasaki, Anita Campbell and Mashable, OPEN Forum wasn’t seeing large adoption among its target audience, so American Express partnered with Meetup to provide 30 local small business Meetup groups across the country with curriculum and financial support to help them perform better in a down economy.

Program Goals:
1. Pair OPEN with local small business Meetups to leverage their reach and develop a scalable program
2. Generate lift in OPEN brand attitudinal metric, showing it resonates among participants
3. Increase OPEN brand sentiment, ensuring small business owners understand OPEN is committed to serving their interests
4. Increase Meetup group organizer activity and morale

How It Worked:
1. New York City Retreat - Discerning What Meetup Organizers Need
OPEN flew 30 Meetup organizers to New York City to better understand their needs as community organizers and small business owners, their members’ needs and how OPEN could add value. OPEN invited influential guest speakers and ultimately found that Meetup organizers wanted to increase the value and credibility of their groups and add more members.

2. Curriculum Development -  Empowering Meetup Organizers
OPEN developed a 6-month curriculum for Meetup organizers delivered as a monthly “Meetup in a Box” and leveraged its existing partnerships to provide special offers and exclusive webinars to Meetups. OPEN also periodically brought Meetup organizers together in between sessions as a focus group, enabling OPEN to continuously evaluate and evolve the program.

3. The Results
Meetups provided OPEN with a nation-wide presence it wouldn’t have otherwise achieved.

• 82% of Meetup organizers responded that OPEN sponsorship improved their Meetups
• Pilot program measured a success - OPEN has now grown to 80 sponsored groups worldwide

• Organizers are a valuable resource to each other
• Each group has different needs
• Need better scale - can’t always fly organizers to NYC, sending Meetup packs got expensive

Leave it to social media to alter the time tested traditions of football, family and food comas on Thanksgiving. Epic Change, a non-profit that helps amplify the stories of changemakers and social entrepreneurs to help them raise needed funds, is in the midst of their second annual “Tweetsgiving”. TweetsGiving is a global celebration that seeks to change the world through the power of gratitude by encouraging participants to express their thanks using online tools and at live events.

The Twitterverse has been abuzz these past few days as people share their humble thanks with the #tweetsgiving hashtag. At the moment, they’ve managed to raise over $26,000 for this year’s beneficiary, Epic Change fellow “Mama Lucy” Kamptoni, a woman who once sold chickens and used her income to build a school that now serves over 300 children near her home in Arusha, Tanzania. The money will go to improvements for the school. Thanksgiving will never be the same.

So before you sit down to eat tonight or subsequently pass out from all that turkey and stuffing, do take a moment to let others know what you’re thankful for this Thanksgiving. Have a happy one.

With so many great insights and case studies at this year’s WOMMA in Las Vegas, it’s hard to sum it all up in one post. We saw a number of trends in insights, bringing to light the best practices from top WOM marketers.

Many of these best practices were incorporated in the Team Aquaphor campaign with Active Marketing and Beiersdorf (leading to it’s success).

Active Marketing Group works w/ teams of ambassadors (or their list of influencers) who apply for specific brand engagements/positions made available through Active Marketing Group. Featured at WOMMA was a campaign to create word of mouth around Aquaphor with Beiersdorf.

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From Rob BonDurant, VP of Marketing at Patagonia – from today’s WOMMA Summit.

Patagonia… continue reading

Neatly six months after the feds officially dropped the “Swine Flu” term in favor of the scientifically-grounded “H1N1″, web users are finally showing signs of following suit as evidenced by recent shifts in keyword searches.

According to Google’s Insights for Search tool, worldwide searchers for the first time since the outbreak have searched for “H1N1″ in greater numbers than “Swine Flu.”

The data shows that while “H1N1″ never received the surge of search queries earned by “Swine Flu” during the height of outbreak, the science-based strain term has slowly climbed atop the level of swine searches.



So what does this mean for brands?

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There is a popular saying in politics that all politics are local; and in China the same can be said about the Internet. Local players, in tune to the specific needs of the country’s “Netizens”, rule the digital space, and the numbers are staggering. Currently, the Internet in China is home to over 340 million users who are online for an average of 16 hours per week, the same amount of time they spend watching television. There are 111 million people managing a social network profile, and these numbers are growing daily. The power of the Internet in China has never been stronger and has not even begun to be realised.

It is no secret that the Internet in China has been an agent for reform, and it is serving as a valuable tool for people to explore a world often beyond their reach. The Internet is not only serving China’s growing set of Netizens though. It is quickly replacing traditional media as brands and companies seek to connect with their consumers in new and different ways. With the exception of Google, international platforms that offer a cut and paste version of their American or European sites simply fail and often get banned. Popular sites such as Facebook and Twitter have fallen victim to the Great Firewall of China. While young innovative Chinese Netizens can find a way to get to these sites, why would they want to? Chinese social media is simply way cooler.

The Internet in China is dominated by long-running, multi-service portals like Sina, QQ and Sohu that have been offering social networking, discussion forums, blogs, instant messaging and other “socialised media” long before Twitter and Facebook. As the nationally preferred form of social media, bulletin board systems (BBS) are available in every imaginable topic, and in these forums, Netizens can be extremely vocal, resourceful, risk-takers, subversive and sometimes a little worrisome.

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Yesterday was a busy day of back to back presentations from the first day of the FDA hearings and there are many recaps now sharing some topline points from the conversations and presentations. I shared my own take on some big themes that emerged from the early part of the day here on this blog. Aside from the content presented during each of the speaker’s time on stage, I think there were several pivotal moments of significance throughout the day. Here’s a chronological recap of what I felt they were, and what they might mean for the next step of this process the FDA has just begun:

1. Pharma needs guidance (Eli Lilly) - Being the first real pharma brand to speak on the agenda, Michelle Sharp did an excellent job representing some of the main concerns that most pharma brands have. Her point that they were operating in a vacuum and therefore simply not willing to use the online channel was well presented. Ultimately, it was her presence and the comparative courage of Eli Lilly to have her on stage that truly stood out, particularly when you consider how many pharma brands were content to sit on the sidelines passively and simply watch the proceedings. continue reading

The much anticipated FDA hearings on how pharma and medical device companies should be able to use the Internet and social media for promotion kicked off today and the presentation room at the NTSB was packed with formally dressed people with expectant faces, ready to participate in what most people consider one of the most important moments in the history of online advertising and promotion in the medical space.

Based on the presentations this morning (including mine on behalf of Ogilvy) there were several themes that emerged as topics that will be interesting to track throughout the rest of the hearings and beyond. To a large degree, these were also the points that the FDA asked probing questions on after speakers were done presenting, which is an indication of what topics the agency considers to be most important as well. The speakers in the morning session included Ogilvy PR, Pew Prescription Project, Eli Lilly, PhRMA, Pharma Marketing News, IAB, VuMedi, WebMD and WEGO. Based on listening to those presentations, here are a few topline thoughts on implications and common themes that are emerging so far:

1. Good quality content for patients and HCPs from companies IS worthwhile and desired. Through the morning proceedings, everyone agreed that companies should have SOME ability to create and promote content online. This is an important agreement moving forward, as it assumes that the focus on future guidelines from the FDA will be about HOW companies can interact online and not on the broader question of IF they should even be allowed to. If there is one big conclusion that I hope the FDA takes away from today, it is that there is an important and meaningful place for pharma and medical device brands to share content and messages online, and this category of information should not be silenced completely or banned.

2. Doing nothing is not an option. A few speakers mentioned the same point this morning, that with the growing number of “unscrupulous” sources of medical information online from people such as “snake-oil salesman” promoting miracle cures, the necessity for the FDA to step forward and help to define what acceptable forms of marketing online are is vital.

3. Companies should not be responsible for policing the Internet. One of the most common questions that companies are asking is how deep they should need to go when it comes to finding and correcting bad information. While opinions on that point may vary, several people this morning mentioned the same point of view that companies should not have to police the entire Internet for bad information.

For the rest of today, you can watch the rest of the proceedings live at http://www.capitolconnection.net/capcon/fda/111209/FDAlive.htm.  Also, if you would like to read more about our POV that we presented today, including a summary of our “3 C’s” model for accountability, you can visit the following resources:

Ogilvy’s Presentations Today and Tomorrow at the FDA >>
Summary of Ogilvy’s 3 C’s Model For Accountability >>

Facebook has recently developed guidelines for any promotions being announced or held on the Facebook platform.

With such growth in popularity and participation over the past year or so, more and more brands and companies are joining Facebook to get closer to their employees, customers and peers.

As more Facebook programs have been developed, Facebook now sees a need to establish a few guidelines for brands, agencies and companies to follow moving forward.

Before starting a new Facebook program, be sure to take a look at these new promotion guidelines and talk to a Facebook representative if you have any questions.

Here are 5 things you should know about Facebook’s new promotion guidelines:

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If you are in Washington, DC this Thursday, 11/12 and are interested in the FDA public hearings focusing on social media, please join Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, LiveWorld and WOMMA as we hold a post-analysis wrap up here at the office. We will be discussing topics highlighted during the day’s hearings and Tony DiResta, Legal Counsel for WOMMA will offer a post-hearing analysis, followed by an informal tweet up - #FDASM. Both WOMMA and Ogilvy will be presenting at the hearings along with many other experts and John Bell will be speaking on behalf of WOMMA in his role as President of the Board. In addition, Rohit Bhargava will be presenting on behalf of Ogilvy in his role leading our Digital Health business.

You can RSVP here and stop by on Thursday night, November 12th,  from 6:30pm - 8:30pm, at the Ogilvy DC office (1111 19th Street - 10th floor).