360DigitalInfluence

First of all, this isn’t new. We have had a social media-related ethics code in place since 2005. At that time, it was the Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics. It helped us decide what was ‘best-practice’ and what wasn’t. These are our ethics not something handed down through culture or a governing body. We simply believed that social media’s true power was grounded in trust — trust between bloggers and their readers; between brands and their followers; between marketers and customers.

The updated code covers more contemporary circumstances. Facebook for one. We have learned that there are principles that can guide our behavior in community management as well as influencer management. We have made a choice to embrace the principles of clear disclosure in our work everywhere even while only one consumer protection body that I know of, the FTC, requires it.

I wanted to share with you and certainly ask for input and feedback. This is a living document and can hardly ever be called “done.” Still, it will guide our global teams as we continue to design and execute complex, multi-market programs around the world. Check it out:

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Happy Friday!

Yesterday in Lisbon at the Global Sabre Awards, Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence team won the THE GLOBAL SABRE FOR OUTSTANDING DIGITAL/SOCIAL CONSULTANCY! Winning what we see as the top honor in the communications field is hugely uplifting to our team around the world. Receiving this honor from Paul Holmes organization means a lot to us. He is the one thought leader in the communications field that actually takes time to spend with all of the agencies out there to really learn what they are doing - year after year.

From day one (7 years ago) we focused our attention on being the best strategists and practitioners in social media not on blowing our own horn, so-to-speak. We wanted to develop creative and effective ways to solve real business problems via an emerging discipline. We also believe in the power of social media to transform marketing and communications organizations.  So, we applied that to our own organization.

We  focused our energy on growing the largest global network of social media strategists and practitioners. We see change all over the world albeit differently in every market. My recent posts on my own blog about Russia are a good example of that.

The true power of  social media comes through a fully integrated model. Not simply where we combine owned, earned and paid media for the compound effect it delivers but connecting new disciplines like shopper marketing, CRM, crisis management, and advertising with social media. This means breaking down the barriers between disciplines and forming new teams and new ways to work.

We are honored to win this award.

Attendance is up this year at the upcoming WOMMA Summit. I attribute that to a great agenda and teh coming of age of social media in major brands. I serve on the board as past president and you would expect me to be bullish about the organization and its events. I am. No apologies there. But I could not endorse something that had a good chance of disappointing people. That would be bad.

You can see the full agenda here (IBM, Harrah’s, Motorola, HP, Ben & Jerry’s, Unilever and more).

There are two conversatiuons that will happen at the Summit that I am looking forward to sparking and participating in…

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Last year, we had a terrific time presenting at the PRWeek Next Conference in NYC and while we are not officially presenting, I would recommend the event. Just look at the quality of the speakers:

• Ray Day, VP of Global Communications for Ford (cl)
• Bethany Sherman CCO of Dow Jones & Company
• Ray Kerins, VP Worldwide Communications Pfizer
• Julie Hamp, SVP and CCO at Pepsico

I am still hoping to attend. It is on November 9th in NYC.  You can find out more here and register now.

Recently we contributed to a report from Jeremiah Owyang and crew over at Altimeter. They just released it last week and we would like to share it here. They drew conclusions from a variety of sources to end up with the “8 Criteria” - most of which I agree with and find useful. They then go on to “grade” a couple of dozen brands in terms of their overall “maturity” in Facebook marketing.  Here are the 8 Criteria:

• Set Community Expectations
• Provide Cohesive Branding
• Be Up To Date
• Live Authenticity
• Participate in Dialog
• Enable Peer-to-Peer Interactions
• Foster Advocacy
• Solicit a Call-to-Action

Forget my knee-jerk objection to using what sounds like such paternalistic terms (”maturity,” ” infantile,” etc…)  there is some sense here…

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This week, Ogilvy is launching a new initiative to publish Red Papers of our thought leadership. Red Papers are Ogilvy-ized white papers meet books. I mean with the emergence of the iPad and even the iPhone as reading formats, I am having a hard time understanding what is a “paper” and what constitutes a “book.”  This one is a bit long - almost 8000 words - not there is valor in length.  I wanted to share some of my experiences in a practical way and therefore I get into some nuts and bolts for planning really effective social media.

What is it about?

For the past few years, we have been helping established and emerging brands apply social media in the most impactful way possible. That means getting beyond tactical and often token gestures at applying social media-based approaches. We work with enterprise to help them not just realize marcom programs but also change they way they interact with customers and organize themselves. While every brand is different, there are common experiences. My Red Paper outlines these and offers a foundation - practical and high-minded - that brands can apply to ensure their own approach is as strategic or as impactful to the business as possible.

Get it now

The Red paper is available for download now. It sits alongside another excellet read in Dimitri Maex’s Red Paper Learning to Read the River which is all about understanding the flood of data and metrics available to us as marketing experts.

Join me and others today for a teleconference produced by Bulldog reporter. The full title is: New FTC, FDA and SEC Social Media Rules: How to Manage Web 2.0 in Regulated Industries.

We will be sharing the latest status on both FTC (can you say ‘Ann Taylor?’) and the FDA’s road towards guidelines (how many pharmas submitted comments to the FDA?) and more importantly, how we are applying best-practice guidelines in our work here at Ogilvy. Real-world application.

You can get more information and register here.

The teleconference starts at 1:00pm ET Today

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) is holding it’s big brand marketer training event in Chicago - The School of WOM -  and we are taking a bunch of our team out there both to teach and learn. While there are basic sessions, we go for the advanced material and learning from the other brand marketers in the room.

As you consider where you will spend your professional development time and money this year, here are three reasons that you might want to join us:

1. If you already are engaged with social media and word of mouth marketing from either the communications or marketing POV and want to learn from other strategists and practitioners with experience - you should come. This is not all about a motivational keynote (although we have Dan Heath and Jeffrey Hayzlett (Kodak) which I am looking forward to). This is about real learnings from the trenches.

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This Friday, Piers Fawkes is having his PFSK Conference in NYC. Its not your usual social media or marketing confab. This is an event that will challenge you, inspire you and likely leaving you better at your job (for those who need that concrete ROI reason to attend). You will see so many folks including the chap who made this awesome graphic above from his personal infographic annual report - Nick Felton.

I interviewed Piers here. More importantly, you can get into the conference with a nice Ogilvy discount by clicking here.

I caught up with our own Thomas Crampton last week in Istanbul. Thomas runs our teams across Asia and one of the big events coming up this year is the Shanghai World Expo.  To help inform our work and our clients who will participate in some way or another, Thomas developed some great research on the current buzz throughout Chinese social media on the Expo. I had a chance to ask him about what he found:

Q: Can you tell us briefly what the Shanghai World Expo is and what it may mean to China, its government, business leaders and even the people there?
A: Shanghai Expo has been billed as one of the largest events of its kind in China. While people outside of China may not have heard of the event, the organizers expect a extremely large domestic audience.

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