360DigitalInfluence

I have been participating in WeMedia events for years. I think the world of Andrew and Dale who started pulling this together when they were with the American Press Institute a few years back. WeMedia is an eclectic mix of leaders from new and traditional media and technology and marketing and…. That’s the point. It’s not another echo chamber event.

You should consider attending - especially as I have a neat code that gets you in at “friends of Ogilvy” pricing: WM-OGV.

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As President of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), I have been anticipating the final release of the FTC guidelines which came out this morning at 8am. Figures that I would be in Paris with our Digital Influence team and not in the US. But even here, everyone is paying attention to the issues raised by these guidelines. This is an important step and will cause many marketers to revise their approach. I wanted to take the time to summarize some key issues as we all dig in to the document.

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We have a burst of growth (gross understatement) and we need new team members now and looking into next year. Most of the positions are some fom of Digital Influence Strategist - all levels, really.

What exactly is a Digital Influence Strategist? We’re social media true-believers + communications experts + disciplined marketers + strategists and practioners + great collaborators + eternally curious.

We need folks in different markets but don’t get too hung up on location.We’re more interested in your talent than your zipcode. Click here to get the skinny on the positions and please tweet to the rooftops. We need the WOM!

Join me on September 14th for a live webinar with WOMMA  on just what “disclosure” between brands and influncers actually means. Everyone supports the idea of discloure. WOMMA has been championing that for years via the WOMMA Ethics Code. Now its time to get specific. The FTC is about to release real guidelines and brands should get ahead of the curve to protect their brands and their customers.

• How should bloggers disclose they recieved a loaner car, laptop or big screen TV to experience?
• How should they disclose if they receive product to keep whether a digital camera or a case of shampoo?
• What about tweets about sponsors? How do you tag tweets?
• How can brands push influencers to disclose their ‘material relationship’ on the blogger’s own site?

These are examples of the reality behind the core question of what is ‘best practice disclosure.’ WOMMA helps brands via the WOMMA Code of Ethics. This year’s challenge is to drill down on disclosure and put specific definition on the best, most ethical and practical ways of doing it.

Monday September 14 at 2pm ET

Ethics and Endorsements: What is Adequate Disclosure?

Moderator:
Paul Rand, WOMMA-President Elect and President/CEO of Zocalo Group will serve as moderator.

Panelists include:

• John Bell, WOMMA President and Managing Director at 360° Digital Influence
• Jory Des Jardin, Co-Founder and President, Strategic Alliances at BlogHer
• Sean Corcoran, Interactive Marketing Analyst at Forrester Research
• Tom Collinger, Chair of the Integrated Marketing Communications program at the Medill School Northwestern University
• Anthony DiResta, WOMMA’s general counsel and partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP

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At WOMMA, we have worked with the great research firm - PQMedia -to release a comprehensive report on the financial state of the growing social media and word of mouth marketing field. This report has just been pre-released to members as part of the value of membership. There’s a lot in here. As a member, you would receive the report automatically. If you are not a member yet want the report, reach out to WOMMA and they can hook you up (not sure the fee)

UPDATE:  WOMMA’s chief WOM enthusiast, John Moore has distilled down some great highlights in his video.

So the big headlines are, well, big:

• “Spending on U.S. word-of-mouth (WoM) marketing increased 14.2% to $1.54 billion in 2008, as brands recognized the need to get involved in consumer and business conversations and allocate resources to WoM. Spending increased at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37.6% from 2003 to 2008.”

• “Total spending on WoM marketing is expected to increase 10.2% to $1.70 billion in 2009 and grow at a CAGR of 14.5% during the 2008-2013 period, reaching $3.04 billion as more brands include WoM in their media mix and ROI metrics improve.”

• “The growing use of WoM programs that rely on “influential ambassadors” to share their knowledge and opinions about products and brands led to a 34.6% increase in WoM media to $109 million in 2008. Spending increased at a CAGR of 122.5% from 2003 to 2008, the strongest growth rate among all of the WoM categories.”

I am still digesting all of the great data in here. Two graphics that I find both revealing and insightful include the share of spend across categories and the relationship of traditional and alternative media share (at the top of this post). In the case of the former, I am surprised to see Health and Pharma placing ahead of Travel. Presenting this past week at the ExL Pharma conference at Pfizer, I was deeply encouraged by the progress made in pharma related to social media over the past year. Nontheless, I expect more out of the travel and tourism space. I am guessing travel will grow dramatically (3.3% to 8% - that’s my prediction) this year.

As for traditional vs. alternative media, I think we have all been seeing this and I would expect the trend gain velocity. I will dig in deeper to the report and hopefully share more later…..

We recently added a great new talent to our team based in SF. She is expert at digital PR, technology and has another, even more impressive, badge of honor. Meet Rachel Polish, Senior Digital Strategist with 360° Digital Influence. And, yes, amongst her other great experiences working with terrific brands like SanDisk and PR Newswire she serves as public affairs specialist for the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve.

Recently, I asked Rachel  about her POV on how social media is changing PR. Here’s what she said:

Me: Tell me about your own social graph. Where are you most active digitally and offline? 

Rachel: While I am incredibly passionate about social media and online engagement, it is my belief that these things cannot exist in a vacuum.  While I am active on Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Friendfeed and am a frequent guest blogger, I balance all of these online conversations with a myriad of networking events, tweetups (including those I develop), Social Media Club, presenting and attending PR/social media conferences and serving on the board of PRSA.  I am only as good as I can be online if I am also pounding the pavement, building a network and picking up on best practices while offline. 

Me: As brands work to get involved in social media and scramble after the Twitter-train, what are 1-2 of the most underutilized strategies/tactics that might actually help them most?

Rachel: LISTEN first!  I’ve seen too many brands get burned by not understanding the needs of their customers before attempting to engage. When the company/organization does not “connect,” it can be detrimental.
I counsel clients and companies to remember that all of these online tools must still map back to a larger communications strategy.  Activity on Twitter, for example, must be about two-way conversation and result in some sort of ROI, however that is determined by the stakeholders.

Me: How will marketers and communications experts resolve the tension of “who owns social media” in the organization?

Rachel: This is an excellent question and, in my experience, there is not a one-size fits-all answer.  What I believe works best is a customized solution, depending on the organization.  In some cases, the customer service department or the sales organization might be a better fit for “owning” social media, as long as PR and marketing have the right to counsel on messaging and brand strategy.  It really varies, depending on the client.

Me:Can you tell me one trend that you are keeping an eye on that might be a little surprising?

Rachel: Just in the last few weeks, I’m noticing that several luminaries in the social media world are halting their blogging activity in favor of using Friendfeed or other conversational sites to engage with their followers.  I’m not sure if these same folks have noticed a drop-off in blog readership or if they would prefer to gain more traction on quick-hit sites, but I’m keeping an eye on the buzz around this trend right now.  Are blogs going away?  I don’t believe so, but I’m interested in seeing where this leads.  Stay tuned. 

Me: You have a neat background – amongst other things, you work for the Coast Guard – how are they exploring social media?

Rachel: Thanks!  I love the Coast Guard and am actually working on a post for the unofficial Coast Guard blog right now regarding how I believe our social media activities need to have more focus and messaging clarity.  It’s called “The Brand of Me vs. The Brand of We.”  The Coast Guard is very forward-thinking when it comes to social media and has a very open policy.  For example, whenever I manage a major case from a communications perspective (i.e. search and rescue operation, environmental disaster, major event, etc.), I ensure that we have video and photos uploaded to the Coast Guard’s visual imagery site, YouTube and flickr.  We also distribute a traditional press release to relevant media outlets, but also post the same release to a site that allows for commentary and reposting to other social media sites.  The commandant (leader) of the Coast Guard blogs and has a video camera with him almost all of the time.  The Coast Guard is also active on Twitter and Facebook.  I would love to see more focus, clarity and coordination between all of these activities to ensure we are being as transparent as possible while engaging in a meaningful way.

Me: Welcome aboard! (okay, it had to be said)

Monday and Tuesday, we will be participating at the NYC Pfizer campus in the ExL Pharma conference on Public Relations and Communications. Most of the major pharma and even device brands will be on hand. My particular session is a panel titled:

• THE CHANGING FACE(BOOK) OF PR: Leveraging Facebook, Twitter and Other Social Media Tools to Reach Key Audiences

Despite the “tools” in the title, my fellow panelists and myself have chosen to talk about practical changes happening today and tomorrow in pharma communications. While we plan to be very specific, we don’t want to create  a  session that gets lost in tactical discussion about Twitter without a more useful context.

Later in the day are the roundtables. This is my favorite format as it really lets peers carry on a discussion. My merry group will be talking about:

• VALUE OF SOCIAL MEDIA: Benchmarking and Measuring the Impact of Web 2.0 Communication Tools

There is lots of excitement about the step Facebook is taking to let folks establish a vanity url starting tomorrow at 12:01am. Facebook parties are launching everywhere to create a social event around grabbing urls at midnight. We asked Facebook whether brands should worry about losing their vanity urls to crafty squatters juiced up on Redbull tonight.

The short story is don’t worry…too much. You should be prepared to approach the urls like, well, regular urls. That means that you may have to explore all of the different ways your brand name may appear beyond the single rights protected way it is normally written. You have almost no chance losing facebook.com/yourbrand. But you need to consider whether you grab adjacent real estate to avoid encroachers ( facebook.com/your.brand; facebook.com/yrbrand; etc…). Update: keep in mind that you can only have one url per page. Update 2: From our good buddy Julio at GSI: facebook doesn’t distinguish between yourname and your.name - you get one, you got both.

Here is the scoop straight from Facebook:

“…More information can be found here:
 
FAQ: http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=900
Blog Post: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=90316352130

Starting Saturday, you can go into the system and choose your own names for both Pages & Profiles via this link: http://www.facebook.com/username/

If you find that the user name has already been taken and you hold the copyright, you can report infringement here: http://www.facebook.com/copyright.php?noncopyright_notice=1

If you/your client holds the rights to a name and wants to protect it from being taken by another user or business, you can enter the trademarked name and information here: http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=username_rights “

Don’t worry. But still throw a party tonight and grab some gold! (Just don’t aggravate the problem of squatters)

I spent the last week with our Brazilian 360 Digital Influence team and the bigger Ogilvy digital team in Sao Paulo. I learned a lot about that market and digital and social media growth across the region. Of all the stats and the discussions, there are three things that stuck out as important insights about the region

Here are the headlines from the experience:

1. Brazilians are adopting social media faster than any other world market
2. Orkut dominates in Brazil now but maybe not forever
3. Mexico will erupt as the next big social media hotbed (after Brazil)

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Join me on June 16 & 17 as I and, presumably 139 other characters kick off a Jeff Pulver extravaganza - 140 Characters -  in NYC that is bound to be the must-participate Twitter event on either coast. Twitter is being applied to brand marketing and business everyday. It’s simplicity and power has captured people’s attention beyond other Web 2.0 platforms and even the big social nets, themselves. Brands like Dell, WellsFargo, Ford, Marriott, Kodak, Comcast, PBS and so many more are on there driving results.

Here’s how Jeff describes the conference:

“While the original scope of the event was to explore “the effects of twitter on: Celebrity, “The Media”, Advertising and (maybe) Politics”, the scope of the event has expanded and we will be covering these topics and a lot more. #140conf will be taking a look at twitter as a platform and will be taking a look at some of the industries which have been disrupted by the advent of twitter.”

I will be running a panel on Twitter and brands. Don’t just come for one panel. Come for the rapid fire, immersive collection of characters from all sorts of brands, companies, orgs and individuals. If you are into Twitter or know you need to be, please attend:

What: 140 Characters Conference

When/Where:  June16 & 17  - NYC

Get more and register now>

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