As I tweeted this morning, I'm working with the folks from CNP_Studio to help organize a WordCamp in Orlando. Yes, we know the details are still slim, but we had to get the date announced for a number of scheduling reasons. More to come soon!

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The final general session of the event dealt with the topic of Federal Trade Commission guidelines and what they mean to WOM. Leading the discussion were Paul Rand, President, Zocalo Group and Tony DiResta, Attorney, Reed Smith LLP.

The new FTC guidelines have the ability to tremendously impact WOMM programs. Tony provided some background on the new proposed rules.

The FTC is making changes to the guides related to testimonials and endorsements. There are a few key points:

1. Results may vary will be a thing of the past.
2. Bloggers can be held responsible, personally liable, for failing to disclose material information.
3. Advertisers and sellers can also be held liable for the actions of the bloggers.

Why?

- There is a new FTC Chair and is pro-cosumer and has voiced concerns with self-regulation.

- The current guide was developed 35 years ago and was last updated in 1980.

- Two FTC-commissioned studies had results that concerned the FTC about testimonials and endorsements.

What the new principles mean:

- Advertisers are subject to liability for false or unsubstantiated statements made through endorsements, or failing to disclose a material connection between themselves and their endorser.

- Endorsers may also be subject to laiablity for their statements.

- The communicator of the message must be transparent and honest.

- The FTC requires substantiation or an appropriate basis for claims being made.

How is WOMMA participating?

- WOMMA has asked the FTC to make clear who is subject liability.

- WOMMA has asked the FTC to make clear what a reasonable consumer is defined as.

- WOMMA asked the FTC to reconsider requiring bloggers to request substantiation before making recommendations.

- WOMMA asked the FTC to be more specific on the role of employer liability.

Paul then took the stage and talked about the relationship between WOMMA and the FTC and how the organization is working for the industry in this time of change.

Luckily, WOMMA is viewed as a leader by the FTC in the WOM and social media space. The past ethical guidelines that have been issued by WOMMA help set the standard to date.

But how do these guidelines evolve? WOMMA has a review process that is constantly updating the guidelines as new issues surface.

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One of the common complaints about social media and WOM case studies is that they're mostly consumer focused. This session was design to address that topic. Kathryn Collins, Director, Corporate Communications, Texas Instrument talked about brining WOM to the business-to-business space. Kathryn was joined by Jeff Beringer, Senior Vice President, Digital Practice Lead, GolinHarris.

Yes B2B can benefit from WOM. In TI's case, they're a unique brand. They're an 80-year-old technology firm. How can you be old and hip at the same time?

Texas Instruments invented the integrated circuit and have continued to drive innovation. A recent well-known product is DLP, the power behind the latest projectors and theater systems.

They're trying to target design engineers. They're the folks that design the products we use. However, they need to get to the engineers early though, while they're doing the initial development work to make sure they use TI products.

TI has created an Engineer to Engineer (E2E) platform. But it was built on some standard foundations.

Listen: They need to listen like engineers though. This can be surveys, behavioral research, word processes and of course analyze online conversations about TI.

They have to base their process on the standard engineering process. Planning -> Design -> Prototyping & Testing -> Production.

The internet has changed from a library to a social place. Engineers could find the information in the planning phase, but when it came to later phases, they needed interaction. Social media and WOMM now provides that platform.

Who do engineers listen to? Peers, industry media, TI employees, analysts and academia. This lets TI know who they need to influence and engage with.

Engineers are not communicators. How do you activate their own experts? TI has a conversation agent training program. They've created a cadre of on-call experts. However it's often an additional duty.

How do they use WOM? They used to do technical white papers, but that model is gone. It's more about conversation. TI looks to help shape dialogue, participate in existing conversation and drive new discussions.

To claim their place as an innovator, they often need to tell their own story. Their doing this with VOIP and power & energy. They're allowing their engineers to talk about the projects they're working on and new ideas they may have.

The next step is to find out where engineers are going and follow them there. Twitter is obviously an emerging channel. What's promising is to see their customers creating their own communities.

How do they measure success? Uptick in discussion volume about TI, accuracy of online discourse and organic search visibility.

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After another amazing lunch, the general sessions picked back up with a look at Wal-Mart and their Elevenmoms program. Leading the session was John Andrews, former Emerging Media Senior Manager, Wal-Mart.

How do you get a group of moms to help evangelize Wal-Mart? John Andrews, kicked off the program with an overview of the Open Brand model. The common theme is that consumers own your brand, and the sooner you start to think about that the better.

One example he showed was the Kogi taco truck in LA. It's the epitome of a new media brand. Kogi is a start-up though. What about a larger established brand? Look at Nike, they're well known, but how do you energize a community around that brand? With their Nike + program they've done that.

Another major asset of social media is the ability to leverage social insights. The ability to mine the discussions and learn. What does your community really want? What should you build? When they started to develop the Elevenmoms program, they asked, "What should a savings community look like?"

For Wal-Mart they started with a plan, but then forget about it. Social media is very dynamic, so perhaps instead of a calculated plan, have a set of guidelines that help you down the path.

Another core component was to link all their media. However, they try to make their community the center of the traditional media elements.

Participation is also key, get as involved as you can. The large events are great, but sometimes the smaller events provide more value and engagement. It's key though to not only have the marketing folks there, but other members of their team.

Having a network of advocates are also an amazing early warning system for any issues that may flare-up online.

Finally, build a real relationship. This can take many paths, but it's important to be involved, perhaps beyond a standard business relationship.

John then turned it over to two of the moms to answer questions.

Q: What guidelines were given to you by Wal-Mart?

A: Both of the moms said there was no guidelines given to them. The only two rules they had was that any travel or product provided had to be disclosed and that they couldn't be disparaging about Wal-Mart. But to be clear, they wanted criticism, but it needed to be informative.

Q: Has the involvement with Elevenmoms brought you any celebrity or additional traffic to their blogs?

A: The moms said it has, but not in the way they expected. They're not seeing increased traffic, but it has lead to new opportunities. They did joke that their home stores don't even know who they are.

Q: How did they identify and approach the bloggers?

A. Twitter. They looked for keywords around frugality and savings. That helped them quickly identify who the leaders in the space though. They did this for three months, then started building relationships. They didn't look at the existing blogs or traffic from them.

Q: How are you identified as a part of the program on your blog?

A: There is a badge that most of them have their blog. It wasn't something that Wal-Mart did, the moms asked for it. On the other side, there is an aggregation site that collects all their content.

Q: How important is the aggregation?

A: John felt it wasn't that important. While they do try to send traffic to the mom's blogs, but it's not about traffic in that sense.

Q: Have you provided any training to the moms about transparency or how to use the social media tools?

A: None. All the moms selected had established blogs or Twitter profiles. They simply asked them to keep doing what they had been doing.

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The second general session of Day 2 featured Duncan Wardle, Vice President, Global PR Integration & WDW PR, Disney Destinations talking about some recent campaigns that Disney has conducted.

Duncan started his presentation with a quick review of the changing media landscape and how the digitization of content is driving consumer choice. Mobile is another huge force, along with media snacking and social networking. All these things point to more power for consumers.

Balance all of these changes with authenticity, that is what consumers want/expect from brands. Since October this has come to the front with the recent financial crisis. People don't trust brands.

Brands talk about engagement, but what is it really? Duncan believes that the brands that will succeed will be those that work with their consumers to build products and services together. It's the standard role of talking with not talking to.

Duncan then moved into a few case studies from the past few years. First up was the Disney Dream Jobs program. Disney partnered with CareerBuilder.com to allow consumers to upload a video to apply for a 'dream' job.

For Disney it was a totally new arena. They had no idea how many videos they would receive and what the videos would could contain. The big step was of course letting go.

Disney was overwhelmed with the number of video applications they received. Duncan and the team watched all of them, eventually narrowing it down to five finalists. The finalists were posted online and consumers were allowed to vote, resulting in millions of votes. The finalists built their own marketing campaigns, driving even more traffic to the campaign. A side benefit was the number of regular job applications that Disney received. Because of this, it was the most successful recruitment effort to date.

The next project was the Walt Disney World Mom's Panel. They launched a search for some of the most passionate Disney moms. Once again the response overwhelming. They received 10,000 applications over the weekend, but turned away over 30,000 applicants. That was the one major mistake they made.

As the program evolved, the internal issue was once again giving up control of the marketing messaging. But the moms are an amazing resource. They currently can't handle the volume of questions they receive, but that's a good problem to have.

The mom's panel has helped them overcome the two largest barriers they've faced, affordability and age. That is, what is the appropriate age for a child to first visit the theme parks. The honest, open advice of the mom's helped break down this barrier.

The women that did not make the Mom's Panel became part of the Mickey Moms Club. One major step was allowing the club to select their own logo. Once again, for Disney to allow somebody outside the brand to do design and select a logo was a huge leap of faith. But, it worked.

Their work with the moms made them look at how they consume media. To help promote the new What Will You Celebrate? campaign they created a viral video campaign. The program allows consumers to create a uniquely branded video to 'celebrate' an event such as a birthday or an anniversary. These videos can then be sent to friends and relatives. This builds the standard pass-along/viral effect, spreading the video even more.

The videos has had an 85% click-thru rate and paid for itself in just over 18 hours from launch and has gone on to blow past all expectations for views and revenue.

What are Duncan's take-away questions:
Reach: How will you reach new consumers?
Control: How do you balance letting go?
Advocates: How will you leverage your biggest asset?
Content: How will content be shared?
Measurement: Is it impressions or engagement?
Success: What will success look like?

(Note: Disney is a client)

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Jeben Berg, Creative Director of Cross Platforms Solutions, YouTube, Google led the next general session on how to effectively use the platforms to connect with customers.

Jeben's first point is that YouTube is not TV, so you need to think differently about it.

How big is YouTube? 81.6 million unique US visitors, over 300 million when you include international audiences. There are 15 minutes of video uploaded every 60 seconds.

YouTube's audience mirrors the online population. In other words anybody that can get online, will go to YouTube.

There are two types of videos, user and partner. User videos account for 91% of all video uploads. The remaining videos are partner videos.

The big question is how do you stay on top and stand out in such a large sea of content? Jeben says there is no single formula for success.

One of the questions that always comes up is responding to negative comments, it's about controlling the flow and interacting. The recent Dominos Pizza crisis was resolved when Dominos responded via YouTube.

Another concept is buoyancy, that is keeping your content afloat, and rising to the surface. It's a difficult task. Nike has always been very progressive with online advertising. They opened their YouTube account in 2005, and started posting right away. Now, they continue to feed the channel and cross-link their content.

Search hierarchy is this: Title, Description and the Tags.

Your content should be self contained. It should be able to live on its own. If I need to search outside the initial video to learn more or get context, then the moment is lost.

BlendTec does a great job with this. Each video tells a story in a simple, self contained way. If you stumble upon a video on another site, the story can stand by itself.

Next, be who you are. Snuggie learned this recently. They also went along with the criticism they received. By participating they continued to drive interest in their product.

Brands also need to be thick skinned. Take the criticisms and roll with them. In the end it keeps the content relevant and on top.

Choice is not an option, people expect choice. Street Fighter has been using annotations to link one video to another. A single video leads to many interactions.

One of the hottest things on YouTube is competition. By our nature we all compete, they will quickly create there own sports and events, just to achieve status.

Episodic innovation is also very successful, once you have an interested audience, continue to build upon it.

Next tip, pull on the heartstrings. Think the Susan Boyle video.

Memes are also a very powerful tool, be prepared to embrace them. A number of trends started by the Obama campaign, spilled over to pop-culture and to brands. Once again, roll with it.

The most valuable pieces of real estate are free. There are a number of YouTube users that have huge audiences, build relationships with them.

Up next is the last general session of the day followed by more breakout sessions.

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After a great lunch, WOMM-U returned to the action with a general session led by David Churbuck, Vice-President of Global Web Marketing, Lenovo and John Bell.

The 2008 Bejing Olympics offered Lenovo a unique opportunity to partner with athletes to use social media to tell their stories and their experiences at the games. As a primary sponsor of the Olympics Lenovo had the right to provide gear to athletes.

Lenovo is the home team in China, so everything had to go perfectly. They were very concerned about the perception of the brand.

There were some internal objections to doing anything social at all. Once again it was the fear of losing control.

Another issue was the IOC. In the eyes of the IOC, once the torch was lit, the athletes were there to compete, not to blog. If they were blogging then they were a member of the media. Eventually these internal barriers were overcome. Lenovo then looked to work with athletes to blog from the Olympics.

Lenovo soon realized that they needed help recruiting and training athletes. Ogilvy was brought in to help with this task. They tapped their existing networks to recruit and train the athletes all over the world.

They looked to find athletes that had blogs, they were free to say what they want to. They also looked to find athletes that would not normally be in the spotlight.

Lenovo did ask athletes to include a badge identifying them as a member of the network. This allowed them to track traffic to the individual blogs.

The next step was to build an aggregation tool that pooled together content from all the athlete's blogs. This landing page was the focus of all of Lenovo's advertising efforts.

The project was in constant beta. They had the ability to quickly change technical aspects of the project without a lengthy approval process.

There were a number of roadblocks. The IOC was very strict in making sure that athletes did not post photos or video footage from the venues. There seemed to be some daily issue related this.

The blogging provided an alternative content channel for the games. Readers could follow the behind-the-scenes story from before the games to after it. As is often said with blogs and other social media tools, the humanization of the content is what makes it compelling.

One of the main lessons learned is to reach out to writers with existing blogs and aggregate the content, don't look to re-create the wheel.

Next on the agenda is YouTube & Google.

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After a great first general session WOMM-U moved on to NBC. Matt Allen, Senior Executive Director of Marketing, NBC.com and Sarah Hofstetter, Emerging Media & Client Strategy, 360i spoke about the holistic approach to social media. The process of getting the organization on-board, but for the right reasons.

Yes we know conversations are important, they're also messy, vibrant, measurable and sometimes can be monetized.

Don't fall into the checklist trap. We need a Facebook page, we need a Twitter program, etc. What is the broader strategy? What is the ROI? The other trap is the Bright Shiny Object Syndrome.

Matt and Sarah then went into a case study from NBC on their approach. NBC has seen great success from their digital word of mouth initiatives.

Widgets are a major part of their strategy, widgets allow people to spread NBC's content to other locations, while maintaining the NBC brand and user experience.

The widgets are also trackable, NBC can see where they're being used. They can also be monetized. NBC can provide advertising via standard ads or pre-roll on video.

There are so many platforms, but so little time. Does the platform provide value to the marketing objectives.

- Does it meet your marketing objectives?
- Does it leverage your social media arsenal?
- Does it follow best practices?
- Does it provide value to the consumer?

For NBC the major objectives were: A preferred player, site traffic and advocacy. NBC has great assets with programs like SNL. However the majority of users were going to other sites such as YouTube to watch/comment.

NBC created a unique video player and a digital word of mouth strategy to capture back this traffic and conversation.

The first step was the find their advocates. However, just because somebody is writing about a subject doesn't mean they want to be approached. With those that do want to be approached they built unique relationships with them. The process is very manual. You need a combination of PR and WOM best practices.

In a case like SNL, they need rapid, relevant outreach. NBC wants coverage on Sunday morning. If they wait, then users will upload their own clips to other services. Once again the goal is to drive the video traffic, discussion and coverage back to NBC.

Obviously a key focus is measurement. They want to measure what people are watching, when they're watching and where they are watching. The data mined allows them to make other strategic decisions. If users are engaged on a site and watching embedded video, does it make sense to advertise or build a stronger relationship.

Popularity in social media dominates PageShare on Google. In 2006, if you searched for SNL on Google, NBC wasn't even on the first page, now it's the first result.

At numerous points they map back to their four primary questions. If they're not answering those questions, they need to adjust strategy.

What are their key DWOM (Digital Word of Mouth) tactics:
- Always be transparent
- Never spam
- Authenticity is key
- Give them something to talk about

Now for a quick coffee break, before we come back to the WOMM-U action.

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The first general session of WOMM-U 2009 featured Geoff Donaker, COO of Yelp. Geoff gave the audience a brief overview of what Yelp is. One on side it's a consumer search site. You're looking for a restaurant a plumber, etc. On the other side, it's a business tool. You're a restaurant owner or a plumber and you need customers. Yelp meets these needs in the middle.

Yelp currently has six million reviews, many of those in the past year. Restaurants are 31% of reviews submitted. People think of Yelp as a restaurant review site, but only 1/3 of reviews are restaurants, the rest are spread across all manner of businesses. Why are they known as a restaurant site? Because most people eat out more than they may have their car fixed.

How do they make money? Local search ads.

Obviously people are going online to do research before making a decision. This trend is accelerating.

What they're finding by analyzing the site traffic is that no reviews = no traffic. The more reviews a business has, the more traffic they get online. Major retailers are now realizing that they need to be part of this ecosystem.

What have they learned about WOM?

Geoff recently had a situation with his car, it needed repairs and at first he didn't use his own product. It resulted in a bad situation, but by going to Yelp and doing a little research, he found a mechanic that worked out perfectly. By listening to the opinions of others, Geoff found the quality service he wanted.

We all have a love/hate relationships with reviews. A carpet cleaner told Geoff some interesting stories. First, he removed all the logos from his vans since he didn't want to accidently cut off somebody in traffic, and then get a negative review.

The small business operators want such control over their personal brand. The concept of putting control in the hands of their customers is terrifying to them. In the past this carpet cleaner would spend $50,000-$100,000 in Yellow Page advertising, now he spends $0. Because of Yelp and other sites he has more business than ever. However the money he's saving from advertising, he's spending on improving customer service.

For Geoff, it's great to see consumers winning and businesses that are providing excellent service winning.

Nothing sells better than great WOM. The stories that customers provide about products and services sell much better than advertising. As a result many of the organizations that excel on Yelp are focussing more efforts on WOM and service.

WOM does require think skin though. Negative reviews sting. Yelp recently entered into their first national advertising deal with Starwood Hotels. However, in the lead-up to the deal, a Yelp user posted a scathing review of a W Hotel in Arizona. Starwood asked for it to be removed, but Yelp left it up. Geoff wondered if that would scuttle the deal, but in the end Starwood realized that the positive and negative reviews were what made Yelp the resource that it is.

With online review sites the temptation to spam is very strong. Sadly there are people that will attempt to game the system. Some do this without knowing it's wrong, while others specifically

The manufactured reputation usually backfires. A pet sitter recently asked customers to write five-star reviews on Yelp and receive a $20 discount. From Yelp's perspective this violates their terms of service. It also brings out the vigilantes. People who attempt to protect the sanctity of the system. Sometimes that retaliation

However, negative WOM can be good for business. A local coffee shop that was VERY serious about their product received a 1-star rating. The reviewer felt the coffee shop was a bit too serious about the product. The coffee shop took that review and ran with it. It became a focal point of their marketing efforts. Yes they were serious about coffee and proud of it. That negative review was quickly turned to a positive.

It's worth engaging your vocal critics. Geoff showed a clip from a local wine shop owner. He said that whenever he contacts a negative reviewer and interacts with them, the review changes from negative to positive. Some of his best customers now are individuals that once left negative reviews.

Geoff's closing thoughts: The genie is out of the bottle, you're better off joining the conversation than not, choose your ambassador(s) carefully.

No break between the first two sessions, we're on to the next presentation.

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Tomorrow afternoon I head down to Miami, specifically South Beach for the latest edition of WOMM-U. For the acronym-challenged, that's Word of Mouth Marketing University.

I'll be doing some blogging and some picture taking. Are you going to be there?

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Mike posted on VoceNation and on his blog that Voce will be sponsoring the big WordCamp in San Francisco this year. As Mike said, it's a natural fit for us.

I'll be there along with a large crew from the Voce Nation, will you be there?

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It's the one questions I'm asked most frequently in the past few weeks, "BlogOrlando?" That's it, just one word. The folks asking assume I know what they mean. And I do. Sadly the news is not good.

After a great deal of consideration I have decided not to host a big, public BlogOrlando this year.

Why? A number of reasons:

1. I just can't make the time commitment this year. Work is busier than ever and I've done it three years now. The event consumes almost all my free time in September. I'm looking forward to a bit of a break and I know my family is as well. I've always had a great bunch of volunteers to help out, but still the majority of the work and stress is on me.

2. In some ways I think the event has run its course. When planning last year's event I started by saying, "I can't repeat the same sessions, and have similar speakers." In the end though a little bit of that happened.

As the topics mature you create a few different groups, namely those starting out, and those that are experienced. Eventually there needs to be two tracks, a beginner and an expert. Layer that on top of the already existing tracks for PR/Comms, Journalism, etc and you have quite the complex event. It's not just a simple get together of folks in a room chatting. The first year we had under a 100 folks, the past two we've been near 300, I would expect the same this year, since cost isn't a factor, the event has always been free :-)

3. Back to the roots. Last year I hosted a smaller event a few days before BlogOrlando. If you remember it was the original concept behind the event. I may still do something small, invite only. Think of it as a TED-style event in Orlando. I'll be mulling that over in the next few weeks.

4. I'm not as connected to Orlando as I used to be. My work has taken me all over the world now and I don't get to spend as much time in the downtown area. I mentioned this to a few folks last year; the fact the the guy behind BlogOrlando doesn't really work there anymore. Folks like Greg Pollack and Ryan Price have always been in touch with the local scene and their local events show that.

I've been debating about when to announce this, since I was hoping that thinking about it more would change my mind. However, as I said above, the question is being asked, and a few folks were even asking about travel plans.

It is the complete end? No. I may still hold a small private event this year, or may think about hosting an event in 2010. We'll see.

A few folks have asked if I would let somebody else run the event. I have mixed feelings about this. While there are a few folks that I know could run the event well, BlogOrlando has mostly been my baby and I'm not ready just yet to let it go. However I may change my mind.

Lastly a big thanks to all my friends and colleagues that took time out of their personal schedules and paid their own way to travel to Orlando these past three years. I like to think we put Orlando on the map a bit. Seeing something like this, makes me feel proud.

In the end we all learned from each other and made friendships and business connections that will last for a while. That's more valuable than any topic covered in a session.

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For the third year in a row, I'll be heading to Atlanta for SoCon09. This year's theme is "In Search of the Southeast’s Social Media Niche."

I'll be leading a session in the afternoon about measurement and ROI of social media programs. Look for a bit of this, this and this to be discussed :-)

Here are some photos from year's past.

Will you be there?

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Last Thursday I scooted up to Chicago for the day to attend BlogWell. Some of my colleagues had attended the San Jose edition of the event last year. The BlogCouncil is the organization behind BlogWell, and a few of their members provided the case studies presented at the event.

During a few of the sessions the discussion of ROI came up. Some in the audience bemoaned this and some of the presenters gave the standard, "it's still early" or "it's difficult to measure". While those answers may be good during an exploratory phase, any type of long term program is dead in the water without some soft of measurement.

Why? Well, welcome to corporate America. At some point you'll be meeting with somebody a few levels up and you won't have 15 minutes to explain what social media is, and why you're doing it. You perhaps have 2 minutes and a single slide in a direct reports deck. You need to provide some tangible metrics, otherwise your budget is moving somewhere else. Simple statements like, "Engaging our customers", "Starting Conversations" aren't going to cut it either.

At Voce we're constantly helping our clients measure their social media initiatives back to core initiatives and goals. After all if we're not tracking towards the objectives we set out, then why are we doing it?

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First off, full credit to Dave Coustan for coming up with this concept, but I'll elaborate on it a bit more. In discussions about what direction BlogOrlando *might* take for 2009, we were discussing how some people seem to become serial conference-goers. You know the self-promoters that talk and talk and talk (see this post).

With the reverse honorarium* we would reach out to some of these 'social media leaders' and say:

"Hey, you're an influencer and a prolific writer on the subject of social media. Well, we're having an event, so here's $500 for you to NOT come. We feel that your lack of attendance will actually allow for deeper/richer discussions among the attendees because you won't try to dominate each conversation and make it all about you."

What do you think? Who would be on your list of non-attendees?

*Trademark pending

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The American Marketing Association's Mplanet conference is coming up at the end of this month, January 26-28th, in my backyard (Orlando). I attended the first version in 2006, yes that's right three years ago.

It's actually an interesting concept, the three year gap ensures that the content is fresh and not simply a rehash of last year....after all much can happen in three years :-)

I'm honored once again to be one of the invited bloggers to help cover the event along with Toby Bloomberg and Peter Kim. Over the next few weeks I'll be posting a bit more about some of the trends/issues related to the event here, and on the Mplanet blog.

Will you be attending Mplanet?

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And I'm in the audience, expect the first two questions to be:

1. Do you have any recent examples of how you've executed a program for a client?

2. How are you measuring the output/outcomes of this program?

If you don't have valid answers to those questions, then why are we even listening to you?

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"Does Design Matter?" That's the question I asked during my presentation with Matt Jones from Dopplr at the Sarasota International Design Summit this past Tuesday.

Before I was crucified by the audience, I quickly said it still does, but perhaps not as much.

Why? I threw out the concept last week, asking, "when so much of a brand's content is consumed via RSS, Facebook, Twitter...does design matter?"

Sure you can design a good looking blog, but if a large percentage of the readers use an RSS reader, does the design matter? Also, what is going to keep you coming back to a corporate blog? It's the content, not the design.

Many organizations are realizing the interactions they have with customers on sites like Twitter and Facebook are very rewarding, however you have very limited design flexibility on those sites. In the case of Twitter you can tweak some of the page settings, but your primary brand-design element is a 48 x 48 pixel avatar.

We recently dealt with a client that had a logo that didn't shrink well, that is when it was 48 x 48 you couldn't really tell what it was. It sounds funny, but things like that are now a design consideration. I remember a while back when a brand was always worried about how a color logo would transition to black & white for print purposes, now it's shrinkage :-)

In a post over on the Mplanet blog I touch on some of these same subjects. However one point I made was that perhaps in this new world of distributed content that small branding you can supply (even if it's 48 x 48) might help you stand out in the crowd. Those that are customers or evangelists can look for that 'official' seal.

As I said at the Design Summit, I don't have the easy answer. But, it's an interesting issue that I think that every organization that engages in social media will have to deal with.

Cross-posted to VoceNation

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Where to start? Perhaps late, late in the sense that the planning for this year's BlogOrlando started much later than previous events. I was even concerned that we couldn't pull it off. But thanks to some help from some great folks like Chris, Rob, Danny, Ryan and yes you Alex.....we did it. Our tracks grew from four to five, our registrations grew and so did the turnout. A big thanks to all our sponsors, especially Ideablob and Voce :-)

In the end 238 of us showed up at Rollins College this past Saturday to learn from each other. As my colleague Mike Manuel said, "Leave your brand at the door, bring your brain." What makes this event so different? Spike from Brains on Fire probably put is best:

I’ve never been to a free conference before. And the difference of engagement levels between a free conference and a fee-based one is night and day. I guess it might be because everybody that’s there WANTS to be there. They CHOSE to go. They CHOSE to give up a Saturday and engage other passionate people. I’m afraid most conferences I go to are full of people that have been sent there from their company. They’d rather be checking emails or anywhere else. But it’s part of their job description or a requirement. The result is sometimes a very low engagement level.

BlogOrlando was the exact opposite.

Thanks Spike. Also, a big thanks to all the session leaders. Each of you contributed something, and I hope many of you learned something from your audience as well.

Jake McKee kicked us off with a story about how LEGO learned to listen to its fans and became better for it. Yes it was a bit marketing/communication focused, but it's also part community, and well it's LEGO.....geeks love LEGO. Even the non-marketing types learned something. From there it was off to the breakout tracks. Just about every session I checked in on was packed.

Room size is always the big debate. Last year we had a few rooms that were packed to the gills, but sometimes those close quarters breed better, more lively discussions. While I like the increase in attendance, it's the smaller discussions that are sometimes the best. I never want to get away from this format. That's one of the reasons we split into five tracks, I wanted to keep the groups smaller.

It was also important to split tech into two sides, basic and advanced. If you keep having the same conversations year-after-year you end up alienating the veteran attendees, you need to give them something new. However, you still need the core stuff for the newbies. Striking that balance is the key.

Highlights for me were the sessions professionalism/identity sessions by Amber Rhea and Jake McKee. I also heard great things about Alex Hillman's session as well as Spike's session on WOM and Geno's session on movements. There was a reason I invited Geno and Spike, they're great guys who do great work. I hope everyone who attended their sessions agree.

Sadly I missed the Orlando Scene session, but thanks to Ted and Andrew from IZEA there are Ustream archives of that session as well as many others.

For most of the day I ran around making sure everything was running smoothly. Luckily we had no major wifi issues, thanks to Mike from Rollins IT, who many of you met. During my downtime I would check out the ongoing Twitter-stream and appreciated all the discussion and positive comments the event was receiving. Today looking over all the recaps, it's much of the same...thanks.

We ended the day with Erik Hersman. I picked Erik for some specific reasons, one he's from Orlando, but most importantly because the work he's doing spans so much of the discussions of the day. As I said when introducing him....most of us were at the event for different reason, pr/marketing, journalism, personal expressions, business, etc. A project like Ushahidi makes all our 'personal' and 'business' needs seem trite.

I hope at the end of the day everybody that attended learned something and made some new friends.

Will we be back next year? We'll see, give me a few weeks to rest and catch-up with my work-life and family-life.

Photos courtesy of Alex and Sean...thanks!

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BlogOrlando has come to a close for the third time. I'm exhausted, but I hope to get some post-event thoughts up tonight.

Thanks to my friends at Walt Disney World PR that hosted the think-tank event on Thursday. We had a blast.

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On Friday I'll be flying to Atlanta, and then making the quick drive to Athens, GA for the UGA Connect conference. I attended the inaugural event in 2007 and enjoyed the mix of familiar colleagues and students eager to learn.

Will you be going?

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We're two weeks away from BlogOrlando 2008 and things are shaping up nicely. Our schedule and session list are set, t-shirts are about to be ordered and the happy-hour plans are in place. There is still a bunch of behind-the-scenes work going on though....it's going to be a fun two weeks.

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This October I'll be speaking at the Sarasota International Design Summit. The speaker line-up is quite impressive, so I'm honored to be part of the mix. On Day 2 I'll be leading a session briefly titled, "Does Design Matter?" Following me will be Matt Jones from Dopplr, who will answer that question.

The gist is, in a social media world where a large percentage of your customers/fans consume your content via RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or some other third-party location how can you maintain a brand experience, if at all....and does it matter?

One unique thing the conference organizers have done is print Moo cards for the speakers. As you can see the cards promote the event. They also threw in one of the new Moo card holders. Nice touch.

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I'm sad to be missing WordCamp this year, but we have a work retreat in Tahoe and then I have to get home for some family fun. Luckily, some of the crew from cnp_studio will be there. I'll look to Sean to take over the mantle of event photographer :-)

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BlogHer 08 has come to a close. It was my third BlogHer and as always, I had a blast. Here are some photo highlights. The entire set is here.

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Heading out in a little bit for a beach weekend in Hilton Head, but next week I'm off to California, specifically Palo Alto and San Francisco. Next weekend brings BlogHer and my third visit to this great event. Looking forward to catching up with plenty of friends.

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Registration is now open for the 2008 edition of BlogOrlando. So go do your thing:

http://blogorlando.com/register/

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Cross posted to BlogOrlando.com

The dates for the 2008 edition of BlogOrlando have been set, Sept 25-27th. Of course the big change is the main event is moving to a Saturday.

In the past I always debated about the Friday/Saturday thing, but this year we have some external forces....mainly the venue....we're just too big :-) In order to accommodate close to 300 people (like we had last year) we need to hold the event on Saturday.

Registration will be open shortly and we'll start to fill in the session leaders and schedule as well.

As I referenced in my previous post there will an invite only event on Thursday the 25th. The main event will kick-off Friday night with a reception and the full un-con and happy hour on Saturday.

If you're traveling in, then you can look to arrive on Friday and head back out on Sunday.

Of course we're always looking for sponsors to keep the event FREE. If you're interested let me know.

More to come....

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Last weekend (or was it the one before that.....) I was in Washington DC for BlogPotomac, here are a few highlight shots from the event. The entire photoset is here.

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As usual I'm taking some photos at BlogPotomac. My photoset is here, the group pool is here.

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On Friday I'll be attending/MC'ing BlogPotomac in the DC area. This latest un-conference is being organized by Geoff Livingston with some assistance from Debbie Weil. I'm glad to say many of the session leaders are longtime friends and colleagues and I look forward to the discussions.

I feel flattered that the event has followed the BlogOrlando model I started a few years ago. If I have my facts right I think Geoff returned from BlogOrlando this past year and said, "Let's do this in DC!"

A number of other locations/events have sprung up in the past few years: BlogSavannah, SoCon, BlogPhiladelphia and BlogCarolinas to name a few. I'm glad the BlogOrlando concept has spread as it has. However, my original inspiration for BlogOrlando was BlogNashville which took place in 2005...seems like so long ago.

I hope to post some photos from the event and perhaps a recap, but I imagine most of the comments will come on Twitter.

Speaking of BlogOrlando, we're holding our first planning meeting on June 26th.

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I'll be heading to the DC area on Thursday for BlogPotomac on Friday. Anybody up for a photowalk on Thursday afternoon in DC or at the Air & Space Museum near Dulles?

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Leave it to Ted Wright at Fizz to always throw an interesting party at a WOMMA event. Last night Ted brought the Veev to Setai on South Beach.

The last Ted event I went to was for Absinthe at WOMMA New Orleans.

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After a great day one, and a very 'Miami' reception last night, day two kicked off with a keynote from Bob Pearson, VP of Communities and Conversations, Dell.

The Dell Hell/Turnaround story is often cited at events and this one has been no exception. Bob likes to think that Dell has just finished Chapter 1. Of course in that chapter there were some things that Dell did wrong, but they've made some significant strides to fix things.

A few key points: First, obviously, we're in the most significant period of change online.

Second, the number of conversation and data online is growing exponentially.

Third, customers want to speak with us in their language. English only reaches 1/3 of the world on a good day

Fourth, new countries have formed that are not being treated with the full respect they deserve. If you look at data, if MySpace was a country, it would be the 11th largest in the world.

Fifth, watch out for the content pushers. They want to create stuff and them dump it. People are looking for conversations and relevance.

Leaders will enter and become relevant in conversations every day in every language all around the world about their company and product.

Six, your new home page is Google. The content and experience is being driven by the customer. What are they defining about you?

Seventh, if you build it they may not come. The traffic that matters is not about you. The search action is not brands, it's broader topics.

Eighth, less than 1% of a person's time online is spent buying product. The majority of the people visiting your site are looking for something else, what are you providing them?

What were Dell's key learnings?

1. The most important thing we do is help customers with their technology problems. Dell has created blog response/support teams that go out and help customers with their problems. Only later did they launch their own blog.

2. Blogging is global, blogging multi-lingual, blogging is a community of passion, blogging is not one blog.

3. Would you rather do a focus group with 10 people or listen to 100,000 people debate ideas for a few months ad ask them questions through the process? This lead to Idea Storm. Idea Storm has generated 12,000 ideas, 120 of which are in action externally.

4. Customers are partners. Dell recently launched ReGeneration, a blog about their customers. Customers are driving it.

5. Communities are more powerful than individuals, communities want to help each other improve. Whatever we can do to empower our customers and communities, benefits everyone.

6. The online experience at work should be simulate to the experience at home. At Dell they gave all their employees complete access to the web, how many large companies do that?

7. Join your customers communities and become part of the solution. Think direct to customer Q&A. They participate in forums like Yahoo Answers.

8. You can see in real time whether or not you're relevant to the conversation. Twitter is great for this.

You begin to ask, if you are doing all of this, why do you need to use something like a press release?

9. If you are dealing with an issue, be truthful, transparent and diligent in updating your customers.

10. Your customers are people, not lines of business. Yes we know that, but what do your customers do? What does your customer do, when they're not your customer....i.e. their personal lives. How can you engage

11. Measurement requires thinking outside the box. Things like awareness and activities are easy to measure, but what really matters are conversations and communities.

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Immediately after the opening keynote, Jeffrey Graham from the New York Times presented a case study on how the NYTimes is researching how word of mouth impacts advertising.

Jeffrey disagreed with Joesph, he thinks that WOM and traditional marketing can co-exist, that is that traditional advertising is not going away.

Jeffrey has a new title for his presentation: WOM: Marketing's Butt Crack. Good laugh.

Next up was a quick game to get things started.

First question: What are the more commonly used marketing objectives? A: Branding/Awareness B: Direct Response C: Trial Response

Second question: What variables are used most commonly in planning marketing? A: Demographics B: Contextual Relevance C: Cost

Third question: What are the most common measures of marketing effectiveness? A: Direct B: Response Branding

Fourth question: What is the most influential contact point? A: Word of Mouth

There is a big disconnect, marketers know that WOM is important, but the investment, planning and measurement still skews toward traditional media.

What are the myths around WOM?
- You can't influence it.
- You can't buy it in scale.
- You can't integrate it.
- You can't measure it.

All this results in WOM getting a very small portion of the marketing budget, hence the butt crack:

All marketing should be word of mouth, but mass communications can still influence/start. Advertising can drive brand advocacy.

Start thinking about putting word of mouth at the center of media planning.

Media planning for dummies:
- Determine the objectives and targets
- Select media channels
- Develop a short list
- Measure results

Old Way: Demographics, Psychographics, Buying Behavior. New Way: Looking at the level of conversations about brands. Why are people talking? Why not?

Old Way: Channels. New Way: Conversations by technology category.

Old Way: The Short List. New Way: Think about quality and influence of content, what is starting conversation?

The NYTimes tracks what brands their readers are talking about....wouldn't a brand want to be in front of an audience that is talking about them?

Old Way: Measurement, Clicks, Impressions. New Way: WOM.

The Holy Grail has always been directly linking marketing to sales. It's called a Holy Grail for a reason, it's difficult to find. Marketers come up with proxies to link sales to marketing.

WOM also forces us to redefine our markets, since it can easily go global via the technology channels available.

Since WOM is a key motivator, shouldn't we link WOM with marketing? That is, what level of conversation is generated by advertising? Should WOM be the ROI measure for advertising?

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WOMM-U kicked off in Miami, FL yesterday with an opening keynote by Joseph Jaffe, author of Join the Conversation.

One of Joe's basic premises is that everything can be a conversation starter. If a book or a business card can be a conversation started, why can't a brand? However, conversation and community are much bigger than a series of tactical strategies.

What's more important impressions or relationships? What brands realize now is that a single bad relationship can have a dramatic impact, i.e. Dell Hell.

The Cluetrain said that markets are conversation, Joe thinks that marketing can be a conversation. If we as an industry don't participate, we'll be left behind.

Joe jokingly said, "God gave us two ears and one mouth, use it"

Step 1, listen. It's unacceptable that often a marketing department doesn't know what's going on. Of course part of listening is hearing and understanding.

Step 2 is response, once you listen and hear you need be responsive. People expect a response.

Step 3 is join, but more importantly, be invited to join. Brands aren't as cool and sexy as they think they are. When brands built islands on Second Life the realized that nobody wanted to come. Brands have to earn their place in the party.

Step 4, catalyze. Brands have the budget, staff and resources to help things along. Find the influencers and help them.

Joe showed some graphs of Twitter conversations related to the Oovoo brand conversation compared

Word of mouth is not bought, it is not sponsored, it is earned. At this point you can get to...

Step 5, start a conversation. You can't do this, unless you've done the first four steps.

So what shouldn't you do?

Don't fake it. Don't manipulate the conversation. Don't control the conversation. Don't dominate the conversation...we (brands) like to talk don't we?

Lastly, avoiding the conversation. Brands are very good at this. Some just don't care.

Are you in the campaign or the commitment business? Are you building relationships that will build and profit over time, or just a quick impression?

Brands need to protect and nurture the new non-traditional programs since they're helping build relationships. How much are you spending on experimentation? Marketing should be storm-chasers, delving into new territories.

Joe believes that corporations will have conversation departments by 2012. Customer service will be a major brand differentiator.

Brands will be redefined based upon on they relate and interact with their communities/customers.

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I'm over there......I'm back in live-blogging mode. This time from WOMM-U in Miami, FL. You can follow all the action here and of course photos.

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I'm very sad that I'll be missing NewComm Forum this year. It's one of the events I try to go to every year. The event is always full of good friends and good content. Unfortunately I have two other speaking engagements this week so I won't be there. However, a few Voce folks will be in the house along with some clients.

I'll be watching Flickr for photos to remind me what I'm missing.

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Wow, I can't believe I'm actually posting about BlogOrlando 2008, but then again it's almost April. Quite a few friends have asked, "Are you doing BlogOrlando again this year?" Yes. At least as of now I am :-)

Back in 2006 when I planned the first event, you may remember that the original concept for BlogOrlando was a bit different than the actual event:

The original concept/title for this event was: Josh is Tired of Traveling Outside of Orlando so Everybody Come Here Con or JTTOOECH-Con. I wanted to get some friends to the area to meet, but more importantly spend some down-time at the theme parks with their families.

That private gathering of friends soon expanded to a public event that eventually became the first edition of BlogOrlando. Then things expanded even more with the 2007 event with almost 300 people taking part.

For 2008 we're blending the old with the new. BlogOrlando will once again be held on a Friday in late September. The main event cost (FREE) and format will not change, and perhaps expand, but there is a twist.

Reaching back to the original concept, BlogOrlando will now feature a private invite-only event on Wednesday. Just an intimate gathering of colleagues, clients, industry leaders, etc. Perhaps a limit of 30-40 folks. The topics will focus more on things like future trends, etc. I dare say Davos-like. The catch is, if you're invited to the Wednesday event, you are required to lead a session at the Friday event.

Here is a tentative schedule:

Wednesday:
- Invite-Only Event

- Special Event/Fun Thing at Orlando Theme Park for Session Leaders

Thursday
- Special Event/Fun Thing at Orlando Theme Park for Session Leaders
- Official BlogOrlando Reception

Friday
- Main Event
- Friday Night Reception

Saturday
- BlogOrlando Day at Orlando Theme Park

More thoughts soon.....

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Some of my favorite shots from this morning at Future of Web Apps - Miami. First is the venue....amazing space.

Next, it's Kathy Sierra on stage. There are 300+ people in audience, but you can't see them.

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A number of SoCon 08 attendees have found they 'met' a new friend at the event this past weekend. It seems that Jack Scherer of The Sales Group (sorry no link for you), subscribed all the attendees to his sales newsletter. Nice.

Jack, in your e-mail to me you said we recently 'met'. I'm really sorry, I don't remember meeting you. Of course it could be my bad....I did meet a bunch of new people at SoCon08 and sometimes I forget names. So....if you could refresh my memory about when we 'met' and 'talked':

1. What did we talk about?

2. During our 'meeting' what did I say that lead you to believe that I'd be interested in receiving your sales newsletter? I mean I don't remember saying, "Hey, if you have some great spam on sleazy sales tactics, I'd love to read it."

Thanks in advance for refreshing my memory.

Of course there is another explanation. We never met, and your initial sales pitch to me is based upon a lie. Great way to get new business :-)

Update: A few minutes later and a Google search for "Jack Scherer" shows this. Um...wow.

Update 2: On April 29th I received the following e-mail from Jack:

Josh,
I am responding to your blog listed on my website (www.salestalent.com) on 2/14/08.

1) I met you after your presentation at the SoCon08 at Kennesaw. We spoke about e-marketing and its application to the recruiting industry. My wife was with me and our conversation lasted about 90 seconds.
2) I was sitting in the front row of the auditorium and was introduced by a friend and a client. After that introduction, I raised my hand to speak and I mentioned that I was interested in meeting people during the conference who had recruiting techniques that were passive in their approach. I mentioned that we were in the sales recruiting and sales training business and that we were interested in other techniques for recruiting candidates, other than using Monster and Careerbuilder. I also said that we publish a monthly newsletter, Driving Profit, which I emailed to the database from the SoCon08 list.
3) As a result of my presentation, I met some very interesting people. One was an attorney who then visited us in our office. I spent two hours with him, giving him marketing ideas to help him launch his new business. There was NO fee for my service.
4) I am not a liar. Quite to the contrary. Consider the following…
a. Elected to the parish council of my church for 3 years
b. Director of a Career Ministry for the last 7 years that helps people network through our church. This ministry has helped many people in their quest to network and refine their job-seeking skills
c. I have provided numerous sales and marketing seminars for the following colleges and associations, as well as many businesses:
- University of Georgia
- Georgia Tech
- Kennesaw State University
- Furman University
- National Association of Women Business Owners
- SHRM (Society of Human Resource Mangers)
- GAPS (Georgia Association of Personnel Services)
- Georgia Society of CPAs
- TAG (Technology Association of Georgia)
d. We have received excellent reviews from these associations and organizations. For specific comments, please visit our website at www.salestalent.com
e. The newsletter that we publish was the driver for my new book “21 Laws of Sales Success” which will be published this year.

In conclusion, I do not feel that your blog is a fair portrayal of Jack Scherer and The Sales Group. I would appreciate it if you would remove this blog by April 30th. It creates a negative image of The Sales Group which has earned a fine reputation during the last 17 years in business.

I responded to Jack that I don't remember talking to him, but what concerned me was that a number of people received similar e-mails/pitches. I also said that I don't remove blog posts, but that I would be willing to post his response, which I have.

I think overall, the larger issue at hand is that he doesn't seem to feel that e-mailing all the attendees was a bad thing. I (as well as other commenters) disagree.

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The first slide I showed in my mid-day recap at SoCon 08 was this photo. This was shortly after 8:00 am on Saturday, about 20 minutes before the event kicked off.

The point? At the beginning of the day, we're all equals. There are no special seats for different classes of people. We can all learn from each other.

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Tomorrow at SoCon08 I'll be leading a breakout on photography and Flickr. What are your favorite things/tips about Flickr? Share them in the comments so I can work them in :-)

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I head out later today for a quick trip to St. Petersburg beach...yeah it's rough, but it is work related. After that stop, I'm off to Atlanta for SoCon 08.

This is the second year for the event so it will be interesting to see the changes/expansion. I'm helping out in a number of ways.

In the morning I'll be providing a quick wrap-up of the discussions so far. In the afternoon I'll be leading two sessions. The first is a general Social Media Overview and the second is on Photography and Flickr. I'm almost to 15,000 photos on Flickr, so the plan is to upload the 15,000 shot during that session :-)

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Now that Shop.org has wrapped up in Orlando I'm on my way to Savannah for BlogSavannah. I have the honor of leading the opening discussion. I had a great time at last year's event...and always love visiting Savannah. (Photo from BlogSavannah 07)

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The second keynote of the morning featured Andy Nulman, President and Chief Marketing Officer, Airborne Mobile. To say Andy is enthusiastic would be an understatement. Unlike many speakers, Andy asked everybody to turn their cellphones on and up. His company is in the mobile content delivery business, a ringing cellphone is money in his pocket.

Mobile devices are everywhere, they've become a third appendage. Couple this with people's passion for shopping and you have powerful mix...but how do you use it?

The fear, from consumers, was that mobile marketing would be disruptive. If it was, the mobile marketing business would be dead.

Mobile marketing is at its core, 1 to 1 marketing. It's about building a stronger relationship. You need to allow people to opt-in, but this should not lead to opt-in overload. You want to be perceived as a dear friend....not a nudge. What would you whisper to them? What can you tell them that will make love your more?

NOW is the word and the acronym that Andy's been thinking about.

Near-by, customers need to be in your radius, close, local
Only, there has to be a limit
Wow, make a compelling offer

The power is getting the person when they're ready to buy. The basic building block is the text message (SMS).

Andy provided five things you can do NOW.

1 The NOW Pssst: Limited time offers, but it needs to be engaging and special. Target people near your location.

2 The Secret Sale: Things like in-store sales, or special offers. Texting to a special number will provide them a message/discount/coupon. It's completely opt-in. No paper costs.

3 The In-Store Experience: Give the customer control of what they want. Give them additional information, the backstory on products.

It should be noted that text messages have to be short, so the message is message, no marketing speak.

4 Woot! Like Countdown: Send limited offers to opt-in customers. The idea is similar to Woot!

5 Mini WAP Sites: Basic mobile web sites that provide information about a store.

What are the benefits? Once again an acronym HUMID.

Hyperlocal - Operate things at a local level. Give local managers the tools and power.
Uurgent - Text messages hit, e-mail sit. People respond to text messages quicker than other forms of communication.
Measureable - Mobile is a data-crunchers dream.
Immediate - Promote cold, fast, hard sales
Dynamic - Take action when you need to. Empty store? Do something.

Shoppers love discovery, talking, bargains and recognition. Mobile delivery can address all of these.

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Day two of the Strategy & Innovation Forum kicked off with a general session by FAO Schwarz CEO Ed Schmults. Ed talked about the challenge of expanding their reach, while protecting their brand.

FAO has been around since 1862. There were two recent bankruptcies in 2002 and 2003. However their direct-to-consumer business is growing. Their retail locations are in New York City and Las Vegas. With their brand equity they are looking to expand their private label toys.

FAO has some brand perception issues. They're perceived as expensive. The store is sometimes seen as a museum or a tourist site. Other issues: Net relevant to today's kids, it's all about the New York store, just for the holidays.

The plan was to repurpose the brand. This started with the merchandising strategy. They wanted to target items that had: Quality, Design Integrity, Orginality, Health/Safety.

With this change they removed hundreds or brands and vendors. Shortly afterward same-store sales rose 20%. Other than Thomas the Tank engine, FAO did not carry a single recalled toy. That's part of their focus, safety and quality.

Their product mix is very selective. There are more private label products and exclusives. The brand repositioning has allowed FAO Schwarz to stand out among children's retailers once again. This change has led Hollywood to their door. Movie studios look to FAO for exclusives for movie-related toys (think Charlotte's Web, Harry Potter, etc).

Their research has shown that FAO is strongly associated with quality. They also had a very high net-promoter score. FAQ has brand recognition similar to large global luxury brands. There is also high affinity within children.

Research showed that FAO is seen as the expert in child development. At first it's kind of scary, but now they're looking to really embrace that. FAO is working with an advisory board to help build that development arm. Ed was sure to mention that their advisory board was a real board of experts, and not a pretend board like some others.

The key questions are: How do they appropriately participate in the parenting community? Who is our audience? Women are a key customer segment. "Women don't just buy brands, they join them?"

Ed noted that they passed on WebKinz. They had a first look at the product, but they felt the quality of the plush was not that great. But that's not what the toy was meant to be. With that

FAO is leveraging their brand by working consignment deals. Vendors pay for the build-out, repay staff costs and FAO only pays for inventory sold. Ed noted that he has brands lined up for these deals. For FAO it's great, they can constantly update/upgrade their stores with no capital outlay.

Recent external capital investments did not focus on IT or infrastructure. Moving forward, one of the key focusses is updating the infrastructure.

With the brand repositioned, FAO is building new revenue channels. They include clothing, health & wellness as well as publishing.

Looking beyond the storefront (Catalogue and Internet) there are things they need to improve on. Their site was boring and not up to date and it doesn't match the excitement of he store experience. They're looking to replicate the in-store experience as much as they can.

Retail expansion has been spearheaded by their Macy's in-store presence. The Chicago Macy's story is performing way beyond expectations.

The next phase is licensing. They're working to license the FAO name to media properties, etc. Internally they're developing a brand book. The brand books sets internal and external expectations.

For Ed, one of the things that drew him to FAO was the ownership. They're owned by a hedge fund. Ed asked the audience, "How many of you are owned by private equity firms?" A few hands went up....Ed's response, "Just you wait, it's coming."

Ed described the relationship he has with the owners, it's not unlike a traditional board. There is a need for constant communication. You need to know are they investors or operators? Investors are starting to think like brands. They want to be seen as innovators.

However, owners will always look to extract brand value. You need to watch this since it can lead you astray.

The key challenges of working with owners:
- Want it all, want it now
- Push for every opportunity
- Challenge convention
- Uncomfortable pressure
- How much do you shield your team?
- Must be comfortable working with senior people
- Expectations of success
- Fear

Lessons learned:
- Great brands are much more rugged than most people think.
- FAO's key asset is its brand. We need to honor our heritage, but keep relevant.
- Chart a path that has a chance to succeed.
- Know your customer.
- All innovation must pass the brand filter.
- Private equity ownership has been a huge plus for FAO Schwarz.

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There are not many retailers that have not heard of the long tail (if not go check out Chris Andersen's book). The final breakout session of the day featured Jack Jia, CEO, Baynote and Brian Elliott, President and CEO, Alibris discussing how the long tail applies to online sales.

Jack Jia from Baynote was first to speak. Jack defined the major problem as being poor search and navigation, 83% of leads to a site will abandon in the process. Sure you're driving people to your site, but are they conversions? In measuring loss, they found that 95% of visitors will give a site 3 clicks before abandoning. Compare this to most commerce sites which require 6 clicks to complete a sale (from inbound link to sale).

Enter the long-tail dream. Is it better to sell many of 1 or 1 or many? In Jack's words it's tail or torso. In order to benefit from the long tail you need to expand your inventory. Here's the problem, when you increase you inventory, you also increase you chances of users getting lost.

One way to help users navigate sites is the wisdom of crowds. The other concept is emergent behavior. Rather than relying upon what somebody 'tells' you what they do, watch what they actually do. Track usage patterns and learn from them. Recommendation technology is based upon these tools.

Jack showed an example using US Appliance, how they make recommendations based upon browsing habits of other users. Community involvement also helps bring relevance to keyword searches.

A side benefit of the long tail is that long tail products have a higher margin.

Jack then sat down to talk with Brian Elliott of Alibris. Jack mentioned that Brian and Alibris stumbled into the long tail way before it was fashionable. Alibris currently sells 75 million SKUs, 15x what Amazon sells.

Brian talked a bit about Barry Schwartz's book The Paradox of Choice. People are sometimes are paralyzed by choice. How do you balance offering more (long tail) without scaring it off (paradox of choice).

At Alibris they do have a number of options for single items, but they allow other customers to rank/rate and this helps other customers. They're also constantly refining their site based upon customer testing.

Alibris built their own recommendation engine. The looked to their vendors for data. Many of their vendors have a wealth of information about their products. The challenge is to hook into that data. The second factor the look for is demand. A high demand product doesn't always make a good recommendation.

Jack asked Brian about some of their SEO/SEM tactics. Brian stressed that the keyword strategies need to appeal to the machine (i.e. the spiders) as well as the consumer.

So much of the recommendation model looks at user behavior around purchases, but what about the non-purchaser? How can you take the data from those sessions and do something with it? That's the next step.

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The afternoon at the Strategy & Information Forum featured two concurrent tracks. I attended the panel focussed on monetizing Web 2.0. On the panel were: Brett Hurt - Founder and CEO Bazaarvoice, Paul Martino - CEO Aggregate Knowledge, Joe Chung - CEO Allurent, Jim Calhoun - CEO Popular Media and Steve Papa CEO Endeca.

There were four speakers, a moderator and 45 minutes....it made for a lightning-round session. Brett introduced the topic by asking the audience how many of them had integrated user-generated content into their sites. A large portion of the audience had. Brett compared that to a few years ago when only five of the major retail brands had dabbled in UGC.

People can find the content they want, Google is becoming more of a brand tool than ever. Of course the CMO wants to know, 'How does this drive sales?'

1. Give you customers a voice
2. Maximize their influence by integrating UGC throughout the brand experience
3. Turn a single voice into a chorus

Integration drives impact. You need to integrate the tools on your site to get people to use them. At PETCO, the initial search filter is now customer rating.

Next up was Paul Martino from Aggregate Knowledge. Their focus is discovery of UGC in non-traditional way. How can you turn people that comment on your products into a sales force? Another focus is interest-based navigation. Driving people through your site based upon user recommendations.

Allow your customers to share their retail experiences within their social networks. However, don't look at the Facebook Beacon model.

Steve Papa with Endeca addressed information visibility. Retailers have millions of SKUs and other bits of information that get buried. In the physical world retailers organize their stores. In the online world it's not so easy.

Now layer upon this UGC. How do you organize this content in relation to the products? You need to make the UGC visible. Steve revisited PETCO. User generated reviews are becoming the primary navigation method for users. Allow the customers to organize the store.

Steve stressed that we're in the first innings of this UGC game and you need to be able to adapt, listening to your customers can help with that.

Next to speak was Jim Calhoun with Popular Media. Jim did a quick review of how the landscape has changed over the past few years. What we're seeing is a new set of tools that go beyond traditional behavioral targeting. Targeting that is based upon social networks is way more powerful. As botched and as painful Beacon was, it's the future. Of course the execution needs to be better.

You need to know what percentage of your customer base is participating in online social networks (i.e. MySpace, Facebook). You need to understand how to market your product now how you want, but how the customer wants.

Jim thinks of it as user-distributed content. It provides: Great leads, great customers, high conversion rates, etc.

The final panelist was Joe Chung with Allurent. Joe talked about redefining the shopping experience and perhaps the notion of social commerce. The goal is to move beyond shopping systems built by geeks for geeks. Until now, people would shop in one window or tab and the participate in social networks in the other. Why not a crossover?

User experience can be monetized in the sense that it improves the usability of the site. Make things easier to use. Joe reference a case study where they redesigned the check-out process for a client and drove a 24% increase in sales.

Another concept that Joe showed was widget-based shopping. The ability to browse, select and check-out all within the browser window of another site.

The goal is move shopping and social interaction closer together. Much of this involves taking the shopping experience out of the traditional environment.

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The second keynote of the day featured Bob Myers, SVP QVC.com and Direct Response Marketing, QVC.com. Bob's talked focussed on the multi-media aspects of QVC's operations, specifically how they integrate the web and broadcast.

QVC is the second most profitable network, this includes the majors. For Bob, advertising and marketing is somewhat interesting, since they run a network. However, they do very little traditional advertising. They have always relied upon word of mouth. They sell stuff via product demonstrations on air.

Now some stats. They reach 90,000,000 home, handled 179,000,000 calls, 341 calls per minute, 3.5 items shipped per second. It's some serious velocity. On the web the numbers are there as well. 200,000,000 page views in their online community, 400,000 online customer reviews.

Their old web site was a very good transactional site, so why change it? They have a social shopping experience on air, why not online?

The company brand experience are the 3 E's: Enrich, Entertain, Engage....they applied these online. The first step was integration of video on the web. Customers want to see their favorite show or host online. It's about providing the content when and where the customer wants it.

A major initiative is the 'Item on Air'. It shows the web user the item that is currently being sold. They can also watch the webstream of the video. The inventory numbers are updated every six seconds, both on the air and on the web. There is video all over the site.

Their program guide was also upgraded in the web re-design. Video is included on the program guide, so instead of a paragraph they can watch an actual preview.

'Items Recently on Air' allows customers to view things they may have missed on their favorite shows. From a technical standpoint it's difficult. It's about media asset management. Bob said that video and media asset management will be your next new headache.

The next major initiative for QVC was the social shopping community. It starts with things like interactive polls. They embed community on every page of their site. QVC has 24 full-time internet sales managers. They interact with online communities. Many sections of the site feature host blogs, forums, responses, etc.

An innovative feature is their Model's Closet. This section of the site allows broadcast viewers to review products not currently featured.

The important thing to remember is that what drives them is not an online commerce strategy, it's a company-wide strategy. Much of what they're featuring online is driven by their broadcast product.

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The 2008 Strategy & Information Forum kicked off Wednesday morning with a keynote by Andy Sernovitz. Andy is known as the WOMM guy, that's Word of Mouth Marketing. Andy's job as the opening keynote was to set the stage for the next two days, so of course the topics were Web 2.0, CGM, and WOMM.

Andy started off his talk with some examples of great, simple WOM. It's the little things that make all the difference. He talked about Red Envelope and how with great product presentation they turn the conversation to their brand.

There has been a evolution in the marketing business, ads to affiliate to search to WOM. With traditional advertising you pay up front, need to monitor the program and then measure results. With affiliate marketing you only pay for success, but it sometimes doesn't scale well. With search you can reach millions for a very low cost, but there is still overhead and management. With WOM, the work is done by the customer, usually at no cost.

The secret to increasing ROI is to get other people to spread your ads for free.

One of the things that lead to Amazon's early success was the affiliate program. They made it really easy for people to run their ads...and yes the affiliate program is advertising. When the first blogging widgets were created, Amazon was there. This enabled them to reach a whole new audience of advertisers.

With traditional advertising, you run it and it's done. That's the way traditional banners. People never save banners. With WOM it can go on and on. With good WOM the true test is will people keep doing it without paying for it. If a blogger picks up a WOM campaign, that blog post will live forever and chances are the reader impressions are a bit more qualified than a traditional banner.

Andy showed the popular Will it Blend campaign. You have millions of people watching an ad that's over a minute long. Then consumers pass this along.

There are three tenets of WOM economics:
- Starts Cheap
- Gets Cheaper
- Builds Assets

WOM is also recession proof. Happy customers are the best ads. The motivation is not money or an affiliate link, it's love. Love gets people to advertise for free.

New love is incredibly powerful. Think of the out-of-box experience. It begs for a recommendation.

WOM 101:

1. Give people a reason to talk about YOUR stuff
2. Make it easier for that conversation to take place

A classic example is Krispy Kreme, they gave people to talk about, hot doughnuts....unfortunately they lost that thing. You can now find their product in gas stations. Who talks about food you buy in a gas station?

To make it easier, make it portable, make it mobile. Allow people to pass it along. Make it easier to share.

There are two motivations in WOMM, the first is You, the brand.

The second motivation is Me, ad in the talker. The influencer. The person you would call about buying a car, or travel. Who is your 'local' expert.

There are very specific emotions related to WOMM:
- Happiness: when things to right.
- Love: passion for products, think Apple
- Surprise: surprise them with things they don't expect
- Fun: think about the stuff your mom forwards to you
- Smart: people like to be experts, give them the inside scoop
- Pride: take ego and add information and reward, make them VIPs
- Anger: when things go wrong, it's also the most powerful of emotions

The third motivation is US, make them part of the community. It's about belonging. People love to show their relationships with brand statements. Think about the Harley owners club.

The 5 T's
- Talkers: find out which people talk about you, it might not always be your current customers
- Topics: What makes a good press release, does not make a good WOM topic
- Tools: What's in the box? What are you sending people, can you pass it along?
- Taking Part: This is what scares marketers, you need to get involved, respond, fix the problem
- Tracking: spending time interacting leads to new inbound links, use traditional metrics

The final question is, "Would you tell a friend?" Is that you're selling, marketing...something you would tell a friend about? If not, what can you do to fix that?

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I'll be live-blogging for the next few days from the Strategy & Innovation Forum, hosted by Shop.org. You can follow the blog-action at blog.shop.org. The photogroup is here.

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I'm off to Atlanta today to take part in the Executing Social Media Conference. Chip Griffin and I are leading the opening keynote session. I'm looking forward to seeing many old friends from the conference circuit.

On Thursday I head to New York City for a meeting on Friday morning. Then it's back to Atlanta for the weekend and a few days next week.

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One of the things I'll be doing at the PRSA International Conference is looking at the various conversational monitoring services in the exhibit hall. There are a number of firms that all 'say' they can automate the monitoring of blogs (social media) and provide metrics, tonality, sentiment analysis, etc. It should be noted that a number of these services cost a pretty good amount of $$$.

What's interesting about the search is the I have long said (as have many of the colleagues in this industry that I know/trust/respect) that the free tools and a trained staffer can do the same thing. Plus there is that community context thing :-)

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From the South to the North. I'm now in Philadelphia for the PRSA International Conference till Tuesday. I'll be helping Kami and a few others with some conference blogging, but I'm mostly handling some photos (big surprise). I arrived late in the day, so I was able to catch the end of K.D. Paine's session and the Social Media panel with Rob, Peter, Lee and Nicco (below). My photoset will be here, the PRSA photo group is here.

Tonight is the blogger dinner. More to come. I plan to post a wrap-up from the UGA Connect conference soon.

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Today at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum I moderated a panel on B2B blogging. When you get a room full of marketers the conversation will sometimes turn to SEO and of course ROI. Mix the two and you have a lively conversation.

Yes we all know that Google loves blogs, but if your only reason for blogging is SEO, then you're going to fail. Back in early 2006 I posted about a newspaper that wanted to start community blogging. I told them if the reasons were revenue or page views that things would fail. The primary purpose has to be conversation and community. If you do those two things right (and have your blog properly configured) then SEO and all the other benefits should follow.

During the panel today the analogy I used was this:

If your fiance asks you why you love him/her and want to spend the rest of your life with them you shouldn't say:

A. I'm looking for increased ROI thru shared living expenses.
B. You have a great network of (hot) friends, and partnering with you allows me to position myself favorably with them.

It should first and foremost be about love and compassion (with your fiance).

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What happens when you invite a group of bloggers to your location like Kennedy Space Center did? There will be blog posts and photos, boy will there ever be photos.

Posts:

http://nowisgone.com/2007/09/28/blogorlando-kicks-off-with-nasa-cape-canaveral-tour/

http://www.communityguy.com/1055/blogorlando-take-aways/

http://www.alexrudloff.com/2007/09/30/blogorlando/

http://www.thedisneyblog.com/tdb/2007/09/the-absence-of-.html

http://whiteafrican.com/?p=764

http://www.indyhall.org/2007/09/28/indyhall-helping-make-noise-at-blogorlando/

http://www.blogorlando.com/blog/2007/09/blogorlando_thanks_delaware_no.php

Photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/communityguy/sets/72157602198929992/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hyku/sets/72157602172071221/

http://flickr.com/photos/extraface/sets/72157602189002851/

http://flickr.com/photos/judxapp/sets/72157602187393027/

http://flickr.com/photos/jharr/sets/72157602194213657/

http://flickr.com/photos/cjscott69/sets/72157602185719113/

http://flickr.com/photos/tiki/sets/72157602189961902/

http://flickr.com/photos/whiteafrican/sets/72157602182180162/

http://flickr.com/photos/cethilk/sets/72157602204873821/

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Here are some BlogOrlando recaps from other folks out there:

- Dave Coustan
- Chris Scott
- Alex Rudloff
- Geoff Livingston
- Jake McKee
- Joe Thornley
- Laurie Mayers

On the live-blogging front Marijean and Mistie from Standing PR and Sherry did a bang-up job. Jim Hathaway has a link-round-up as well.

And photos....do we ever have photos. The BlogOrlando Flickr photo group started with 250 photos on Thursday. As of this post it's at 1,083.

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I just posted my 'Thanks' list for BlogOrlando. On a personal note it was touching to see this post and collection of video clips by Geoff Livingston.

Thanks everybody.

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I'm still recovering from BlogOrlando and hope to have a big wrap-up/thank-you post up in the next day or two. For now though I'm off to Chicago for the MarketingProfs B2B Forum.

On a good-travel-karma-note, my first requested upgrade since becoming a SkyMiles Medallion member was confirmed, woot!

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Big thanks to Billy, Andrea, Jill and Sara from Delaware North Corporation for hosting the BlogOrlando session leaders at Kennedy Space Center today.

I'll be uploading my photos in a few days, but for now you can look at some from Chris and Judson.

P.S. it was almost an all Nikon crew out there!

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BlogOrlando kicks off Thursday so I'll be tied up with running that event till next week. This year's event is much bigger than last year, and thus requires more planning and time.

Some updates will be posted over at the BlogOrlando blog, but you're best bet is to follow what other folks are saying. The official photogroup is up on Flickr.

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October is shaping up to be another busy travel/conference month. Three key events to highlight that I'll be speaking at:

MarketingProfs Business-to-Business Forum: I'll be leading a panel on the second day of the conference.

University of Georgia's Connect Conference: A few days of fun in beautiful Athens, GA.

PRSA International Conference: I'll be part of a panel on Monday and then presenting on Tuesday. In addition I'll be joining Kami and a few others in blogging the conference for PRSA. As with recent conferences, I'll be mostly focussing on photography. We're trying to organize a blogger dinner for Sunday during the conference.

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I'll be one of the presenters at the upcoming PRSA International Conference in Philadelphia. I'll also be one of the conference bloggers along with Kami Huyse and some other good friends.

The Sunday before the conference kicks-off we're planning a blogger dinner. I've asked Annie Heckenberger with the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Co. to suggest a locale.

As soon as we have the final details we'll post them, but go ahead and mark your calendar for dinner on Sunday, October 21st.

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SPRF/PRCA. that's quite the acronym, it stands for Southern Public Relations Federation and Public Relations Council of Alabama. The group is holding their annual conference over the next three days in Mobile, AL. I'm slated to speak on Tuesday, but I'm heading to Alabama today.

Why early? I plan on sneaking away on Monday afternoon to photograph the USS Alabama and some of the other 'hardware' they have at Battleship Memorial Park.

I may post a few session recaps from the conference as well. We'll see.

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I, along with good friends Kevin Dugan, Constantin Basturea, Paull Young and K.D. Paine will be presenting at the University of Georgia's Connect conference. It's being held October 19-20, 2007 and is hosted by the Grady College of Journalism & Mass Communication.

I'll be arriving in Atlanta the morning of the 19th. I might stay in that area, or head directly up to Athens, GA. We'll see.

Last year I spent the day on campus at UGA speaking to a number of classes. It's a great place and I'm looking forward to spending some more time there.

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Over the weekend I finalized the schedule for the 2007 edition of BlogOrlando, the un-conference being held in Orlando, FL on Sept 27-29th. You can check it out here.

When you have so many great sessions planned it's difficult to figure out which ones should overlap. This year we have four distinct tracks tailored to the diverse audience that attends the event. The tracks are: PR/Marketing, Media, Technology and Life/Local.

If you're in the Orlando area (or want to come to Central Florida) be sure to check out BlogOrlando and perhaps register. See you in September.

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Yesterday I visited the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex to plan a pre-BlogOrlando event. During my brief stay I was able to 'ride'...whoops, 'experience' the Shuttle Launch Experience (SLE).

That little slip was on purpose. The SLE is just that, an experience, and not necessarily a ride. When you tell people it's a ride they have a certain expectation and if you're thinking ride when you get on it, then it might not meet your expectations. This issue is compounded by the fact that there are a bunch of 'rides' about 60 miles away at places like Disney and Universal Studios.

That brings up the question, how do you marketing or tell people about the experience which simulates an actual Space Shuttle launch without using the word ride? When you try to tell somebody the word 'ride' always seems to slip in there.

I'm a space/aviation geek so the ride/expereince was cool and something I look forward to taking my son on soon.

The rest of my photos from KSC can be found on Flickr.

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The finalized list of 2007 BlogOrlando sessions has been posted. This FREE event will be held on Sept 27-29th in Orlando at Rollins College. You can register here.

This year's event is shaping up to be a big step-up from last year. We've broken down the event into four separate tracks to represent the diverse audience we expect. Here is the list:

Opening Keynote

The State of Social Media in the World
Leader - Shel Israel, CA - Global Neighbourhoods
Keynoter Shel Israel recently conducted a 10 week Global Survey of the state of social media on behalf of enterprise software giant SAP. He interviewed more than 50 people in 20 countries on four continents. His primary finding: social media is evolving at different rates in different corners of the globe, but it is changing all cultures and businesses. It is beginning even to change some governments.

Israel will report on his finding, some of which are quite surprising most of which indicate that social media is rapidly changing the entire world and in a great many ways, it is for the better.

PR/Marketing Track

Blogger Relations and Ambassador Programs
Leader - Tom Biro, NJ - Open the Dialogue
Working at MWW, Tom spearheaded the Nikon D80 Blogger outreach program. Tom will talk about working with bloggers and building ambassador programs.

Using Blogs for Product Development
Leader - Dave Coustan, Atlanta, GA - Earthlink
Dave Coustan, corporate blogger for EarthLink will talk about how organizations are using blogs as communication tools to develop better products by (gasp) actually asking people what they want.

Crisis Communication
Leader - Laurie Mayers, MI - MS&L
How do you handle a crisis via blog, or created via blog? Laurie Mayers of MSL (think the GM Fastlane Blog) will talk about how GM handles ‘issues’ online, and the limitations of what a publicly traded company can say on a blog.

Customer Relationships with the Rabid Crowd
Leader - Jake McKee, Dallas, TX - Community Guy
As former director of global community development for LEGO, Jake knows a thing or two about working with passionate users. What can your organization do to develop deeper, longer term relationships with your audiences?

Tourism and Social Media
Leader - Annie Heckenberger, Philadelphia, PA - Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation
As the social media guru for the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation Annie oversees a number of social media programs used to promote Philly. Annie will discuss how tourism groups are adapting to the new media landscape.

Business Blogging the Next Steps
Leader - David Parmet, Pound Ridge, NY - Marketing Begins at Home
David Parmet returns to BlogOrlando to lead a session on the business blogging. We’ll assume you know what a blog is….and start to talk about what some of the next steps are.

Participation is Marketing
Leader - Geoff Livingston, Alexandria, VA - Buzz Bin
In the end it’s all about getting involved. Geoff will touch on a number of topics presented during the day…the foundations are honest, open communication. Can you do it?

Continue reading "2007 BlogOrlando Sessions Posted" »

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I could do a long, detailed recap of Gnomedex, or I could just point to Randy Stewart's great comic version. Good stuff.

One of the folks I've been running into quite at conferences is Kris Smith. Of course it's hard to miss Kris, he has a unique look :-)

If you look at the photos below you can see there is a difference. One is casual-conference-goer-Kris, the other is serious business-man-out-on-the-town-Kris. But which one is the real Kris Smith?

Kris is a podcaster by nature so of course he was doing quite a bit of podcasting from Gnomedex. He talked to a number of folks including me. To listen to the podcast you can click here. We talk about conference photography, development and a number of other fun topics.

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Speaking at Gnomedex Guy Kawasaki said: Good companies are about making meaning, not making money.

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A few hours ago Chris Pirillo kicked off the 7th edition of Gnomedex in Seattle, WA. The wifi and EVDO is very slow so photos will be sparse today. Look for a massive upload tonight.

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I'm sitting at Orlando airport (MCO) using their free wifi (go Orlando!). It's been a hectic past few weeks and I'm almost at the end of my marathon travel run. I'm at Gnomedex till Sunday and then I make a quick trip to Phoenix at the end of next week.

After that I'm home for a while, thankfully. I need some time to slow down and catch up. Then it's time to start ramping up for BlogOrlando.

Plus there are some work changes coming up....more on that later.

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My blogging-partner-in-crime Chris Gent has a wrap-up post for our conference blogging at the 2007 Florida Public Relations Association Annual Conference. We posted a total of 84 entries, 7 podcasts and almost 700 photos.

Like many conference blogging experiences, it was fun, but exhausting. We had a team of bloggers and we tried to closely follow the conference blogging guidelines I set out last year.

Chris and I handled most of the photography. You can find the FPRA Flickr stream here.

One of the highlights for me was Cynthia Gordon's session on how Universal has been using digital and social media. Many of her examples revolved around the recent announcement that Universal Studios Theme Park would be home to Harry Potter.

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I'll be blogging from the 2007 FPRA Annual Conference for the next three days. You can follow all the action over at the official FPRA Blog.

We have a team of conference bloggers covering the event. The conference is being held at the Ritz-Carlton in Sarasota, FL.

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Last week I asked how many photos would be uploaded from BlogHer. Looking at the numbers exactly one week later it was 2,903 photos. If I look now it's 3,321. That's quite a few photos :-)

At some point the uploading from the event will stop, but who knows when. Each day a few hundred more photos are being uploaded. I'm going to put together a set of my favorite shots from the conference. What are yours?

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The photo below is one of the most powerful images I think I've ever captured. It's a moment between Elizabeth Edwards and Jen Lemen. Jen was sharing a personal story with Mrs. Edwards. They spoke for quite a long time and as you can see there is a tremendous amount of emotion there.

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One of the best 'booths' at BlogHer this year was Scrapblog. Carlos, Alex, Cindy and the rest of the gang offered hands-on demo of their product and a great photo opp for BlogHer attendees. Bloghers had a number of props and costumes available to 'dress up' and have a Scrapblog made.

During the event I heard a number of women talking about the booth and organizing group shots.

From a social media standpoint, Scrapblog has been uploading all the images created to Flickr and will be doing some follow-up features after the event.

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I'm in the closing keynote session at BlogHer '07. It's a room full of hundreds of women bloggers talking to Elizabeth Edwards.

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It's interesting to watch the ongoing Twitter coverage of Elizabeth Edward's closing keynote at BlogHer '07. Almost all the tweets I see are micro-coverage of the Q&A. It's really cool to see the use of Twitter in this way.

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Dave Weinberger points to some live-blogging tips from Ethan Zuckerman. Ethan has some great sugg.

Last year I wrote a rather lengthy post on my how-to's for conference blogging. One of the things I talk about is building a well-rounded team and making sure you include a photographer and some audio/video. It's been a great guide for a number of folks and we plan to use it for the upcoming FPRA conference in August.

Ethan has a few great points that I agree with.

- Conference blogging gets me invited to conferences I couldn’t otherwise afford to go to, and which I enjoy being present at. - Other bloggers link to my conference posts, which raises my Technorati profile, my google juice, etc., and makes it more likely people will read my original writing. - People expect me to. (This is a good and bad thing.)

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One of the afternoon sessions at BlogHer '07 features a teenager speaking about professional blogging. What's funny is that I know her father. Small world.

Chloe Spencer will be speaking about her Neopets web site called Neopets Fanatic. Her dad is Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts.

At BlogOrlando we also have a teenager speaking, Judson Collier. When I first put Judson on the speakers list I got an e-mail from somebody saying "He's just a teenager." My response, "Yes I know, and he probably knows more about the subject than you, so you should listen."

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I have a few live-blog gigs coming up so I'm not going to burn myself out blogging, so I'm focussing on photography. However there are plenty of other folks live-blogging. You can check out:

- Amber
- Rusty (one of the men here)
- Aliza
- Marrijean

I'll be adding more as I find them.

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Terri Theurer from Yahoo spoke about some of the technical things you can do to optimize your blog. Yahoo saw that almost 60% of their visitors are arriving with an empty cache. That is they are loading all elements of the page from the web server, not their local cache. There was a thought that with the increase of broadband use that the browsing experience would be faster, but it's sometimes the opposite. Designers are developing heavier pages, combine this with an empty cache and you have long load times.

The other thing to think about is mobile users, they need an extremely fast download.

(Disclosure: Yahoo is a client, I have done design and development work for them)

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Annie Heckenberger, the creative force behind the recent BlogPhildadelphia un-con has posted her recap, aptly titled: I'm Ready to Talk About BlogPhiladelphia.

The success of BlogPhiladelphia should be attributed to the people who participated. I still can't believe that 270 pre-registered and we had to turn people away. Even better, I am thrilled that more than 250 people showed up. The biggest measurement of success in my mind, is the community that was forged at the event. All of these people who knew "of" each other - or didn't - had the opportunity to meet in person and collaborate, share and learn.

One of the things that these 'local' events do is bring together a number of folks that have never met in person, that's the special thing.

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BlogHer '07 is kicking off this morning in Chicago. Jory, Elisa and Lisa are on stage doing the opening announcements. My photos will be here, and there is a photo group here.

This is the third year of the conference and things have grown quite a bit. The question I have though is how many of the audience are women bloggers and how many are PR folks looking to 'reach' women blogger? Talking to a number of folks it seems the PR factor is a bit higher this year.

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The date for BarCamp Orlando has been set. It's Sunday, September 23rd in Orlando (of course) at Taste.

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Last year I noted that the BlogHer conference generated over 2200 photos on Flickr, I wonder how many will be taken/uploaded this year in Chicago? 3000? 4000? 5000?

As a baseline, I did this search. It shows 5,982 results as of 11:00 PM on Tuesday night before the conference. I'll do a search again on Tuesday after the conference.

Update: I did the same search at 11:00 PM this Tuesday and got 8.885. Doing that math that's 2,903 photos from the event. I think if I give it a few more days we'll easily crack 3,000.

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BlogHer starts later this week in Chicago. I head up on Thursday and am really looking forward to it. In my recent travels around the country I've met quite a few people that are heading to BlogHer as well. I'm looking forward to catching up with old friends and meeting some new ones.

Last year's event was great, but it will be interesting to see if there is a different vibe away from California. I don't think so, but we'll see.

Are you going to BlogHer? I'm organizing a dinner for either Thursday or Saturday night.

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The second session today at WordCamp featured John Dvorak and Om Malik, it was the eternal blog/journalism debate:

Here are a few choice tidbits from their conversation:

- Why not link? Why waste time/space describing something when you can link?
- Many traditional journalists don't like blogs because they're so annoying, they're always sniping at traditional media.
- Papers that don't allow their reporters to link almost say, "We don't want people to go somewhere else and realize how bad we are by comparison.
- There is this assumption that countries like India and other areas that don't get blogs, Om said the majority of his Indian readers are using mobile devices.
- Om says to be a successful blogger, you need to engage the people that comment.
- People who comment are often smart people that say smart things.

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I'm at WordCamp for the next two days. Not much blogging, mostly photos. My WordCamp photoset is here.

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After a hectic work/travel schedule the past few weeks, I'm taking a few days off to spend some time with the family. If you need something in the next day or two, think if it can wait :-)

On Wednesday, I fly to San Francisco for the rest of the week. I'll be working in the Palo Alto area on Thursday and Friday. On Sat/Sun I'll be attending Wordcamp.

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In a session on city blogs, Joey Sweeney of Philebrity had a great quote when asked about the relationship with other blogs in the city.

It's like being in a band and playing gigs other with bands. Sometimes you become friends with another band and other times you wonder how the other band even got the gig.

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At BlogPhiladelphia, Emily King, editor on the Intelligent Travel blog for National Geographic Traveler Magazine said that each post on that blog is looked at by at least two researchers and a copy editor before it goes live.

Not really an 'immediate' publishing tool. I wonder how they deal with comments?

As a contrast, I'm sitting next to Benet Wilson who blogs for Aviation Week at Towers and Tarmacs. She says that no editor reviews her posts before they go online.

Update: During the Q&A, Emily said that the posting process normally takes a week.

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I'm in Philly for the next two days for BlogPhiladelphia. I just did a brief overview of the unconference format to kick things off. No tools!

My photoset is here, the photo group is here.

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I'm heading to the airport in a few minutes for a quick trip to Houston, TX for a PRSA event. After that I'm off to Philly for BlogPhiladelphia. Looking forward to seeing old friends such as Annie, Dave and David.

I'm hoping to type my iPhone review while I'm traveling today.

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This summer is full of a number of fun events all around the country. Here's a quick look at where I'll be:

July 10-11 - Houston, TX for a PRSA Seminar. I'm conducting a professional development seminar for the local PRSA chapter.

July 12-13 - Philadelphia, PA for BlogPhiladelphia - Annie and the gang from Philly are organizing a great event. They say they modeled it after BlogOrlando...and yike's they're doing a better job :-) I'll be leading the first session of the conference, perhaps an un-keynote.

July 18-22 - San Francisco, CA for work and then WordCamp over the weekend.

July 27-29 - Chicago, IL for BlogHer. One of the best events I go to each year. This year I know of a few other men going :-)

August 5-8 - Sarasota, FL for the FPRA Annual Conference. We live-blogged the event last year and will be doing the same this year.

August 9-11 - Seattle, WA for Gnomedex. Another one of my favorite events.

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I am in Tucson, AZ at the Loews Ventana Canyon Resort for the Airports Council International - North America conference. This is the view out the front door :-) Here's the view from my room.

I speak tomorrow afternoon to a group of airport communicators. The opening keynote is being led by USAirways CEO, Doug Parker. Maybe I should tell Doug about my recent USAirways experience :-)

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I'm at the Media Relations Summit, but you wouldn't know it. I'm holed up in my hotel room sick and working :-( I had planned to attend most of today's sessions but that plan is scrapped.

I'm hoping to be well enough to attend the geek dinner this evening.

If I do make it to any sessions today, be on the look out for photos and posts.

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I'll be in Washington D.C. this upcoming Sunday through Tuesday for Bulldog Reporter's Media Relations Summit. I'm part of a panel on Tuesday covering blogger relations. Joining me on the panel is some guy named Phil :-)

I arrive early Sunday morning and plan to bum around the touristy things most of the day. If you're arriving early as well let me know and perhaps we can meet-up.

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Joe Thornley is doing his usual bang-up job of conference coverage from MESH in Canada. Here is the choice quote from Mike Arrington's opening session:

The best thing that traditional journalists can do is to start wrting their own blogs and to build their own brands. This will protect them against downsizing in traditional media.

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An association I am a member of is holding their annual conference at the Ritz-Carlton in Sarasota in early August. Last year we live-blogged the event with much success. This year we want to repeat the online conference coverage. One problem, the cost of wifi at the Ritz.

The cost for wifi in a conference room is $300 per single-user, per day. Now this isn't for a speaker or for general use, it's for one person to be able to sit in the audience and use wifi. Now there is a break for additional users, they add $50 per user/per day. With the event lasting three days, the total cost for wifi for three people will be $1600. I don't even want to know what it would cost to enable wifi for everybody in the room.

Ridiculous? Of course, but too often it's standard practice at conference space. I think that when negotiating any contracts with a conference hotel, wifi should be provided as a base service. If you can't do it, then don't even submit a bid.

A fellow conference blogger said this:

It’s ironic that the hotels charge so much and yet our blogging actually is promoting their hotel. Think of the pictures we posted in last year’s conference blog… golf course, beachfront views, decorated ballrooms… all free advertising for the hotel.

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It's great having good friends out there. I set out this morning to work on the BlogOrlando 2007 session list. After an hour of e-mails, IMs and a tweet or two, I'm almost done. Just about everybody I asked has said, 'Count me in' or 'Let me confirm the date, but otherwise we're a go.'

I posted the names of the confirmed session leaders so far, and a few more should firm up in the next day or two. The plan is to have a diverse series of tracks. So far they are:

- Local/Florida
- Marketing & Communication
- Journalism/Media
- Society
- Developers
- Newbies

If you don't know about BlogOrlando, it's a FREE un-conference held in Orlando from Sept 27-29th. The main event is Friday, Sept 28th. On Thursday we'll be doing some fun stuff that might involve the Mouse. Saturday is the 'official' Disney day with a group trip to one of the theme parks.

As for hotel and travel, everybody is on their own. Hey, it's a free conference what do you expect! Dave Coustan will recommend the EO Inn. I think he's already made his reservation.

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Annie Heckenberger just sent out the official announcement about BlogPhiladelphia which will be held on July 12-13, 2007 in Philadelphia of course.

Here are the details:

Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation (GPTMC) and uwishunu.com are pleased to announce the inaugural BLOGPHILADELPHIA.

This two-day “unconference” will be open to bloggers and non-bloggers alike. There will be a few panels featuring leading tech pioneers spanning a wide spectrum of technology platforms and social media experience. We also plan to bring together a good cross-section of experts to lead break-out sessions covering various areas of social media: avatars, blogging/vlogging, mobile/sms technologies, online & mobile social networks, podcasting, PR in the world of CGM, virtual communities, community-edited news sites, social bookmarking, and of course, where and how marketing fits into all of this.

Whew! Overwhelmed yet?

Well, don’t be! As we all know – there are no established experts in this evolving field. That’s why the unconference format is a great opportunity to catch up with other like-minded individuals and innovators and swap intel.

And of course, while you’re here in Philly, we’ll getcha a cheesesteak and then run it off with a ceremonial Rocky-esque run up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. You better believe that’s going up on Blip.Tv and Youtube.com!

I've been working with Annie behind-the-scenes on this event for quite a while. Their plan was to model this after BlogOrlando, which BTW will be held on Sept 27-29 this year :-)

I'll be in Philly, will you? If I lived in the Northeast I'd probably hop on the train to head down, but a train trip from Orlando to Philly would be an adventure in itself.

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Coming out of New Comm Forum there was a roaring debate over live-blogging. Since I do quite a bit of live-blogging for conferences, I figured I'd put in my two-cents (Another great live-blogger is Joe Thornley). For the background you can read the following posts:

- Steve Crescenzo's original post
- Shel Holtz responds to Steve
- Shel Israel responds to the response

From my perspective, Steve didn't like what Shel Israel wrote so he questions the validity of live-blogging. Is this one of those shoot the messenger not the message situations, or perhaps in Steve's case shoot the message, the messenger and the medium?

One way to get called out on the blogosphere is to make a broad generalization like 'live-blogging is useless' or 'all women who blog are mommy-bloggers'. Do you agree with either of those statements? Didn't think so.

Much of the debate seems to hinge on the word live-blogging, or as I define it, writing real-time notes of an event and posting them during the event. It's an interesting phenomena. Last year at Mplanet, Ann Handley commented on this real-time process:

Josh -- I think I'm having a meta experience. I'm in the back of the room while you are live-blogging this...seeing these guys on the stage at the same time I'm seeing the photo here. Cool...and only a little scary....

If you're questioning why somebody is doing something than the Cluetrain hasn't taught you anything. Bloggers and individuals do things for a number of reasons. Questioning their reasoning or saying it's not worth their time is very short-sighted and selfish. It's my time and energy, I'll do with it what I want thank you.

I recently spent quite a bit of time live-blogging the WOMBAT event and Forrester's Marketing Forum, was that useless and a waste of time or was the quality of the coverage lacking because I live-blogged it? I don't think so.

There are new wrinkles to the discussion. Jeremiah talks about people using his concepts/content in sessions and not crediting him. Chip Griffin also talks about live-blogging and about video blogging and conferences.

One of the benefits I see about conference blogging is that it's forcing organizers to get good speakers. If you have lousy speakers or people that use the time to pitch their own products/services the word gets out rather quickly and kills the vibe about your conference. The long term relevance of blog content via Google is becoming key to conferences. Google the name of a conference, the first result should be the official conference web site. More and more though the other results are blog posts from attendees.

I choose to attend conferences not based upon marketing materials I receive but the comments and feedback I get from friends that have attended the conference or blog posts from attendees. In other words, conference blogging is becoming an important part of the 'marketing' of conferences.

There are now organizations like WOMMA, FPRA and PRSA that actively seek out and support conference bloggers. This is a smart move since they have a hand in the blog coverage of their events. This is where thing can sometimes get sticky though.

I am often asked and compensated to live-blog a conference. This usually includes free conference registration and sometimes partial (or full) travel costs and in some rare cases I am paid for the service. In this role I disclose what I have been given. I am also there to document the sessions and not necessarily critique them. If you read through my live-blogs of events you will see they are more of a play-by-play than an analysis.

Yes there have been cases where I am sitting in a session saying to myself, "Boy this person is useless, or this is a pure sales-pitch." While I might not come out and say this directly, I usually find myself writing less about that session than others. On the flip side if I am at a conference on my own dime I might call out a speaker, but I usually don't.

Looping back to the recent New Comm Forum which started this whole debate, I can say that there were a few sessions I would probably call out, but I didn't blog much from NewComm....why? Sometimes it's good to step away from the laptop and enjoy the sessions rather than covering them. Plus I'm having more fun with photography at conferences anyway :-)

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Jory Des Jardins, BlogHer and Larisa Hall, TheFind.com, addressed how to reach the true influencers on the web, women. They shared a campaign that they completed online.

Jory described what BlogHer is and how they have grown over the past year to over 10,000 members, almost purely WOM driven. They do not advertise. Jory views the site as the TVGuide to women bloggers.

Jory sees the marketing dollar moving, and more of this is moving online. While people spend 36.4% of their time online, advertising only spends around 5% online. Looking at BlogHer stats: 94% female, 64% between the ages of 28-40, 51% visit daily, 94% with high school education. The women are also not afraid to buy online.

In October of 2006, TheFind.com launched a new 'search by color' feature. The campaign objective was to drive women to the site to use the service and build buzz about the feature. But how do you market a service like this? TheFind knew they wanted to support a charitable cause as part of the program, TheFind.com looked to BlogHer and asked their members how they should proceed.

The BlogHer network wanted to support Doctors Without Borders. TheFind.com donated $1 for searches for anything red on its shopping search engine. BlogHer was given the exclusive run of the campaign so they could have a sense of ownership. The members appreciated that.

When users completed searches on TheFind.com that resulted in a donation they received immediate feedback and thanks.

The campaign resulted in an increase in 'red' searches from 1% to 12%. Over 10% of the searchers came back 5-6 times in order to search again and donate. The donation to Doctors Without Borders was $10,000.

What's better click-thrus or blog chatter? Jory and Larisa think that blog posts are better since it also helps boost your SEO.

What did they learn?
- Be creative, but keep it simple
- Identify a cause that your target is known to care about
- Give examples, help them out
- Interact with those bloggers who participating
- Always solicit and respond to feedback
- If you are choosing a philanthropic route, choose your charity carefully to make sure they spend their money wisely

Doing good = ink in the blogosphere. If your campaign can be a story in itself then it will be talked about.

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Christine Morrison, Intuit, and other panelists presented a case study on an exciting topic, taxes. All joking aside, the topic is something we can all relate to at this time of year.

Christine serves as the product manager for TurboTax and makes sure the entire customer experience and product lives up to the expectations of customers. To get things started you need to listen to your customers. Customers are you best teachers.

Most importantly though, you need to act on what you hear from your customers. That's what separates listening from engagement.

So what does WOM have to do with taxes? Believe it or not there are passionate users of TurboTax. Intuit built the Inner Circle as a community for their passionate users. They wanted to solicit their input and then give something back. One of the difficult things it keeping the balance between what we give and what we get. The majority of the members are mostly looking for recognition.

In the product development cycle TurboTax has to be on time. Uncle Sam doesn't push back his tax deadline, so they can't push back the updates to TurboTax.

They currently have 10,000 members out of a customer base of 15 million. This small little sandbox gives Christine and Intuit a great place to test new things. One thing they have been doing are local events for their members. On the internal blog, users have begun to stick up for Intuit, they are becoming brand advocates.

A huge issue for Intuit is the listing of their software on sites like Amazon and the accompanying product reviews. This past year Christine invited their beta users to leave reviews on Amazon. Reviewers were required to disclose that they had received a preview edition of TurboTax.

Intuit works with Informative to collect data about their customers and Inner Circle members. Intuit uses this data to understand what's important to their customers. Content that is discussed is also ranked by the members. The goal is to have scalable conversations with customers.

Promoters want to have an ongoing dialogue with brands while detractors want action to be taken on their issues. This allows Intuit to provide different content to promoters and detractors.

One of the major benefits is that Intuit can allocate resources to fix the issues that matter most to their promoters/detractors.

Building great products builds great WOM. Their research shows that 46% of new customers arrive because of WOM. Rather than mining for customers they think of it as mining for gold. The Inner Circle was mostly a product development program. The decision was made to use the Inner Circle for more outreach programs.

While many organizations use the net-promoter score as an indicator, how many of them actually follow-up on this? What this means is if the person was likely recommend our product, did they actually do it? Intuit learned that 14% of their Inner Circle members were true advocates.

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I love LEGO and my son loves LEGO so I was interested in hearing what Bill Thompson from Informative had to say about how LEGO is using blogs and blogger outreach programs to connect with customers.

Bill asked how marketers cut through the static. But let's define static as: fixed or stationary, showing little change, lacking movement, not really static in the broadcast sense. Now think about static marketing or conversation, it's not good. In product development, static is not good.

What they want to do is adapt, they want to learn from our customers and their conversations. They want to anticipate and exceed unexpressed needs.

LEGO is a 75 year-old company that is re-inventing themselves. They have an extraordinary community. LEGO fans make Star Trek fans look like lightweights.

Recently LEGO embarked on a program to update the Mindstorms product. They asked their fans what they wanted and listened.

The conversation loop is an ongoing process. They ask, listen, prioritize and respond, then start again. With tools like surveys, forums, blogs and profiling they learn about their customers.

With their platform (illustrated below) they can quickly gather feedback from customers on a variety of topics. Not only do the validate certain programs they also rate/rank them. Not only can they look at overall data, the can look across segments.

LEGO uses blogs within their member communities and allows readers to rate posts for the benefit of others in the community. The feedback can be sorted by profile, so users can see what other people like themselves are saying.

A blog allows LEGO fans to:

- Talk to cool LEGO employees, icons
- Rate, rank posts
- Collaborate with others
- Contribute, influence future direction
- Understand, innovate with precision

Customer can contribute and help direct the future of the company.

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Brandon Evans, RepNation and Tracy Sanford, JetBlue led a session detailing JetBlue's ambassador network, CrewBlue.

Tracy started things off by reviewing how WOM impacts JetBlue and marketing in general. JetBlue was a brand that was really built on WOM. Their research has shown that 81% of JetBlue fliers recommend us to a friend. Their focus was the bring humanity back to airline travel.

From JetBlue's perspective they want to help amplify the conversation that already existed among their customers. It's a fortunate situation to be in.

JetBlue's communications strategy has a number of components (shown below). One of their first initiatives was a series of commercials featuring letters read by actual customers. The commercials were genuine and honest. No shots of planes flying off into the sunset or airline pilot hugging a small child.

Another focus is their Blue Betty mobile marketing unit. This traveling JetBlue program allows people to experience the JetBlue way of travel.

Much of the content their receive from customers is shared via a microsite.

The next question is how do we introduce JetBlue to college students while maintaining the passion that many of their current customers feel.

Previous to 2005 JetBlue had never used an outsider represent them, previously it was always a JetBlue employee. The other issue is that JetBlue is part of the culture in New York, but it's not always so big in other markets.

Their goal was to become the air carrier of choice for college students. But, for the most part many students had never flown JetBlue.

The first step was to select the channels and markets. For JetBlue they were looking for the individuals that made campuses move. When it came to campus selection they targeted the following markets: New York, Boston, DC, Los Angeles and San Francisco. They wanted to indentify passionate JetBlue fans who are creative, responsible campus leaders.

A focus of the training was to make the ambassadors feel part of the team. They become part of your marketing team and really embrace your brand. They allowed their ambassadors some flexibility in customizing local programs. Sometimes a local event turns into a great idea for a national campaign.

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Gary Colen, Alloy Media + Marketing, presented a case study based upon the work they had done with Helio, a new wireless brand in targeting college students.

First off we need to look at the market. The college market is usually defined as one market. but it's really hundreds of markets. If you look at a target, you have a college student, part of a larger group, money to spend, media editor, brand experimenter, strong friend-fluence.

College students are sometimes a good test market. They have grown up with technology and love to experiment. Also the college market is always growing. Today there are 17.4 million students.

They looked at how students spend their 'fun' money. Food is the number one, followed by entertainment, clothing, cell phone, personal care products, cosmetics. The average college student spends $32/month on cell phone service.

Their research showed that a large majority of students avoid ads on the internet, text messaging ads, direct mail and ads on social networking sites. College students are also prone to test new brands and often seek the advice of others when making purchases.

Helio recruited 21 on-campus ambassadors. These ambassadors received extensive training about the wireless market and the Helio brand. This included a visit to the Helio HQ.

Once on campus they began an incremental exposure plan. The reps used Facebook as a primary communication tool. They used the tools that the students use. The major goals included:

- Brand Impressions
- Product Engagements
- Event Attendance

Helio soon became a natural part of the Rep's daily lives. They integrated Helio into their social network profiles.

At the end of the day it's about having a great product. Helio was fortunate that they had a great product with a good feature-set.

Unfortunately Greg didn't have a Helio device for us to play with :-(

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Noted author of the Cluetrain Manifesto and the upcoming book Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, Dave Weinberger kicked things off this morning at WOMBAT in New Orleans.

Dave started off his keynote with a question, "Yes we know that markets are conversations, but is marketing a conversation?" Our first duty is to the conversation. But what happens to marketing with the top priority is conversation?

For many years we lived in the world of broadcast, i.e. a select few talking to everybody else. We get to listen, we receive the radio waves. We want to lean forward and not lean back. Things are changing.

There has been an evolution of the market. It started as a place to do business, the traditional market. Now the term is a verb, it means to sell to somebody. This was driven by the industrial revolution. Customers became consumers, things that can be replaced. Conversation became messages.

Dave quotes Doc Searls, "There's no market for messages." Marketing becomes a war.

Instead of relying upon corporations for information, people rely upon each other.

What are marketing conversations really like? Dave referenced the Juicy Fruit blog campaign. The blog was designed by people that probably had seen a blog, but never really interacted with blogs. The bloggers thought they were being passionate consumers, but they were just being lame.

Dave recently shopped for a washer and dryer. Rather than visiting the Kenmore site he searched blogs. He trusts the information he receives from other people. Often there is information about products/services that you can only get from other customers.

It's not the value of conversation, it's the value in conversation. People talk in real voices and have conversations that are opened ended. Conversation is about WE are interested in.

Control by the market is increasing. There is more person to person communication than broadcast communication. However it's not about the tools and the content of this new market. It's the connections.

For years there was a separation between content and meta-data in the analog world. Today, with everything digital, all content and meta-data are digital.

The owners of the information no longer own the organization of that content, the users do. You can no longer know what people are interested in. People will determine that on their own. The lesson, include everything.

Tagging and folksonomies have given users control over the organization of content.

The result is that content becomes more valuable when it's free. Think about the travel industry. For an airline their flight information is more valuable when they share it with other sites. Users don't want to search every airline site.

Things like playlists are bringing order to the chaos that is all the music in the world.

Hyperlinks are not neutral. A link is a little act of generosity. You're telling people to go somewhere else. Links are like conversation, you recognize that somebody else's view is important.

The majority of company web pages are not designed to be conversational since they own it. They think they know what we want and how we want it.

Dave turned the conversation to Edelman and their recent issues. Dave noted that he is a consultant to Edelman. While Edelman is genuinely trying to do things right they have screwed up. The truth though, is that this is hard to do. Companies are going to fail before they succeed.

Why is this new conversational market so hard to deal with? Clients want to sell, and customers are still sitting ducks. Advertising does work, we as humans respond to good advertising. The combination of self-interest and human meaning leads to self-delusion.

One of the major issues is that marketers get paid to talk. Does that corrode the conversation?

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The after-party last night featured Ted Breaux (photo below) and the new Absinthe. Good party, and good pictures. Here's the set.

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Online is the new darling, but offline is just as important. Ted Wright, Fizz and Lance Gentry, IZZE, talked about out to build WOM in real world. It's not every day that you see somebody give their presentation from a Segway (well actually once before). Ted and Lance did a great tag-team presentation that was a great break from the standard, speaker A followed by speaker B.

Quick stat from a recent study, 0% of youth surveyed said they would purchase something based upon seeing an billboard at a sporting event. For example, IZZE has no above the line marketing. They have never run a TV or Radio ad or a newspaper ad.

First off, determine the demographic target for your brand. Quantitative and Qualitative research will help. Build on the backs of others, read, read, read what's out there. Learn from others.

Aim for the aspirational person. They may not be a consumer of your product, but reflects the values, practices, attitudes and need-mindset that you want to become and that your target groups aspire to be like.

Be interesting or be gone!

In modern, mature advertising markets that average consumer receives 4000 advertising messages per day. If you're not interesting then you need to go back to the drawing board and make your product interesting.

Determine influencer hubs for your demographic. Key influencers are worth almost a million impressions for a brand. Constantly refine you approach as well. Look at where you are at and what you'll need to do a few quarters from now. Influencers are always looking for new things and new stories. By changing your approach you satisfy that need for change on the part of the influencer.

An influencer will not stay with you if you don't innovate.

Use the 'Treasure Hunt' to your advantage. Consumers in North America are always on a hunt for the next luxury good or the next bargain. What's the story behind that hunt? Make sure to give consumers an option to trade up and trade down. Don't get stuck in the middle.

Let's talk a bit about cultural creatives. The cultural creatives are doing now, what you need to be doing with your brand. They are 50 million individuals, they are book buyers, they desire authenticity, they aren't consumers, they're shoppers. They are technologically savvy, the love to experiment. They think they're unique, but they're not since there are 50 million of them.

People are buying things to silently or non-verbally communicate who they are. It's what they drink, what they drive. Whole Foods is there church.

Jumping the chasm is making the leap from the tastemakers to the progressive user to the mass market. The mass market plays follow the leader.

How to translate this offline? Great products sample, average products advertise. Lesson, sample, sample, sample. Invite people to sample, never interrupt or intercept.

Teach influencers your brand story and they will share. Influencers want to know the story behind the product/brand.

Giving away free stuff does not build a brand.

PR is critical because is validates WOM but remember that the story/editorial has to be earned.

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Want to learn about how to use blogs for buzz? Chances are Anil Dash from SixApart and David Jacobs from Apperceptive can help.

Anil kicked things off with a question, "What can you do with a book?" For the most part people think of books as things you can consume/read. You never think about writing a book, at first. Today with the web there is an entire generation of kids growing up that know they can write, they can take part in the process.

Persistence and awareness are two major things associated with blogs.

Content does not need to be thrown away, persistence can be important, and is increasingly so. Google can find you. Almost half the visits to many blogs are from content that is over a month old. Now think about your e-mail newsletters, can I find the content from last month's e-mail newsletter?

Does the home page matter? So many people are finding content from search results, links from friends.

By putting our names and dates on content, we are creating a social contract. There is a promise of "I will stay in touch." But a promise is more than words, it takes work. It's about relationships, with friends, customers, etc.

It's about making the tools on the web as meaningful as other mediums. It doesn't have to be disposable.

Awareness is another key issue. So much of the e-mail traffic that Anil receives is not relevant at the time he receives it.

The devices you want to use are the one that give you control. Think Tivo or the iPod. Each of these devices gives you control over the experience. RSS is similar, it gives you control. RSS delivers awareness without interruption.

Awareness keeps the lines of communication open without the rudeness. Blogs are about maintaining a relationship with the people you care about. Blogs allow you to scale a conversation beyond the traditional one-on-one you have in person.

Next up, David Jacobs reviewed some examples of how blogs are used in the real world. The first example was Serious Eats. The conversation about food now takes place online. The other thing is the site opens up the conversation to the community. There are experts, but isn't everybody and expert in something? The site features profiles. Users can tell a bit about themselves, web sites, their favorite foods, etc.

How is this different than a forum where the person with the most free time wins? There is control from a post/editorial standpoint.

The user profiles builds a history of the users contribution to the site. It's their reputation. You respect those that contribute to the site. If you have a community like this for your customers it lets you learn who the real influencers are.

Once you begin to host the conversation, it's like having a dinner party at your house. You learn a lot in a civil environment.

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WOMMA always has fun lunchtime activities. Last year at the DC event we had the exciting Rock-Paper-Scissors tournament. WOMBAT 07 was no exception. John Moore from Brand Autopsy provided five scenarios for the tables. Each table was tasked with reviewing their individual case studies and then present their findings.

The scenarios: Negative WOM, Selling WOM, WOM & Disclosure, WOM vs CGM and WOM & Boring Products.

For the next 30 minutes each table worked amongst themselves to figure out what to do.

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After a quick morning break, a panel made up of Pinny Gniwisch, Ice.com and Mark Hillman, Resource Interactive talked about this thing called YouTube. Heard of it? :-)

First up was Pinny who talked about how Ice.com is using YouTube. To do innovative things sometimes you need to challenge management. Often they don't understand new technologies and need some convincing.

There are four C's in the diamond world. Pinny decided to build up the four C's of YouTube.

Convince: You need to convince management. They started small with a basic video and racked up over 500,000 thousand views.

That small experiment convinced management to try things.

Clarify: You must clarify your mission. At Ice.com their mission is to have people join their channel. To build a relationship with customers.

Commit: Commit to the movement. You must be genuine, otherwise the YouTube community with shun you. Pinny joined the YouTube community, he interacted with other members.

Collaborate: Make an effort to integrate within the company.

In the end Ice.com has seen a tremendous amount of response from a campaign that only cost a little over $1200.

Next up was Mark Hillman. Mark's main message. Create conversation worthy content. Give people a reason to talk.

Too many videos are heavy on the branding or entertainment. There needs to be a happy medium.

Some of the initial work Mark's firm did for Herbal Essence hair care products was a bit too product heavy. While the videos were informative they didn't take to the true spirit of YouTube.

Further projects with Herbal Essence created the Dump Cupid campaign. The videos were mostly entertainment focussed that was unbranded, with the exception of a URL at the end of the spots. The YouTube portion was part of a total campaign, online and offline.

Mark's tips:

- Find something that is already accepted and back you brand into it
- Always go entertainment over brand
- Make if feel low-budget
- Think of everything, but make it feel chaotic
- Keep it loose
- Be brave

From the Q&A: Mark said it's hard to get people to go to consumer products/goods web sites.

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Ed Keller, Keller Fay Group and David Shiffman, MediaVest looked at how you can integrate WOM into your traditional advertising mix.

First to speak was David Shiffman. WOM has gone beyond the discussion of how we can define it, to measurement and strategy. Research estimates that there are 3.5 billion word of mouth conversations each day in America. That's a big number. How do you get a handle on/measure/engage with a number that big. Obviously firms want to know what people are saying about them.

The current trends indicate a decreasing amount of trust in brands among customers. In 1999 it was 71%, in 2006 it's at 63%.

Overall though, WOM Is gaining in advertising. Word or mouth is essential to rebuilding trust.

The new landscape, specifically with blogs, social networks, etc is now powered by conversation. In some ways this echoes the social marketplace that existing in the 1800's. Looking at today's marketplace, the successful brands: Google, Starbucks, Red Bull, etc are built upon word of mouth.

Its important to remember that WOM is not replacing or beating advertising, it's a partnership. It has to be considered in a larger context within the advertising/marketing campaign.

Real customers are you best evangelists. People find WOM coming from real customers to be more credible, are more likely to be passed along and be acted upon.

The role of advertising has changed. In basic terms it used to be delivering a message to a consumer. Today, it's about reaching influencers, building awareness, sharing, conversation and consumer advocacy.

There are three rules: Identify & Engage Influencers (think NetFlix), Inspire & Reward Advocacy (Swiffer), Measure & Learn (Measure)

The last item is increasingly important. What are the business outcomes and how do you measure your success? WOM is measurable, both offline and online.

Next up was Ed Keller. Ed spoke about the 2007 Super Bowl ads. What does a large advertising event like the Super Bowl do for WOM? The Kelly Fay group conducted research prior-to and after the Super Bowl to measure the impact. They conducted 3,500 interviews before the game and 2,700 after the game.

During the month prior to the Super Bowl, brands involved in advertising during the game had 5.4% of all brand conversations, after they game they were part of 6.4%. That's a 15%increase. From a raw number standpoint that's 148.4 million conversations before and 170.4 million conversations after the game.

WOM about Super Bowl advertisers was much more positive (61%) than negative (10%) before the game and this ratio improved after the game (63% to 8%).

People talking about the Super Bowl advertisers' brands were 55% more likely after the game to refer to the advertisers' TV commercial. Although many of the advertisers included an internet component. However, there was no significant increase in WOM online, in fact it decreased.

As the WOM grows, post Super Bowl, the chance of conversations leading to purchasing decisions increases as well.

Obviously the Monday after the game shows the biggest increase in WOM related to the brands, but that steadily returns to normal levels after the game. Coca-Cola, Bud Light, Taco Bell and Honda enjoyed the highest increase in WOM after the game.

Lessons learned: WOM and advertising can work together. Advertising is frequently referenced in WOM. Advertising works best for WOM when it targets influencers, uses consumer-speak (not market-speak) and is portable.

Advertisers should rethink their objectives - aim for current customers. Give them the language and motivation to recommend.

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Tuesday's opening keynote was delivered by Chip Heath from Stanford University. Chip talked about how to make things stick.

In his research Chip has identified a number of ideas/concepts that are naturally sticky. For example: You Only Use 10% of Your Brain. He asked the audience who had heard that? Almost 100% of the audience had. Chip asked, "Who conducted the research study on that?" Other sticky myths: The Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure visible from space.

But what makes these myths stick? Can we reverse engineer them to learn how to make our ideas sticky? One thing we have going for us is that these urban legends don't have blogs, advertising, newsletters and pr assistance. Imagine what a sticky idea with corporate backing could do.

Chip listed some of the basic foundations of Sticky ideas. Sticky ideas are: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories.

Think about the previous statement, "You only use 10% of your brain." That's unexpected.

How do you stand out in crowded markets? Let's look at hamburgers. How about the Heart Attack Grill in Tempe, AZ. Heart Attack Grill embraces the opposite tendency within culture today. We know that fast food is bad, but they take the opposite approach. The Heart Attack Grill serves the triple bypass burger and a number of other fatty foods. The unexpected approach that the Heart Attach Grill builds tremendous word of mouth.

However is having a great product enough to garner significant WOM?

Look at the Ritz-Carlton. While they test very high and have a great product, it doesn't get people talking. Perhaps the unexpected will give people something to talk about. Now look at DoubleTree, it's a standard hotel, but there is something unexpected about them, it gets people talking. DoubleTree provides their customers fresh-baked cookies.

What gets people taking about the Toyota Prius? Not the mileage, not the hybrid drive....people talk about the key. What's interesting is that with all this technology and environmental aspects of the car, it's a basic fundamental thing that people talk about.

Getting back to the Ritz, what could they do that was unexpected? They developed the "Big Night In". Rather than having guests leave the hotel to eat dinner, they encourage guests to eat at restaurant on property. This includes an in-room champagne toast and appetizer from the restaurant. Now there is something for guests to talk about.

Shifting gears, Chip then talked about concrete ideas that embed themselves in our minds. For example take the urban legend about the stolen kidney. When we here this story we have the ability to pass that on to friends with amazing clarity. Now think about your the last PowerPoint you saw, can you recall that with clarity?

This is the challenge that business faces, many times your ideas/concepts are not concrete, they are abstract. Are there tangible, concrete elements that can be included in your statements? A term like High Quality is abstract.

Chip analyzed the mission statement from Eddie Bauer: "To give you outstanding quality, service, and value, and guarantee that we may be worthy of your high esteem. While that is a decent statement, it's not tangible." That statement could be applied to almost any service business. What makes it unique? Nothing. However once you hear the stories about who Eddie Bauer was and what he did, suddenly the brand takes on a tangible existence. Why not convey those stories?

There is a reason that abstraction is so pervasive. The curse of knowledge. As we become experts, we find it difficult to imagine what it's like to not be an expert. When you talk to your 11-year-old son about a video game, you're on the other side of the curse of knowledge. Your son can't fathom your ignorance on the subject.

Sticky ideas are also very emotional. Identity is a powerful motivator. Think about road-side litter. The target market is the 18 to 30-year-old truck driving male. How do you get that target market to care about litter?

The campaign that was created featured the tag-line, "Don't mess with Texas." Texans are a very patriotic people. Once they made the connection that littering was 'messing' with Texas the target market responded.

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The opening session started off with Ed Keller, WOMMA Board President. Ed provided a brief overview of WOMMA. WOMMA was founded in 2004, and as of today has 370 members encompassing brands, agencies and academics.

WOMMA's mission is to make WOM part of the mainstream marketing mix. There are three fundamental pillars within WOMMA: Ethical Leadership, Research and ROI and Best Practices.

The basis for ethical leadership is the Honesty ROI:

Honesty of Relationships: You say who you're speaking for.
Honesty of Opinion: You say what you believe.
Honesty of Identity: You never obscure your identity.

WOMMA is also working to advance the profession. Research fuels strategy and planning, evaluation and learning.

WOMBAT is designed for best practices, it's why we're here in the Big Easy.

Ed then went on to introduce the WOMMA board with some interesting tid-bits about each of them. The purpose of course was to help start conversation.

Next up was Virginia Miracle from Brains on Fire for a WOM 101. Word of Mouth is consumers sharing information with other consumers. Word of Mouth Marketing is brand to customer to customer. Ultimately it's about giving people a reason to talk about your product.

Types of WOMM are: Buzz Marketing, Viral Marketing, Community Marketing, Evangelists, Product Seeding, Influencer Marketing, Cause Marketing, Conversation Creation, Brand Blogging and Referral Programs

The guiding principle is to empower customers to share their honest experiences. Ideally WOM facilities a dialogue among customers and with their brands.

WOM can't be faked. It's unethical and it can cause a backlash.

Why WOM? WOM has credibility, advertising is becoming decreasingly effective, and empowering the consumer benefits everyone.

Next on stage was Jim Nail with TNS Media Intelleigence/Cymfony. Jim is chair of the ethics committee at WOMMA. Jim's message: Ethics - Good Business, Not Just Good Deeds.

Jim showed a slide featured the Lone Ranger and Robin Hood. He asked, "Who would you rather be?" They both champion the poor, but Robin can be a shady character. However if Robin had just used the WOMMA Ethics Evaluation Tool he might have dialed it back a bit.

Consumers expect business to be ethical. Ethics are essential to brands. Ethical behavior is practical. Ethics is about trust, and trust is fundamental to any brand.

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Things are about to kick-off this morning at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association's Basic Training 3 here in New Orleans, LA. First up will be some opening remarks and a brief review of 'What is WOM?'. Photos from the event are here (the light is tough).

We were supposed to have three people blogging this event, but it looks like it's just going to be me :-)

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Hot on the heals of blogging from the Forrester Marketing Forum, I will be at WOMBAT in New Orleans the first of this week. Keeping with my 'How to Blog a Conference' guidelines, I spent some time today prepping many of the posts I will be writing.

What does prepping mean?

Well WOMMA has got the event-blogging thing down to a science. Last week I received a schedule of the sessions I will be attending/blogging. With that schedule I have already created drafts of the session posts. These drafts have the title, categories, tags already saved. I also write a short intro listing all the speakers/panelists and link up any blogs/companies as needed.

Spending about 30-45 minutes today saves all that time during the event. Having a session post prepped ahead of time allows me to concentrate on the speakers and photography as soon as the session gets started. I don't have to fumble to get everybody's name/links done.

Why the warning for a title? Well in the prep I see that I will be posting close to 20 scheduled items during the event. That number will probably increase during the course of the event though :-)

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After New York, my next stop will be New Orleans for the Word of Mouth Marketing Association's Basic Training event, otherwise known as WOMBAT. I am going to help blog the event along with some of the usual suspects. Of course the WOMMA sessions are always great, but they also do a great job with their 'evening' events.

Also, if you're in to the WOM thing and want to help with some research, make sure you hook-up with Peter Kim from Forrester Research. Peter will be at WOMBAT and is looking to meet with folks to discuss some WOM research he's working on.

See you in New Orleans.

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I have been working on finalizing the date for the 2007 edition of BlogOrlando. I almost have things confirmed but I wanted to at least throw a date out there so people could pencil it in.

BlogOrlando 2007 will be held September 27-29. The plan is a similar schedule to last year's. That means the main event will be on Friday, September 28th. On Thursday the 27th we'll have a dinner for those coming in town early. Saturday will be a Disney day.

Granted this might change...but I certainly hope that it doesn't. As soon as the date is finalized I'll post some more details here and on the BlogOrlando site. If you're interested in leading a session let me know.

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Originally I had planned to stay for both days of the Forrester Marketing Forum, but I have another event on Thursday that I need to get back for. With that, I am leaving Miami late Wednesday night and dashing back to Central Florida. There were a few sessions on Thursday I really wished I could make, but duty calls.

Similar to Mplanet in 2006, this event featured an all-star cast of speakers and sessions. Highlights for me were the session by Peter Kim, Sylvia Reynolds and Eric Kintz.

All my photos from the event can be found on Flickr. Blog coverage will continue on the Forrester Marketing Blog.

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Eric Kintz, VP Global Marketing Strategy & Excellence with HP lead the final keynote session of the day.

Eric started off his keynote by plugging the primary theme again, the customer is the focus. It doesn't matter if you're B2C or B2B, it's the customer. HP has millions of interactions with customers every day and every second. HP sells three printers every second. That's a lot of customer interaction. They have to get it right with each of those customers and with each of those interactions.

To drive customer centricity at HP they are focusing on:

- Integrating the customer into driving business
- Measure and manage what matters to the customer
- Inspire employees to drive customer centricity

HP developed their performance chain. First off they had to gather metrics and tie customer centricity to profitability. Customer experience builds customer loyalty, which builds sales. Next up, operations looks to improve efficiencies in processes that matter to customers. The final piece is the employees. The goal is to have employees focus their attitudes and actions towards the customer.

HP measures and manages what matters to the customer. Technical support is a major customer touch-point. They want to make sure that when you call support that your problem is fixed and done so quickly.

Internally, HP has been focusing on customer experience training. Teaching their staff how the customer thinks. Another initiative is the 'Voice of the Customer'. With this program, any HP staff member can log a complaint/issue for a customer.

HP is also fortunate to be a B2C and B2B provider. They can often take a B2B customer (and their employees) and turn them into B2C customers. That's a powerful thing. Moving forward with B2B they want to market one account at a time. It means knowing the customer.

One new project is Change Artists, it is a portion of the HP web site that allows CEOs and CIOs to discuss issues surrounding technology. The discussion is about problems and solutions and not HP products. By hosting this conversation HP is learning what their customers want.

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The breakout session in the afternoon that I attended discussed customer-centricity in the B2B space. Can it be done? The panel was made up of: Laura Ramos - Forrester Research, Don Friedman - CA, Jeff Reid - UPS, Marc Ruggiano - John H. Harland Co.

Laura introduced the session with some background on how the topic came about. Like many of the other sessions, it was based upon Peter Kim's research on marketing organizational structures. Much of Peter's research was B2C focussed, so how does this apply to B2B? Are the same sets of skills and attributes of a traditional B2B marketer relevant?

Forrester's recent research has shown and many B2B marketing organizations do not use customer-centric metrics. Once again, do the new rules of customer-centric B2C apply to B2B?

Laura then introduced panelists one at a time. Each of them spent a few minutes talking about experiences from within their organization.

Don Friedman, CA - Yes, B2B can be customer-centric, but the big question is how? One of the issues they face is how do they bring products to market that customers really want. Marketing used to be a function of promoting a product, today it's driving product development, the campaigns come at the end. When you have 1200 products in the portfolio it's difficult to change thinking overnight.

Being customer-centric doesn't always mean restructuring your marketing organization, it means putting the needs of the customer first. Sometimes you can work within existing structures to get that done.

Jeff Reid, UPS - UPS has a huge, diverse customer base. They have always used basic segmentation to organize their efforts. Moving forward they look to enhance their current segmentation and how those customers use the different channels within UPS. They have also developed personas. Their research has shown that they sell to five distinct personas. These personas are always looked to in the development of products/relationships. They looked to see what pained their customers and worked backwards.

A traveling road-show introduced the rest of the company to these personas. The road-show was successful since many internal groups had never really met/dealt with a customer.

Another major focus is creating and using credible metrics. When you cross different business units in a customer-centric model you need to make sure that the metrics you are using cross over well. For example in the web-space abandonment is an often used metric. However, outside the web-space it's not a well known term.

Marc Ruggiano, John H. Harland Co. - Harland is a major provider of products and services to financial services companies. Many people know Harland from checks. They print checks. However the payment world is changing. Banks aren't seeing an increase in check orders.

For years Harland had a geographically organized sales teams and product-focussed call centers. In the last two years they have undergone a large reorganization. Sales and marketing is now organized by the financial institution segment, i.e. large bank, small bank.

Harland has an interesting cross between B2B and B2C. The banks are Harland's clients, but the end users of the products are consumers. In this model then need to address the needs of the client and then their clients. Not only do they need to know their customers, they need to know the consumers.

Customer-centric marketing matters if:

- You server clients with different challenges
- You customize products for clients
- You have different business models for different clients
- Your competitors vary from client to client
- Your performance or expectation differs by client
- Your budget dollars need to stretch farther than before

Laura then joined the group and opened up the Q&A. She opened with a statement, "Are we all in agreement, B2B can be customer-centric" The panel agreed. Next, do you need to organize yourself around customer channels?

Don wondered if companies can really afford to re-organize their marketing structures by customer. There is benefit, but we're back to the 80/20 rule. The largest customer groups get the attention first.

How do you handle internal politics and disagreements on shared projects?

Jeff said that within UPS they let the customers decide. When you look at what the customer wants/needs then you take opinion out of the development process.

Good lines from Don: "If you don't have a customer you don't have a business." "Being customer-centric is not conducting focus groups and reading reports."

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During the Q&A of her session, Sylvia Reynolds from Wells Fargo said (paraphrasing):

For years everybody was searching for the online customer. There are no online customers. Customers are real people.

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The final keynote before lunch featured Sylvia Reynolds, CMO, Wells Fargo. Sylvia's session also dealt with customer centricity (sense a trend here).

Sylvia started with a few basic questions: What is customer-centricity? If this is so important why haven't we been talking about this before? Are all these new technologies (blogs, podcasts, etc) enablers or distractions?

Sylvia provided some stats about Well Fargo and how they interact with their customers. Wells Fargo has 23 millions costumers with millions of interactions with them via stores, on-line, phone and ATM.

What's important to realize is that in their history Wells Fargo has always been focussed on the customer, it's just now called customer-centricity.

Sylvia joked that a customer has never asked Wells Fargo to be more centric.

Wells Fargo has been very successful, so it's difficult for Sylvia to convince management that they need to change they way they do things. From management's perspective, if they weren't doing things for the customer already, then they wouldn't be successful.

The new goal is to manage sideways. Wells Fargo is looking to build customer experience across their 80 channels. That's the challenge.

Sylvia asks, "How many of you have been in a meeting where somebody talked about the 'customer' and they inserted their own preferences?" Do they really know the customer?

All the new technologies are exciting, but use the new technology to solve real problems.

At first collaboration between departments was for mutual benefit. Cross-sell is a religion within Wells Fargo. The new approach is to build collaboration with the customer's needs first, then internal benefit second. The new directive: Make our shared customer the center of all decisions. Nobody 'owns' the customers.

Wells Fargo is starting to use campaigns that connect to larger customer issues/dreams. This is a departure from 'product' marketing.

Wells Fargo is also trying new forms of marketing: blogs, events, Second Life. However, the use of new technologies is rooted in solving a problem. They discovered that people under 18 didn't know about Wells Fargo's history, or felt it made them look old. With the Guided by History blog they are trying to make the history of Wells Fargo relevant, hip and current.

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After a short morning break the keynote sessions at Forrester Marketing Forum continued with a session led by Gary Skidmore, Corporate Officer and EVP, with Harte-Hanks.

How do you make customers the very center of what you do? That's the big question on everybody's mind here. Look to Starbucks, they've made an emotional connection with their customers. Think about their customer experience. As a customer you can order the drink you want with the ingredients you want. It's all about the customer. Gary then showed his standard Starbucks order: Tall, Decaf, Non-Fat, Iced, Vanilla, Latte.

Are your customers fans? Apple has a serious fan base. Look at the iPod, 100 million sale and over 2 billion songs downloaded. Think about the social game, "What's on your iPod?" Everybody has a unique playlist on their iPod..it's a unique customer experience.

To win in the market you must let your customers rule. Think about the upcoming generation, they are growing up with this new set of customer experiences that are all about them. Each year, as they grow older they will become more of your revenue base. It's all about them.

Want to create a customer-centric organization? First off, take care of your employees. Take care of their needs so they can focus on taking care of your customers' needs. For example, Cabela's encourages their staff to borrow equipment from their inventory. They want them to experience the products as the customers would.

Customer-centricity is a journey not a destination. If it's done right it will touch every facet of your organization.

Five strategies for achieving customer centricity:

- Information: Accurate, high-quality data about your customers
- Opportunity: Give people access to the data to build relationships and look for opportunities
- Insight: Understand the data, target and predict
- Engagement: The application of the data
- Interaction: Program execution, look to work in all channels in all locations (online/offline)

However, in business you have to make trade-offs. Knowing your customers will help you make those decisions.

Customers want access, they want information. Know how they want access. Customers also want choices. However, what they choose today might be different from what they choose next week. Customers also want experiences. Experience is becoming the secret sauce in business. Customers want reciprocity. They also want control.

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Registration for BlogHer 2007 is now open! I just grabbed my ticket....you should too. My flight is booked and so is my hotel :-)

Can you tell I am excited about BlogHer? Like I've said before it's one of my 'must' events. Are you going?

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The second keynote session on Tuesday was led by Mike Fasulo, CMO of Sony Electronics. Mike asked the audience, "How many of you have owned a Sony product?" Just about every hand went up in the room. Mike jokingly thanked the audience of highly-distinguished customers.

Mike feels that the successful brands of the 21st century will be those that can execute a truly customer-centric approach.

What keeps Mike up at night? Increased competition, widespread commoditization, price erosion. However, if we're only thinking of the customer do any of those matter?

When Sony launched the Bravia the did a tremendous amount of research to gain customer insights. What did they learn? The target audience was women. Women were not usually associated with electronics. However, their research showed that 55% of all consumer electronics purchases were made by women. Women influence 83% of all electronics purchases in the U.S.

Sony launched the product as the world's first television for men and women. The focus was on picture quality and style/design. Both of these items were equally important to men and women.

How do customers view Sony? Customers view Sony as a single brand. They don't see Sony as their individual units, i.e. Sony Pictures, Sony BMC, Sony Electronics, Sony Computer Entertainment, etc. But that's how Sony is organized internally. That's not how products come to market. The internal and external views don't match. The problem is, how can each of these units leverage the overall Sony brand?

In the imaging world, they have three brands, Alpha, Cyber-Shot and Handycam. However from the consumer perspective it's just imaging.

How do they align customer service, product marketing, corporate communications, event, sales and finance to serve a single customer across various product lines and divisions?

Looking at a recent campaign they launched, you see two different product lines sharing a theme. The focus is on the use of the product, not the aspects of the product, i.e. zoom, megapixels, etc.

Now the problem becomes continuity. Carrying those commons themes across all mediums. One thing Sony is doing is syndicated major campaign elements to vendors and point-of-presence opportunities.

Another customer-centric effort is the Sony stores. The purpose of Sony stores is not to sell product, it's to engage the consumer with Sony. Let customers shop where they are comfortable.

(Disclosure: Sony Computer Entertainment America/SCEA is a client)

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Peter Kim, Senior Analyst with Forrester Research led the opening session at the Forrester Marketing Forum here in Miami, FL. I was fortunate enough to catch Peter speaking about the reinventing the marketing model at Mplanet last year (session review). Peter's report on reinventing the marketing model served as the inspiration for much of this event. It seemed fitting then that he should lead things off.

Peter said that this entire conference has been organized around you/us (the attendees). The conference could have been held in Boston or New York, but we thought of you...so we're in Miami.

Wanting to be customer-centric is different than actually doing it. It's the details that count. Customer-centricity is easy to say, hard to do. But here's the secret...it's in the details.

Peter hopes to cover three major points: Why now? How are marketers doing it? How can you make it real?

Why now? Customer expectations have changed. People expect immediate service. When you call or send an e-mail, you expect quick service. There is also social computing. Customer can now create content, talk with each other, etc.

The stage is set for more vocal consumers. However, marketing is not ready for change. Marketing organizations are broken. Increasingly the marketing department only controls one of the Four P's....promotion.

A few lessons: Don't try to own the customer. Build relationships with IT, HR and other departments.

How Are Marketers Doing It? Do you have a customer-centric culture? USAA does. USAA provides insurance and financial services to members of the armed forces and their families. When USAA trains new employees they educate them about the military. USAA makes sure that their staff understands the life of their customers. USAA has adjusted their billing cycles to match military pay periods so it's easier for their customers. Everything USAA does is for their customers, and it builds a strong customer relationship.

Technology can assist with customer-centric programs. Del-Monte has been using blogs to engage dog owners to listen & learn. They are developing products that their customers want and need. That makes marketing much easier.

How Can You Make it Real? Build functional relationships. Customer advocacy creates customer empathy. Use technology to make what exists better. Listen and learn. Focus on the details.

Here are a few other links from Peter's session: Forrester Recap, Q&A

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The 2007 Forrester Marketing Forum officially kicked off this morning with opening remarks from Forrester Research Chairman and CEO, George F. Colony. To set the stage for the conference, George reviewed the six things he tells the CEOs he talks with:

1. You company is inside out. You need to put the needs of your customer before the needs of the company.

2. Your web site needs work. Company web sites they review fail to meet the needs of customers. Think of the customer first.

3. You should be asking one question. Would you recommend this product or service to a friend of colleague? The net-promoter is becoming a driving force within organizations.

4. You don't own your customer... your customer owns you. Loyalty is waning like never before.

5. Bits wants to be free....bits want to break the law. Companies don't like this, but it's the truth.

6. Great marketing + great technology is the only way forward. The most powerful part of this statement is the "+" sign. It's the combination of those two elements that makes the magic. It's the companies that do this well that will be successful.

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Here will be my home for the rest of the day :-) The Forrester staff is busy with final technical checks and rehearsals. Peter Kim will be on-stage for the first keynote in about 30 minutes.

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The Forrester Marketing Forum kicks off tomorrow morning here in Miami, FL. There will be two days of marketing madness with much of the focus on customer-centric initiatives.

You can follow the official Forrester Marketing blog at: http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/. Peter Kim will be blogging, as well as Marianne Richmond. I'll be posting throughout the event and taking some photos.

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Next week begins another travel/conference binge. First up is the Forrester Marketing Forum 2007 in Miami, FL. I'll be heading down to Miami early on Tuesday the 10th to catch up with George Vazquez from PRNewswire and hopefully some of the gang from Scrapblog.

Friday of next week I have a quick day-trip to NYC for a PRSA Association/Nonprofit Section Conference where I will be speaking in the afternoon. Tom Biro and I are looking to hook-up for lunch/coffee in the early afternoon, you're welcome to join us...I'll have more details later.

The week April 16th I'm off to New Orleans for the Word of Mouth Marketing Association's Basic Training (WOMBAT) event. Looking forward to seeing a number of familiar faces at that event. WOMMA is always a good time.

For disclosure purposes: Forrester is providing me press access to their conference but I cover all travel expenses. WOMMA provides me free access to WOMBAT and a hotel room, but all other travel costs are out of my pocket. Each of them request that I post to their event blogs, but I am free to re-publsh on my blog. All photos will be posted to my Flickr photostream.

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Yesterday I spent a bit of time at PodCamp Atlanta. I'm not a podcaster, so why was I there? Well three things: 1. Amber and Rusty asked me to kick-off the event with a keynote/session on social media and the un-conference format. 2. There were lots of familiar faces and friends that I wanted to see. 3. I'm always down for learning new things.

To kick things off I asked the audience a series of questions. It was interesting to see that the majority of the group were already creating content in some way online, i.e. podcasts or blogs. Of those, about half were interested in business cases/monetization while the other half could care less about money. They do it for passion. That passion was refreshing compared to the audience at SoCon07 which seemed mostly corporate.

At first the audience didn't open up too much. Only a small percentage had ever been to an un-con so they were unfamiliar with the format. That forced me to speak a bit too much perhaps, but eventually the questions and comments started coming. Once people realized they could say what they wanted, when they wanted the vibe changed. Good stuff.

Leonard Witt shared a great un-con experience....he wanted a more hands-on session (which wasn't on the schedule) and it ended up happening. Ask as ye shall receive :-)

However there are always the folks that want to turn a learning experience into a sales pitch. One session I sat in turned into a commercial for their services, I was really tempted to say, "This isn't about you....."

The venue was great, I especially liked the 'lounge' area which was full of comfortable leather chairs, sofas and other tables for small impromptu gatherings. When I wasn't in a session I was sitting somewhere chatting with somebody. I would say this has been the nicest conversation area I've ever seen at a conference.

Who was missing? The 'traditional' media. Amber said a bunch of folks from the AJC were invited, but didn't show up. The AJC was also a no-show at SoCon07. However, the independent/traditional media gang from Creative Loafing were there. I say independent/traditional for a reason. In the real world I think Creative Loafing feels they aren't traditional or mainstream media, compared to larger papers, etc. However, in room full of bloggers and podcasters, they are traditional media.

There was an AP reporter around for a bit. In almost-liveblogging style he filed a report soon after the event. For a bit though, the tables were turned on the AP reporter. Dave and Amber began to interview him, which didn't go too well. (Photo Below)

Congrats to Amber and Rusty for putting on a great event.

My PodCamp Atlanta photos are here, the general photo group is here.

Other recaps from: Stephanie, Grayson, Ellie's Dad and Harmen's not-so-great day.

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Yes I am a bit late on this one....a week late actually, but like many others I wanted to share a few thoughts about New Comm Forum. From a conference blogging standpoint you can look at Joe Thornley and Chip Griffin who did the most comprehensive recaps. Heck, Nathan Gilliat wasn't even there and he has some comments. Nathan was able to follow along virtually.

Todd Defren wrote a comment that was often said among the usual gang.

Many of the veteran attendees noted that the crowds were more “corporate” than ever. This doesn’t mean that the suits want to mess things up; everyone I talked to from the corporate side seemed genuinely eager to learn; to be more open and candid.

However, I do learn a great deal. I pay attention to how the audience is receiving and perceiving the content, what questions are they asking, what keeps them up at night, is ROI the only measure in corporate-land, etc.

As an independent consultant I sometimes have experiences with corporations that make me glad I don't work for one, but the audience at New Comm showed that the corporate world is wanting to learn, for their benefit and for the benefit of their customers.

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Next weekend I'll be in Atlanta for PodCamp Atlanta and some other fun stuff. Amber Rhea and Rusty Tanton have asked me to lead the opening session to set the stage for the conference. I'll be talking about the social media movement overall and how podcasting and other forms of personal publishing & expression are changing our lives. I'm looking forward to it. Things kick off Friday night with a reception at Manuel's Tavern.

Then, on Sunday, Toby Bloomberg, Jeneane Sessum and a few others are planning a dinner/meet-up at 5 Seasons Brewing from 5pm till.....

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One of the interesting points to come up during Jeffrey Treem's session on social media for employee engagement was that internal implementations of social media tools are great proving grounds.

Often corporate communicators fear the risks involved with social media, however internal instances can have a great deal of control. As the tools are adopted it also helps shift the culture internally. Organizations learn about conversation and interaction with groups outside their normal circles.

That's a good thing.

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Just got finished with a great keynote from Dave Weinberger at New Communications Forum. For the audience (that I think is mostly corporate comms...) it was a great message. Shel Israel has some greats notes from the session and so does Joe Thornley.

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During Paul Gillin's session...from Tom Foremski (paraphrasing):

What's kiiling the revenue stream for newspapers is search engine marketing and not really blogs or social media. It's easier to sell shampoo via a search result than an ad next to journalism.

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I snuck in and took a few shots of Shel Holtz leading the Podcasting Pre-Conference Session to a packed room at New Communications Forum. The next few days should be fun. I've decided I'm going to concentrate more on photography than blogging the sessions. The photoset will be here.

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Later today I'll be packing for my trip to Vegas for New Communications Forum. As I have said before, NewComm Forum is one of the best events of the year. Like many conferences it's a combination of great sessions and great people. I jokingly said to a friend, they should just cancel all the sessions and just let us all hang out.

I'm looking forward to seeing: Shel I, Shel H, Mike, David, Brian, Joe, Kami and many, many more friends.

I'll be on two panels and helping with the post-conference wrap-up session on Friday afternoon.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

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One question that always comes up is, "How long should my blog posts be?" One consistent answer is, don't make them too long. However, like any 'rule' there are exceptions.

In my case, one of the most linked-to and read posts happens to be my longest post ever: How to Blog a Conference

I think in that case, if you create good valuable content that is researched and well written it can be a a great resource. So, sure keep those blog posts kinda short, but don't be afraid to write that novel every once and a while.

Update: Kevin O'Keefe also talks about post length.

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Mitch Glaser posts on the final day of WeMedia. Go read the entire post, but here is the choice quote for me:

Outside in the hall after the panel, NYU professor and PressThink blogger Jay Rosen told me that Lasica and I had not gotten through to them. Rosen had raised his hand but wasn’t called upon, but had a great analogy of what was wrong with MSM’s approach to citizen media.

“They are trying to change the vocabulary without changing the grammar,” he said. “They use the new vocabulary [of new media] but they are not changing their mindset, and accepting a loss of control.”

In other words, they might start blogs or podcasts or accept comments on stories, but they still believe their work is coming down from on high atop the mountain of Eternal Truth. The new truth of we media — lowercased — is that the media elite have lost the lock on media control, the old style of getting into a room and deciding what is news for the rest of us.

What I have always said is that many newspapers adopt the tools of social media, but not the community or methodology.

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After a so-so second session, the lunch and afternoon sessions at SoCon07 got back to the core focus, conversation. A number of folks said they really 'got' something out of the sessions they went to in the afternoon.

I had the pleasure/problem of leading two sessions. Pleasure, because it's always good to interact with folks and help share a passion for a topic. A problem since you can't attend any other sessions. The last session I lead was called "Off the Record". I did a similar thing at BlogOrlando and the discussion was very similar at SoCon07.

At the end of the day the entire group gathered in the main auditorium to briefly talk things over. Overall I think the event was a great success. Like BlogOrlando and BlogSavannah, this event served as the first real local gathering point for people interested in social media. The entire audience was perhaps a bit too corporate, but I think that's a function of some of the promotion that went out via TechLinks and other business/technology organizations.

On a personal level I finally got to meet Jeneane Sessum after what seems like a few years of trading blog comments and e-mails. Hanging out with Nik Willets was also a blast.

Congrats to Leonard, Jeff and Sherry on a great event. Also a throwback to Kevin Howarth one of the instigators of social media/blogging in ATL a while ago (Kevin wasn't able to make it to SoCon07).

Jeff, Sherry, Leonard

See you at SoCon08.

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After a quick commercial break, thanking the sponsors, the second group session of the morning was lead by Christopher Klaus of Kaneva. Chris talked about the evolution of media, virtual worlds and online interactions . Chris is doing more of a presentation, so many heads in laptops in the audience. After a great kick-off session things are slowing down. I mean we're talking about set-top boxes for TV. I'm checking out for now.

It's painful to watch things grind to a halt. The wifi is good though!

At BlogOrlando one of the session leaders started with slideware, after about 10 minutes I walked up and said, no more slides.

One interesting comment from Chris, "I want somebody to create a virtual world where people are themselves."

Update: I was glad to see things pick back up at lunch and in the afternoon.

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Leonard Witt with Kennesaw State University kicked off the opening session entitled: How Will Web 2.0 Affect You. To set the stage, Leonard provided a quick history of the open-source-software movement and the ramp up to Web 2.0.

One of the founding principles of Web 2.0 is that the sites get smarter with use.

In the journalism space there was OhMyNews in Korea, citizens became journalists. Then came craigslist. Things are changing.

However, much of this new world is build on trust. We have to trust that everybody is working toward a greater good. All these technologies are disruptive. Leonard is showing some examples of Web 2.0 apps. The Chicago Crime Map is a great example. Flickr, YouTube, FaceBook are all examples of communities that are being built by the users.

One of the goals of this event is to find out how we can use these tools for good, and from a local standpoint how can Georgia get ahead of the curve on these issues.

The room has opened up for questions and discussion.

One audience member took a riff on a 'pro-firefox' comment, he doesn't like the elitism in the movement. Specifically how there is so much anti-IE sentiment, you need to remember that the majority of people out there are using IE.

The conversation steers to a tools discussion and then moves away...whew. Good conversation so far. But some Waffle House bashing.

Comment from the audience: "Web 2.0 is just an online extension of what we've been doing for the past 300 years. Sharing stories, sharing ideas."

An un-conference vet next to me says, "These are the same debates that always occur..." I pointed out like I did at BlogSavannah that for many of the people are hearing this debate for the first time so it is informative.

A number of people in the room are truly concerned about using social media for social good. That's a refreshing thing.

Amber is doing a good job of following the conversation.

Other thoughts from Nik and Mark.

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SoCon07 is being held today in Atlanta...well technically not Atlanta but Kennesaw State University. Things are about to kick off. I'll be posting some session recaps from the morning and taking some photos. My photos will be here, the photo group is here.

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The photos from the SoCon07 opening reception are up....

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I'm sitting in the Orlando airport getting ready to fly to Atlanta for SoCon07. The event kicks-off tonight with a dinner at the Marietta Conference Center. I'll be leading one of the tables and a few sessions for the main event on Saturday.

See you there!

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I wrote a few things about the WeMedia conference yesterday. Pondering them a bit more during my drive from Miami I wanted to post a follow-up. During the opening session on community there was a bit of soul-searching on the part of the traditional media. They know that the future for them is 'local' and 'community' and 'conversation' but do they really know how to do that?

When I deal with any media client that wants to 'embrace' social media and become more community oriented I always ask the same thing, "Do you know the names of your readers?" I know the answer to this before I ask it, but it's more of an exercise. Compare this to many individuals that run hyperlocal blogs, they know the names of their readers. They have a community.

One aspect of community is cooperation. During the community panel Jan Schaffer from J-Lab said she wanted to see more cooperation between traditional media on citizen's media. To paraphrase what she said, 'why is it that when a local paper looks at a new hyperlocal blog they say, "we need to do that to" and starts to compete, why not work together?'

Many times 'competition' in media is based upon ad sales. However many hyperlocal blogs don't accept advertising. The hyperlocal blogger isn't in it for money, they're just trying to provide the community information and discussion.

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Somebody just brought up the point that the majority of the people in the room at WeMedia are from 'Big Media' and the big issue is the new wave of media from the people. So where are the people? Are they part of this discussion, this conference? Nope. That's what makes events like BlogHer so great...the attendees are the people.

Another attendee, Mike Orren with Pegasus News just stated, "There is still this notion that we speak, then they converse." We, being media, they being the readers.

A friend pointed out it's somewhat arrogant for a room full of 'big' media folks to talk about how citizen's media will work. I wonder what J.D. is thinking...he's in the front row.

Mitch Glaser - The reality is that the majority of 'local' papers aren't owned by local people, they're part of a large corporation. That's why many of these hyperlocal sites are successful. They're run by somebody that is truly local.

Update: Mitch has more to say over at MediaShift.

Thanks to the audience taking control of their media experience and creating their own media in blogs, podcasts, video and social networks, the people who are losing control have decided to meet — and meet, and meet again — until they figure out how they can take back some control of this uncontrollable situation.

Update 2: Jeremiah is attending his first conference that mixes traditional with social media. Read his thoughts.

This was one of my first dunk into a conference focused on the intersection of “traditional press/media” and “social media”.

There was quite a bit of confusion from this group, which was primarily journalists and folks from media. They don’t know how to fit, they don’t know what to do.

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I'm sitting in the first session at WeMedia at the University of Miami, FL. Here are some quick notes:

Lisa Stone, BlogHer - What we're seeing with women bloggers is that they are no longer waiting to receive the news they are actively seeking the news, they're discussing.

Eduardo Hause, Daily Me - 123 Million newspaper delivered each day, 150 million over the weekend, compare that to only 50 million internet users reading news sites in a week

Shel Israel - Shel immediately questions the stats that Eduardo stated.....how many of those 123 million papers are read, what percentage of the paper is read by that smaller portion?

Ian Rowe, MTV - What we're also seeing is the change in the editorial process. Before it was a group of men sitting in a room deciding what stories would be reported and what show would be aired at 9pm on a particular night. That's changing.

Lisa Stone - Did we all really love Lucy or did we all watch it because it was the only thing on? In court reporting there are a number of lawyers that now cover trials via blogs, previously most court reporting was handled by traditional journalists that were not lawyers. There is a new level of expertise out there.

Question from the audience, what is community or is it communities? Many media folks thing community is their local geographic region.

To follow-up on this, just because I live in Central Florida, is that my community? No, I belong to many communities. Some real, some virtual.

The Guardian Unlimited has some coverage of this session as well.

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