Communitiessocial-Networks

Being so fascinated by and engrossed in social networking, and digital media relations more widely, I’m asked on a regular basis “What’s the point of spending so much time online?”. The very basis of the question betrays the fact that the questioner still, like the majority of people to be fair, feels it necessary to divide their life up into “offline” and “online” portions. Yet they don’t distinguish “time eating / not eating”, “time talking / listening”, “time with new people / with old acquaintances”, “time on the phone / not on the phone”. Like eating, listening and telephones, digital media simply exists. It is part of life. Sure it may have its unique characteristics, but then what doesn’t? I am living, working, having fun, exploring, innovating, learning… some of which just happens to be online and some offline. ...

The third convergence conversation of 2008 will look at the impact that new bandwidth intensive services are placing on the UK’s broadband infrastructure. I’m delighted to be chairing the event, and we’ll kick off with the following speakers: Angus Flett - BT Wholesale Geoffrey Spencer - Nortel Antony Walker - Broadband Stakeholder Group Bill Gash - Partners in TV Mike Aigner - Geo Networks Chris Barraclough - STL Partners What’s the topic? Recent rumblings from ISPs have highlighted the fact that new bandwidth intensive on demand services are placing an enormous strain on ISPs’ “all you can eat” business model. The BBC’s iPlayer alone has already enjoyed rapid uptake with over 17 million programmes streamed or downloaded in the first seven weeks following its Christmas day launch. ...

The word Cyberspace always makes me chuckle for some reason. Not sure why. Anyway, I noticed an article recently in the FT - “Business urged to woo social network figures ” - about a report from Experian and Hitwise saying, well, that business should make sure they look after influential people online. Cool. My headline would be “Influential people are influential people, online or off”. But it was the box-out in the article that I wanted to highlight here, particularly as it relates to this MarCom Professional network. Not sure about the examples though. I quote…. ...

It’s December. Time for pseudo-snow to uphold the pretence of a white Christmas. Time for Christmas pop songs to replenish the coffers of faded pop idols. And, of course, time for reflections on the year. The biggest trends in marketing communications in 2007 were without a doubt the rise and rise of social networks, and the associated dominance of video content – professional and user-generated. Not a theme ignored on MarCom Professional I can see. This has been a subject close to our hearts since we ran the first blog training course for our clients in 2001 and introduced them to conversational PR not long after. That was the term we used then, but now we talk about the brand as the sum of the quality of its dialogue with its stakeholders, and our Chairman Larry Weber decided, rightly, that 2007 was the year the mass market wanted to read more about it. ...

“If Facebook is the Cathedral, who owns the bazaar?” This evening’s Mashup Event , hosted this time at Merrill Lynch’s London HQ, focused on Social Networks. It was the busiest of the series to date; at over 200 attendees it was twice the size of the one I chaired earlier this year. So congratulations to Simon and Tony on making it happen. Social networking has arrived. I can say this on the sole basis that we were in less-than-5-star hotel venues not long ago, and now we’re hosted by one of the world’s biggest investment banks! Moreover, the breadth of attendees is growing as more and more employers and leaders become interested in how Mashups affect their business, affect their markets, affect their lives. ...

Here at Racepoint we’ve been thinking about the ramifications of one of my previous posts, “Continuous engagement… the death of market research ”. A particular area of interest is the way in which we might help companies interact with stakeholders other than via text-based media. Yes, I know there’s the telephone too, but following the tenet that restricting the channel can only restrict the quantity and quality of interaction, how else can we reach out and engage? ...

ESPN pulled the plug on their cell-phone product after investing $150m including $40m in advertising. This is precisely the failure market research is intended to prevent. How can business harness customers and prospective customers to improve their hit rate and time to market? The following simple figures demonstrate the difference between traditional market research and continuous engagement. There are dozens of differences between the two approaches. Research is ad-hoc or at regular intervals whereas continuous engagement is, well, continuous. Research is one-way, and engagement is two-way. Research is devoid of any direct brand benefit (and research purists will claim this is beneficial) whereas continuous engagement inculcates brand loyalty. Here’s a list of the primary differences: ...

Attended the Mashup* event last night on “media and advertising agencies in a digital world”. It was a wide ranging discussion, featuring Rod Banner from Banner Corporation, a presentation from AKQA’s head of mobile, and moderated by Hamish Pringle, DG of the IPA. Unfortunately, the questions from the audience were so diverse that there wasn’t quite the usual cohesion found at a Mashup event, but nevertheless there were some real gems in there. Tony Fish’s question on the attention economy put most people on the back foot, and I learned about Openads for the first time. Very interesting. ...