Newspaper sales dip, but websites gain

According to the Newspaper Association of America, newspapers circulation declined 2.5% in the six months ending March 31 compared to the same period last year while visits to their websites grew. Story on USA today.

Via Micropersuasion

Wired online video guide is a must read

Wired put together the definitive guide to online videos and vlogs in its May issue.
See the new networks for video portals, Watch this way for animations, diaries, documentaries and vlogs for... well for vlogs.

As a bonus: a guide to making your own clips.

The impact of blogging has reached a tipping point

See article on BBC online from Julian Smith, senior analyst at Jupiter Research. Noteworthy quote:

"When a company's marketing story differs from the one being told by online consumers, a credibility gap will emerge that could have dire consequences on brand perception and favourability. "

Biggest task is alignment then but that often goes way beyond PR agencies remit...

BTW, I just came back from a fantastic social media event organised by my colleagues and friends at Digital PR in Milan. More on that Monday when I'll have more time to blog (study, study...)

AQA: Any Question Answered

If you live in the UK, you can text any question you have to 63336 and get an answer back. The service is provided by Issuebits Ltd and combines search technology and human researchers. When meeting someone for the first time, try texting "who is" and their full name" to get a lead in the conversation.

Podcasts: a legal guide

Colette Vogele, with some help from the Stanford Law School's Center for Internet & Society and other contributors have released a legal guide to podcasting.

This will save you thousands in legal fees.

Via New Media Musing

Google sketchup gives a second life to Google earth

Google just released Google Sketchup, a free 3D modelling software that allows you to create objects (house, trees, spaceships...) you can import in Google Earth and share with others. Business 2.0. thinks that Google could venture into Second Life's territory. As it stands, the application currently lacks the avatar creation, animation and interaction that makes second life literally come to life. But it could be a step in that direction. It is also a clever way to get users more involved, both in time spent and emotionally with Google Earth, beyond its initial novelty factor. Inviting other users to visit your house will certainly contribute to increase Google Earth's network effect and draw in more users/more usage. I wonder if this will kick-start a range of new virtual careers, a la Second Life where talented 3D designers could sell their architect and builder talents to others, or cunny businessmen will start trading real estate or set-up shops. May be this is a new beginning for the stillborn virtual shopping mall trend of the mid-nineties :-) Anyway, I'll give a go at building a new home in the coming days...

Via The Business 2.0 blog

New World, Old France. Nouveau Monde, Vieille France

French journalist Thomas Blard posted on his blog a video interview of Nicolas Baverez, an economist and historian who authored the 2003 best-seller "La France qui tombe" (Falling France). Nicolas Baverez talks about his new book "Nouveau Monde, Vieille France". The interview is in French only but if you speak the language, I strongly recommend it to understand what is going on with the French today.

Amazon Wikified

The New York Time (you need to register) reports on how Amazon is boosting its user generated comments capability through product wikis to complement its shopping experience with a social experience.

See comprehensive article on the Motley Fool

American Express: 15 seconds film CGM competition

Amex invites consumers to create and submit 15 seconds clips around "aspirational themes" such as childhood ambition, proudest moment, perfect day and so on. There are some pretty good and amusing clips already posted there (see director Dane Boedigheimer's wildest dream: being hit by an asteroid...).

ComVu broadcasts live from Phone to Web.

Steve Rubel comments on ComVu, a new service allowing people to broadcast live video from their mobile phones. This technology (which I have not tested yet) sounds like a major milestone in reshaping the traditional media landscape to a consumer generated mediasphere. It could potentially turn the billion mobile phone owners into TV broadcasters. This will prove challenging for media rights owners. Picture me going to a football game and broadcasting it live to my friends (provided I have a good seat, a good camera phone and some snappy comments, I could compete with some paid-to-watch sports channel :-). Bloggers can already provide live coverage but nothing replaces the emotional impact of watching an event unfolding live before your eyes.

IPA Q1 2006 Bellwether report: Advertising, sales promotion and direct down, online marketing up.

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising has released its Q1 2006 Bellwether report. From its press release :

• Marketers cut traditional media budget for the 6th quarter in a row,
• Only 22.7% of marketing budgets were increased for 2006-2007 (the lowest percentage since 2002)
• Online was the only media to have budgets increased in Q1 ; the strongest gain since Q1 2004.

I am reproducing a quote verbatim from Sir Martin Sorrell which sums-up clients' mood:

“The IPA Bellwether report confirms our experience. The UK remains one of the weakest geographical markets at the moment. But new media and new technologies are growing rapidly as clients experiment with different approaches and question the value of traditional media.”

Bonjour America: French arrogance explained

I came across this funny video blog from Cyrille de Lasteyrie, a French blogger who dreams of meeting Clint Eastwood. French are perceived as arrogant, especially across the atlantic (and pretty much everywhere else too...). Why is it so? Cyrille has the answer: it has to do with French and English grammar. French puts a name before its adjectives in a sentence (a cat blue and sleepy) while it is the reverse in English (a sleepy blue cat). So when an american talks to a frenchman, the latter gets impatient because he is waiting to understand what the story is about... Got it know?

Chevy Tahoe Apprentice Campaign: Results Published.

The excellent Church of the customer blog has obtained statistics on the Chevy Tahoe campaign:

Of total submissions to chevyapprentice.com:

• About 84% have been straight product-pieces favorable to the Tahoe
• Of the remaining 16% of submissions, the majority are either anti-SUV (as a category) or the creator is using the ad as a platform to promote a specific cause or defame a particular group; a minority of submissions directly attack the product
• 4 million page views
• 400,000 unique visitors
• 22,000 ad submissions

Read the full post there.

It is quite commendable that Chevy share their campaign results.

Consumers 2.0: Mash-Ups

After writing about the “media” part of “consumer generated media” for the last year or so I thought it was time to focus on the “consumer” part too. The topic of the day is: mash-ups. Why? Because I was amused by my friends’ puzzled look when they heard the Beastie Boys colliding with the Bee Gees on my Zen player. I figured out that it was time to do my part to bring this topic further into the marketing mainstream.

Mash-ups are becoming increasingly popular with our favourite target audience: Millenials (and some Gen-X too). Bloggers took over the news by adding their own comments to create new meanings. Media and technology savvy consumers take over cultural products such as movies or music to enhance them, to create something more personal or just for fun sake. Newsweek ran a good feature on mash-ups last month. It’s easy to see why mash-ups are becoming so popular: they are cool.

Audio mash-ups
To make an audio mash-up: mix the instrumental version of your favourite track with the lyrics of another song. If you are musically adventurous, you can take different elements of different songs to create a brand new track (Eminem vs. Stereo MCs vs Eagles anyone?). The best part of it is that all can be done on your PC which affordable software, a bit of time and a healthy dose of talent. A guide on how to create mash-ups is available here. Look at Wikipedia if you are interested in mash-ups history. I personally like PartyBen or Instamatic’s mash-up of Madonna’s ubiquitous single “Hung-up” (“If Madonna calls, tell her I am not here...”). Look at Mashculture too for new releases.

Movie mash-ups
Mash-ups are not only about music. Did you ever think the movie Fight Club could become a romantic comedy? What would happen if Toy Story met Requiem For A Dream? Here again, affordable and user-friendly technology contributes to unleash creativity and give consumer control over content. Check out Mashupmansion or youtube for more.

Web mash-ups
You must now be all familiar with web mash-ups so I won’t spill much electronic ink about them on this post. Programmableweb.com has a web 2.0. popular mash-ups list.

I believe that mash-ups are another genuine consumer 2.0 trends which is likely to get bigger and bigger. The Beastie Boys published acapella version of their albums on their website, invited their fans to remix them, and posted the new tracks on their online forum. As a result, the Beastie Boys are among the most sampled artists by mash-up DJs. Consumers love it, it creates a lot of positive WOM and certainly helps boost their album sales.

However, mash-ups could pit consumers and corporations’ interest against each other. What about copyrights? What happens when the mash-up is more popular than the original? What are the benefits for the content originator?

A lot of these questions are being asked when talking about open source. This trend could call for a rethink of the movie or music industry’s business model. Let me rephrase that to set expectations right: mash-ups will get increasingly popular with consumers and as a result we will see plenty of lawsuits.

From a marketing standpoint, I can see immediate applications for mash-ups to reach millenials but I am still trying to reconcile mash-ups’ value with company profits. I need to articulate my thoughts on this and I’ll post more on that later. Your comments or suggestions are welcome.

Chevy Tahoe's apprentice: you bloggers are fired!

Apparently, Chevy is pulling-off some of the monster online commercials it inadvertently infanted with its Chevy Apprentice campaign. Cnet posted some of the best satire ads on its website. So did other bloggers. The contest rules specify that "any attempt to undermine the legitimate operation of the contest may be a violation of criminal and civil laws." B.L. Ochman wonders if Chevy will be sending out cease and desist letters to bloggers. She has a another good point too: knowing how popular SUVs are with environmentalists, and how web savvy campaigners are, it would have been quite naive to expect participants to restrict themselves to editing clips of large four-wheel drive vehicles negotiating tricky turns on icy glacier roads to the tune of some hard rock soundtracks. I bet these clips will be haunting the web for a while.

Thanks to Guy for the tip.

Chevy Tahoe: when CGM goes wrong

The marketing guys at Chevy decided to ride the Consumer Generated trend and invited budding film directors to create “the best Tahoe online commercial”. You can register there to take part.

Sounds like a good idea but unfortunately some cheeky consumers felt a little too empowered and started subverted the marketing machine.

Check this clip out or this one while they are still online.

Via Twist and Shout Comics

Google Romance?

While researching the paper industry's value chain for my strategic management assignment, I came across a welcomed distraction: Google Romance.

Could it confirms Google's rumoured business strategy: to throw as many new business ideas as possible against a wall to see which ones will stick? Could Google's mighty search technology really be harnessed to mend and match broken hearts?

No. It's an April Fool's joke.

School 1, Blogging 0.

Not much blogging at the moment and it is likely to remain so for the next week. I am working intensively on my second term exams (micro-economy, marketing and corporate strategy) and the pressure is mounting between group assignments and individual exams. As you can imagine, studying on top of working is eating most (all) my free time and unfortunately, blogging has been the first casualty.

Top tip to improve your search engine ranking: sue Google.

Parental advice website Kinderstart is suing Google because its search engine ranking dropped.

Reuters article Via Seth Godin.

Media consumption: surfing web officially overtakes watching TV

Brits spend 164 minutes online each day, equal to more than 41 days per year, compared to 148 minutes or 37 days for TV viewers. Government statistics shows that 64% of adults regularly go online. See article on Google survey from BBC.

I am going to ask one of my all time favourite question again: why is online media not getting a fair share of media budget compared to TV or newspapers? When will marketers get it? I ranted about this a while ago following an unofficial survey I gathered from Millward-Brown, one of our sister agency. There are no rational reasons.

Wal-Mart enlists bloggers for PR campaign

My colleague Niall pointed me to a NY Times article (dated 7th of March if you don’t have a subscription and look for the print version) revealing that Wal-Mart uses bloggers to push its communication agenda. How did the NY Times found out? Several bloggers enrolled in Wal-Mart’s PR program regurgitated almost verbatim most of the statements they received from Edelman, Wal-Mart’s agency. They did that often without naming their sources of their relationship with either company.

This excellent article raises some valid questions about bloggers’ “independence” and what they should disclose to their readers. It seems to me that on the long-term, bloggers who churn out press-releases or have affiliation with companies, but do not disclose them will loose their readers’ trust, thus deflating the very own reason why they were worth engaging with at the first place. From a PR standpoint, it provides an interesting challenge: how to drive communication agenda with bloggers while preserving their authenticity?

Disclaimer: Edelman is a respected competitor to Hill & Knowlton, my agency. This post does not cast any judgement of value but is aimed at stimulating discussion on relationships between PR professionals and bloggers.

Who needs RSS when web users 'only visit six websites'?

According to a research published by Diretgov, half of UK internet users regularly visit just 6 websites on average. 95% also say that they go online with a specific destination in mind (what happened to "web surfing"?).

Steve Rubel thinks that this could explain why RSS hasn't taken off yet. I agree, most people don't need to keep a watch on dozens of websites or blogs, so see little use for an aggregator or feed system. The fact that RSS feeds are not user-friendly enough for the average web users doesn't help either. This could confine RSS to innovators or professional usage for a while.

Via Steve Rubel

If Microsoft designed the iPod packaging...

What happen when you sit in a room full of marketers... or how to value simplicity.

I read about the clip via Seth Godin's blog but he linked to it through YouTube, which is down for maintenance. You can see it on Google video instead.

Steve Micropersuasion Rubel joins Edelman and Harold Burson launches blog

Today is a remarkable day for both the PR community and bloggers:

• Steve Rubel announced that he is joining Edelman as a Senior Vice President, based in NY. See Edelman's blog announcement.
• Harold Burson (Burson-Marsteller) launches his very own blog.

Google buys Measure Map to bring web analytics to blogs

It seems that Measure Map is not even live yet... but since they were bought by Google, we expect that their services will be good and probably available as a free tool like the excellent Google web analytics.

According to their site:

• Measure Map helps you understand what people do at your blog, and what influence you are having on the world.
• Easily navigate the numbers that matter
• Track links to see who sends you traffic
• Find out what people do at your site

See Google's blog announcement (is that the end of the press release?!)

McDonald's is open for discussion

I was so busy with work and study that I missed the launch of McDonald's corporate responsiblity blog. Shame on me! Shel Israel (the co-author of Naked Conversation) posted his recommendations on how to improve it, and in the same stroke, laid down the simplest and best communication rules for corporate blogs I’ve seen so far.

Yahoo! and AOL to charge for emails

It is fair to say that Yahoo! and AOL's plan to charge businesses for ensuring that their emails are not delivered to their subscribers' spam folders has not been as well received as it could have. The Red Herring summarises what is at stake quite well. And The Onion concurs: "this is going to drive small companies like info@jckibffydmh right out of business!"

Google Removes German BMW Site

According to Techworld, Google removed BMW's site from its index because of search results manipulation. The BMW page listed in the results was redirecting to another site, with different content (also called "cloaking"), which is a violation of Google's quality guidelines. That shows that Google means business when it comes to maintaining the integrity of its search engine listing. Story first broke on Matt Cutts' blog.

Seat guru: Is the future of flying experience pricing?

As mentioned in my last post, Valla Vakili from Yahoo! presented at our internal workshop on folksonomy. One website I found noteworthy was seatguru.

Thanks to the web, we can now compare prices easily and quickly before any purchase (think kelkoo) so consumers can find out whether they are being ripped-off or not. This took a lot of power out of travel agents and airlines who could charge pretty much what they wanted before and gave consumers the upper-hand in negotiation.

Seatguru doesn't compare prices but passengers' experiences flying in different aircrafts, from different airlines. I found out that if I flight Lufthansa on an A333, seats 45 A, B,H and K don't recline as much as other seats and get all the traffic from the gallery.

Now that I am armed with that knowledge, can I negotiate a better seat or a cheaper price since my flying experience won't be as pleasant as others?

Despite all odds, I survived food poisoning, corporate finance and NY last week.

The last 2 weeks have been pretty hectic for me. I started my 2nd term at school and the workload increased massively... especially corporate finance. Playing with figures is not my forte and I am struggling to keep pace. I had a busy time at work with a large pitch and preparing for an internal workshop on social media in NY. I was hoping to spend a few days there but came down with food poisoning (culprit: prawns) just before leaving so had to postpone my flight and shorten my trip. I couldn't do much while ill. I am now back in London, tired and slimmer.

Nonetheless, my time in NY was put to good use. First, we had the opportunity to hear from Jeff Jarvis at Acquavit (great food, great service). Jeff shared with us his views on how blogs are impacting traditional media. When talking about bloggers, his advice to PR agencies was to get out of the way, which we will of course not take :-) On the second day, we had three other external speakers:

• Nick Desai from Juice Wireless on mobile communication in the US. Although I am not a specialist in mobile communication, I realised that Europe was a few years ahead of the US in terms of brands using mobile phones in their marketing. It must be a frustrating situation for Nick, to see cool stuff happening here while having to go through a lengthy educational process with clients in the US. This is the situation we face in Europe with social media :-)
• Elizabeth Talerman from Campfire talked about branded entertainment. This is the team behind the Sega Beta-7 campaign with Wieden+Kennedy so I listened. They presented the art of heist campaign they ran for Audi. Pretty good stuff, very guerilla, seamlessly integrated and the experience they create is very compelling for consumers because it provides a lot of fun. And it delivers ROI too.
• Valla Vakili from Yahoo! showed us how Yahoo! is embracing social media and gave us a great overview of what folksonomy is about and what it means for brands. With loads of cool examples. So cool that they will be promptly recycled, with credits due in my future presentations.

I will try to share some of these insights and these examples over the next few days, when I will digest them, now that I can.

Need extra money? become an iPod coach!

Department store Selfridges is to offer lessons on how to use an iPod for technologically challenged customers. £65 for a 40 mins session (that's $115)... That beats giving French lessons for a living!

Via The Register.

Blair, Cameron: The Podcasts War

Tony Blair urges The Sun readers to "shop a yob" in the first ever podcast by a British Prime Minister. Not wanting to be outdone, David Cameron (newly elected leader of the conservative party) recorded an exclusive seven-minute podcast for the Daily Telegraph's readers, criticising the plan.

I'd love this product even if I weren't a stealth marketer!

I stumbled across this funny article in the Onion via the WOMMA blog about a stealth marketer really fired up (for once) about the product he is supposed to pretend to like. A short extract: "Normally, if I were hired to viral market a new beverage I wasn't particularly passionate about—for example, that new Coca-Cola drink, whatever it's called—I would just subliminally insert favorable comments in two dozen or so high-traffic chat rooms and be done with it. Only a very special product could make me devote a week of evenings to surfing literally hundreds of chat rooms, gaining the confidence of unwitting users by establishing a base of common interests before casually mentioning how I recently tried the most hardcore, carbonated pick-me-up the world has ever seen." As the WOMMA rightly puts it in their cover article, "you know you made it once you are in the Onion" but these are not the practices we will endorse.

Google Video Future of Movie Distribution?

Google is selling movies, NBA fixtures and TV series on download. Time to sell these Netflix shares.

Tell-a-pal incentivises referrals

Tell-a-pal has put in place a neat system to manage customer referrals and incentive programs on your behalf. They take a 5% commission on rewards value.

Netomat brings mobile phones and PCs together

Netomat is a new social network (another one) but worth mentioning since it allows sharing messages and feeds on both PCs and mobile phones, seamlessly.

Sun acknowledges blogging's positive effect

Sally Falkow runs a piece on Sun and how blogging helped the company moved from the 99th to the 6th most popular server company. Jonathan Schwartz is quoted: “Companies need to speak with one voice and be authentic. Blogging allows you to speak out authentically on your own behalf, and in the long run people will recognize that. Do it consistently and they trust you.”

via Micropersuasion

West Virginia Tragedy Will Damage Trust In Media Even Further

BBC runs an article on how the media brought hope then despair to relatives of trapped miners in West Virginia, US. Jeff Jarvis is quoted as saying "The next time I hear someone being haughty about professional news vs citizens' news, I'll remind them of the West Virginia tragedy, where news travelled ahead of the facts, where everyone was horribly wrong". I second that and feel sad for the families who have been badly let-down by a media race to sensationalism.

Crazy Frog Advertising Irritates But Brings Big Bucks

Jamster's crazy frog commercial has been named the most irritating of 2005. The company spent £45 million on advertising in the UK last year, including £10M in May. That means the frog's annoying moped sound was aired 83 times an hour...

Interestingly, the bulk of media buying went to TV and press with a pithy £39,591 on online advertising. It seems to have paid off though as the frog grabbed over 30% of the UK ringtones market. M&C Saatchi concludes that "traditional media channels remain heavy hitters with UK youth.”

Via a press article on Marketing and the online edition of the Times.

Fortune 500 companies blogging 2

I forgot to add the link to the wiki. Thank you Josh.

Wall Street Journal Launch Blog

The WSJ law blog's mission is to scour the universe for compelling stories in two related areas: business and law, and the business of law.

Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki

Chris Anderson (Wired Magazine) and Ross Mayfield (Socialtext) are compiling a list of Fortune 500 companies blogging. It's a work in progress but an interesting reference. The site mentions a list of European companies blogging too.

2005, the year of the digital citizen

From the tsunami to the London bombings, the BBC reviews the rise of citizen journalism.

Happy New Year (while it lasts)

According to Wikipedia, 2006 will be:

- The International Year of Deserts,
- The Rembrandt Year,
- The Mozart Year,
- The Tesla Year,
- The International Asperger's Year,
- The year of the dog in Chinese Astrology.

Many psychics, pundits and forecasters predict that 2006 will also be:

- The year when action movie hero Arnold is re-elected as governor of California and military draft is re-established in the United States (no connection here I hope),
- The year when phone calls will be free (a one in three chance that is happens),
- The year when a 9-mile-long asteroid will strike the earth (after the world cup, fortunately)

See USA Today.

I cannot wait, especially for the asteroid part. I already missed the beginning of the world, I wouldn't want to miss the end.

Happy New Year by the way :-)

Citizen journalism at 30,000 feet

Jeremy Hermanns talks about his terrifying experience on an Alaska flight when the plane suddenly nose dived and decompressed because of a hole in the fuselage. He posted some pictures of the event. Amazingly, his account of the incident attracted loads of critics (trolls) questionning the story, his credibility and so on. Talk about the wisdom of crowds...

My 2006 Predictions (Not)

2005 is coming to a close and I predict a rise in champagne hangover, soon-to-be-forgotten resolutions and an endless supply of mystics, psychics and punters (also known as "analysts" or "experts") sharing their vision of the future with less enlightened mortals. (See Fred Wilson's delicious tag on this).

Will Ajax finally make the transition from kitchen sink to popular web design technology? Will we ever trust Wikipedia? Will we soon run out of buzzwords combining the word"blog" with less fortunate technology related words? (vlog?, splog? ...).

I planned to articulate a clear vision for 2006 in this post through proper research, talking to industry players, looking at tech and marketing budget trends, sampling consumers... but then I realised that it was a substantial amount of work to do, all before the end of this year. Instead, I used Mcalister's 2006 tech prediction generator:

Last year I made several predictions that now seem ridiculously too ahead of times... But a few ideas were pretty close. I've got a feeling that 2006 will be a big year, and here are some of the reasons why:

A Los Altos startup is going to open our eyes to some new ways that social RSS tagging can influence culture. Business 2.0. will pick up on this and run several cover stories on the founders.
Jorma Ollila (NOKIA) will be in the spotlight for his decision to support AFLAX remote scripting. This will upset Robert Scoble, and the blogosphere will react "mainstream media like"... The noise will quiet before the end of the year and it will all be forgotten soon after the shock.

Amazon will see their stock skyrocket after their Podcasting business starts taking off. We've seen it coming for a while now, but 2006 will be the year it really kicks into gear.

Either Yahoo! or Google will seek to expand their social networking business by acquiring Linkedin. AOL will be overlooked in the process, and they will see a management shakeout later in the year.

One of the big leaders in the entertainment industry will wake up to the opportunity in the Internet and the Web 2.0 trends. After months of speculation, they will make a key acquisition that will shake up the landscape for years to come.

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and all of that.

Finally, I finished my first term exams but for one assignment due on the 4th of January. I feel shattered. For the next week, I will swap blogging for skiing. I wish all of you who have been reading Beyond PR, despite the irregular posting frequency a happy holiday season. I'll be back after the 26th.

Science in Wikipedia as accurate as Encyclopaedia Britannica

The British scientific journal Nature reviewed science entries in Wikipedia and the Encyclopaedia Britannica (E.B). Results: few differences in accuracy.

8 serious errors were found, 4 in each encyclopaedia. Slightly more factual errors were found in Wikipedia (163 v 132 for E.B).

See article on BBC

It is pretty remarkable given than Wikipedia is entirely edited by volunteers. It also brings some faith back into the value and quality of open source knowledge, given the recent issues with Adam Curry (The original podcaster :-) and John Seigenthaler Sr.

Martell Cognac Blog: Conversation NOT Flowing!

Today, I read in New Media Age (the paper version) that Pernod Ricard is sponsoring a "blog" on Guardian Unlimited. In that instance, blog is more of a concept. It's just a website with an online competition, tips on serving cognac and two supposedly controversial articles: "xmas shopping, online or high streets?" and "Modern art: love it or loathe it?". Should you care, you are invited to give your opinion. The blog is called "let the conversation flow" but there is no flow in the conversation since you have to email your entries, for them to be selected and posted on the site (there is no conversation either as no one responds to your opinions). A complete let-down for what could have been a great blogging/advertising combination.

Seth Godin on e-marketing

E-Consultancy features an interview with permission marketing guru Seth Godin. Among other things, Seth talks about RSS being the future of email marketing and greater usage of the web for retention and CRM rather than acquisition.

I have been a convert of Seth's marketing philosophy for years but with hindsight, I am now casting a more critical eye on his assertions. Seth predicted that banner ads will disappear in 2000… While paid search is attracting more online marketing budget, "interruptive advertising", be it banners, pop-ups or eyeblasters is still a major eyesore on the internet landscape. Why? Because it works. It gets you noticed and it delivers click through. And conceptually, I don’t see the difference between displaying a banner about the new Jeep on an online automotive magazine, and pushing an announcement about that same car in a subscribed automotive RSS feed...

Opinmind : mostly positive sentiments

Opinmind is not another blog search engine since it helps you "discover and connect with people with similar hobbies and interests". (although it walks and quacks like a blog search engine ;-)

One interesting feature is how it categorises results between positive and negative opinions with a "sentimeter". I typed "bird flu" and the positive results came up with "love", "good" or "awesome" in the sentence while the negative have "hate" or "sucks" or "stupid". It looks like the sentimeter matches keywords according to their proximity in a sentence. Probably pulling from a dictionary of negative and positive qualifiers. This works well for opinions which are expressed “directly” but could miss more subtle comments. There is also a risk that one whole post will be judged based on one sentence. i.e. the whole post is positive but there is one sentence containing "hate" and the term you search for too close together).

Nonetheless, I think that it is great to have a tool like Opinmind freely available. I am sure it will grow and improve with time.

You can read the Opinmind blog here.

via Micropersuasion

Nabaztag, the smartest rabbit on the Internet

Nabaztag should top your Xmas list. It's a rabbit that talks, sings, moves its ears and pulsate with colours. And it is connected to the Internet 24/7 via your WiFi network so you can program it to track and react to stock prices, the weather, your email inbox, SMS ... You can even send messages to Nabaztag owners too via the Nabaztag website.

The Consumerist

PR Week US runs an interview with Joel Johnson re: new consumer watchdog blog "The Consumerist". The site is titled "Shoppers bite back" and hope to channel customers' frustation with poor products/services. So far there are takes on BMW, Walmart and Best Buy. It looks like the blog is still finding its editorial line, not knowing whether to become an archive of lame company promotions or the official voice of countless pissed-off customers turned online activists. I wish it was more like Fuckedcompany.com

Worth keeping an eye on anyway.

The Phelps Group Adds Cedarlane Natural Foods And Whatever To Its Roster And I Am Fed Up With Receiving Your Press Releases

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (December 6, 2005) The Phelps Group, one of the nation's leading integrated marketing communications (IMC) firms, was recently selected by PSI, a leading provider of workforce testing services, and Cedarlane Natural Foods, maker of all-natural frozen foods, to carry out IMC campaigns consisting of advertising and public relations services.Public relations veteran Bill Krenn will lead both accounts. The combined capitalized billings for the two accounts are approximately $3MM... whatever!

This is the kind of email I receive almost daily in my mailbox. No message, just a copy and paste of a press release in an email. This one is from Bahareh Ramin, media contact for the Phelps Group. I was close to put his email address here on the spur of the moment...

I don't know who the Phelps Group is. I bet I am not alone. What on earth is "workforce testing services?". May be Phelps Groups or PSI are famous in the US. But I am based in London. Why should I care? OK, my blog talks about marketing and PR, but mostly from an online perspective. Why emailing me this press release? Does the Phelps Group get the email addresses of all bloggers remotely related to marketing and bombard them blindly with emails in the hope that one of them will say: "wow! how did I live without knowing that! I must post the entire press release at once on my blog and that will certainly attract millions of readers who will join me and the prestigious Phelps Group in celebrating that glorious account win."

If you want to engage me, at least make an effort of being relevant. And a note saying "hi, this is why I am sending you this" will be appreciated as well.

Blogging the shoposphere

Business Week carries a short story on how online retailers try to tap into social networks and blogs. It features Shoposphere, a new Yahoo! Beta feature where members can display their shopping wish lists. When creating a list, you can search and pick products from a list of suppliers selected by Yahoo! These “pick lists” can even be accessed by RSS feeds.

Million dollar homepage: why didn’t I think of that!

The Wall Street Journal is running an article on Alex Tew, the British student behind the million dollar homepage. If you are unfamiliar with the concept: he divided a webpage into 1 million pixels, and sells them for $1 each. Through clever PR and marketing, he has so far sold $716,900 worth of pixels since August. Advertisers range from online casinos, online communities, discount CDs, domain name hosting and even the Times.

There are now hundreds of copycat websites, some of them with interesting twists on the concepts, other just simple rip-offs. Someone is even selling a script to “create your own million dollar homepage”…

Hats-off to Alex. It is a one-off but will definitely be part of Internet advertising history. On a personal level, AdRants summarises my feeling well in true “Onion” style: “Million dollar homepage causes entrepreneurial depression".

We are human, after all.

I love this Korean blog featuring a collection of pictures of people from all over the world covering one of their eyes. It is as if they are responding to a signal sent by this Korean artist. A silent hello, a token of acknowledgement, saying: "we are part of it". It is so simple yet so powerful. Seth mentioned about the impact of seeing these half covered faces. These pictures do carry a strong emotional charge. The sum and variety of them gives a feeling of connectedness. People-to-People.

via Seth Godin

Ikea blog: better do it yourself

Great blog from an Ikea "positive fanatic". Nice example of a consumer turned advocate and how blogs can help spread consumer generated brand messages online. It's fun reading too. And there are more like him: Ikea fan in Ohio, Ikea fans website, Ikea Lovemark...

I also found a "boycott Ikea" in Italian to counter balance that.

via Micropersuasion... again... (yes, I do read other blogs!)

Google: click to call adwords

Remember call back buttons on websites... Google is testing "click-to-call" on its search results to connect people and companies automatically. And Google foots the bill too.

via Micropersuasion

Mashups: XBOX 360 inventory google map locator

Chris Lambert has developed a XBOX 360 inventory locator for Best Buy stores. This is a good example of a growing trend of building up applications on top of Google free applications or integrating different online applications and content together (mashups).

See more Google maps mashups on Googlemapsmania.

Can you be sued because of what you say in your blog?

You betcha! The Media Law Resources Centre published a list of current US lawsuit against bloggers. (Via Whatsnextblog). There are been some cases too in France (in French) and Singapore (with a happy ending).

Based on my limited legal knowledge, these are the common blogging legal pitfalls I identified:

- Breach of copyright: reproducing someone else content without permission. Grey area since bloggers often reproduce articles to comment on...
- Breach of employer's contract, especially releasing proprietary or confidential information.
- Libel: you are insulting and causing prejudice to someone (the plaintiff must show that he/she occured damages).
- Publishing false or malicious information (for example to get a share price to rise or spreading false rumours about a product being defective to kill a competitor's sales...)

Apparently, you could be sued because of the comments posted on your blog too...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a legal guide for bloggers (this is based on US law only).

Advertisers to sponsor podcasts

Following from my post on iPod children stories yesterday and how advertisers could sponsor them, I read that Dixie, a US manufacturer of disposable tableware goods (cups, plates… whatever you don’t fancy washing-up) signed-up a 12 months agreement to sponsor Mommycast, a podcast show targeting young mums and parents. Way to go.

Via Tech based marketing

Podcasting for children: how bloggers turned into iPod story-tellers

Hugh Fraser from the Angel Blog is launching a series of iPod-friendly children stories. Titled “Storynory”, they feature classic children tales such as “The snow queen” or “The Frog” as well as some modern stories. All narrated by an English actress and ready to download for free.

It is a wonderful idea. Advertisers should get in early with some "embedded and non-intrusive" audio messages as I am sure they will prove popular.

See the storynory website

Does Google know where it is going?

Peter Day runs a column on the BBC website called “Work in Progres”, linking business and technology to wider issues (a bit like Business 2.0 but with less superlatives).

The premise of his article on Google (see “Google searches for the future”) is that Google’s success is due to its lack of strategy. Don’t get him wrong, he is not saying that the company lacks direction but that Google adapts its priorities and focus according to the evolving potential and successes of its countless search based projects. In Peter’s words: “Its (Google) people start things, and then work out how to make money out of them”.

So far Google's PhDs army dabbled into advertising (adwords and possibly print), pictures filing, call/IM, blogs, price comparison, emails, mapping the earth and digitising its books and recently web analytics… Yet, its main (only?) source of revenue is selling ads.

Either Google has a master plan than common mortals cannot comprehend or it is on a fuzzy path to somewhere yet to be determined but promising.

This lack of apparent strategy worked well so far and with every pundit watching Google's every move, generates a lot of publicity. Will Google turn-up as a telecom company? The new E-Bay? The largest media placement agency? Or just the most used and revered search engine in the world?

I don’t know. But it is a fascinating case of reinventing business rules.

If you want more clues at to what Google has in store, you can buy a CD containing Google related patents… (Xmas is approaching fast).

Tesco Supermarkets Launch Deal Of The Day RSS Feed

Probably a first for a supermarket chain in the UK. See for yourself and hurry-up to the store to grab that Nicolas Feuillate champagne at 30% off!!!

via NevOn.

Accenture Launch Dutch Blogs

Accenture has launched an employee blogging portal in Holland. Most of the blogs are in Dutch but there are quite a few in English. I took note of some blogs on topics I am interested in such as Geoffrey Stoel blogging on telecom and gadgets, Rieta Aliredjo reflecting on consultant's hectic life, Remco Harmsen on business intelligence and Jort Possel on marketing. Good initiative to showcase the firm's thought leadership and attract talents. Do we expect to see official Accenture blogs in UK or US soon?

Via Micropersuasion, who was tipped by Pablo Halkyard although I could not find his original post on the subject. Nonetheless, I am referencing his blog. Here is why: "The Private Sector Development Blog (PSD Blog) gathers together news, resources and ideas about the role of private enterprise in fighting poverty". Great resources for my forthcoming economy classes!

The League of MBA Bloggers

Thanks to Karibu, a fellow London Business School MBA blogger, I discovered that there is actually a league of MBA bloggers... The site doesn't seem to have been updated since July this year but it is a good resource for anyone considering a MBA and wanting to talk to some students, or to meet MBAs from other schools. I discovered that there are 6 bloggers at LBS (I am sure there are a lot more...) and that I am the only one from the Executive program. I know that some of my classmates are reading this blog so I am sure that there will be more EMBAs blogging soon. I am starting a LBS blogroll and invite students and alumni to do the same.

First European Blog Survey

If you are a European communication professional, it is likely that most of the research you use to talk about how blogs impact communication practices comes from the US.

At last, the “European Public Relations Education and Research Association” is running the first pan-European survey of who is using blogs and for what purpose.

The project is led by the University of Sunderland (UK), the University of Erlangen-Nuernberg (Germany) and the University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart (Germany) with national coordinators in Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia and the United Kingdom.

You can take the survey here and you will get access to results when they will be published. You can talk about the survey on your blog too to encourage more to repond (we will all benefit from more participants).

Via www.newkidsontheblog.blogs.com

IBM to monitor how blogs impact reputation

IBM, in partnership with Factiva and NStein is said to be developing an application called the “Public Image Monitoring Solution” to analyze how discussions on blogs and other websites are affecting corporation's "image". See story on ZDNET.

Via Naked Conversations

Paris riots: 15% click through on Google.fr for Nicolas Sarkozy

French politicians are becoming increasingly web savvy and opportunistic. Web agency L’enchanteur des nouveaux media (the new media charmer/wizard) is running a Google adwords campaign with keywords related to the Paris riots. When typing “voitures brulees” (burned cars), “emeutes + paris” (riots + paris) or “racaille + banlieue” (scums/yobs + suburbs) on Google.fr, a sponsored link brings you to the official website of the UMP, the majority political party headed by Interior Minister (and unofficial presidential candidate) Nicolas Sarkozy. There you are invited to sign a petition pledging support to Nicolas Sarkozy’s handling of the situation.

According to a ZDNet article (in French), the online petition had 12,000 visitors and 3,000 signatories within 2 days. Average click rate reach 10% to 15%.

CEOs give blogs a thumb (up or down, depending on your outlook on life)

PR Week/Burson Marsteller released their annual CEO survey, including some insights on attitude to blogging. Key takeouts:

- 7% of CEOs are blogging.
- 18% of CEOs plan to host a company blog over the next 2 years.
- 59 % of CEOs think blogs are useful for internal communication.
- 47% think blogs are useful to reach an external audience.

Recognised benefits of blogs included to quickly communicate new ideas and news, providing an informal venue for communication and obtaining immediate feedback. See press release. No online version of the survey available yet.

First seen at micropersuasion

Forbes' Daniel Lyons calls bloggers lynch mob. Bloggers light torches.

Forbes published a controversial article by Daniel Lyons entitled Attack of the Blogs. It opens with “Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective.” Since it is the talk of the town today, what to make of it?

Steve Rubel thinks it is a soon-to-be maligned and unbalanced story. Look at the comments on his post and you will see that he is not alone.

Because I am a contrarian too, I preferred Dave Taylor’s post on the subject. He presents good arguments for his case. He concludes with:

“There are so, so many positive articles and books being published about blogging, some of which are just as one-sided in the other direction, entreating even the most illiterate of business owners to quickly jump into the blogging world lest their competitors get there first, that blogging itself "reinvents business" and so on, that perhaps articles like "Attack of the Blogs" are needed just to achieve some sort of balance.”

So before jumping on the Lyons' bashing bandwagon, let’s think whether that would cast us with the bloodthirsty lynch mob decried in his (cheap-shot type of) article.

Media industry 'panic' over Internet but online still not getting fair share of media budget

Speaking at the IAB Engage 2005 conference, Sir Martin Sorrell, WPP’s CEO highlighted how traditional media are loosing ground to their online rivals. He singled out News Corp recent online media “panic buying” spree and the threat to some traditional media’s business models (newspapers classifieds v. Craiglist). His question to media owners: “How can traditional media continue to charge more for less?" Sir Martin Sorrell blamed the failure from traditional media to embrace online on the age of people who run major media/ad groups and a reluctance to change.

I could not agree more. One of my friend from research company Millward Brown (she left since) shared with me some insights on a 2005 survey they conducted titled “Why online isn’t getting a fair share of media budget?”

Here is the situation, figures may vary from studies to studies but it gives a general trend: the Internet is getting only 5% of ad spend while it has a nearly 35% media consumption. TV is getting 40% of ad spend for an equivalent media consumption. Newspapers are getting nearly 35% of ad spent too but for a 10% media consumption.

Why such a gap for online? Here are the most mentioned reasons:

• Comfort with the known. Clients are risk adverse and don’t like to make sweeping changes to their media or marketing budget allocation. They will go with what is safe and make tiny incremental changes every year. As a result, they are loosing touch with overall media usage and fragmentation (especially given the speed at which it is accelerating),
• Lack of understanding and lack of interest. Here is the age gap again… Most marketers think that their consumers are just like them. Company CEOs like to see their ad running on TV and on their favourite newspapers because this is what they watch and read. Younger marketer find that learning new things is time consuming, especially when they are pressured to deliver short-term results. So they go with the safest option: comfort with the known,
• Marketing services are too siloed. The whole advertising system is biased towards ATL getting the lion share of client’s budget. If you were an ad exec or a media buyer, would you like it to change? Of course no, you would lobby hard to keep it that way. Margins and budgets are too low online to incentivise traditional ad agencies to shift. And clients don’t push hard enough for integration This is a vicious cycle.
• Interactive is hard work. Yes, you cannot do last minute changes on a program as easily as you can with an ad copy. It needs a bit more planning. The pressure has always been on interactive agencies to be as flexible as their offline counterpart. Would it be a bad thing if traditional marketers were also better planners?

Addendum: if you work in PR, just replace "ad exec" or "media buyers" with "PR professionals" and TV with "media relations". Same mistakes, same punishement.

Dilbert blogs while you should be working...

I blame Scott Adams for most of my early professional life's cynicism towards big corporations. Now he has launched a blog. The first entry sets the tone: “If you’re reading this on company time, congratulations on beating the system. If you’re reading it on your own time, you really need to find a job where they pay you to do this sort of thing.” Time to look at these motivational posters again…

Googlebase turns bloggers on speculation overdrive

Bloggers are buzzing about Googlebase (I know, it says that you are not authorised to view the page… isn’t it exciting?). Apparently, Google could launch a new “classifieds” service that could compete with EBay, Craigslist and every other classifieds services. Or is it a Quickbase type application? Good summary of what is going on here. There is even a screenshot there.

Kiva offers charitable micro-loans to small businesses in developing world.

Seth Godin reports on Kiva, a service connecting private lenders and enterprises in need of micro-loans, mostly in Uganda (for the moment). The site is the brainchild of Matthew (entrepreneur) and Jessica Flannery (MBA student). You can loan anything from $25 onwards and you will get it repaid by instalment over a period of time. Kiva gets its revenue from donation and keeping interests from loans, if and when interests are charged. See current businesses looking for loan.

The Grameen bank had a similar initiative in the late 90s and is still considered as the largest micro-credit organisation (besides the World Bank). Loan repayment rate is very high (apparently close to 95%). Interests rate charged on micro-credit could reach 20%.

More about micro-finance from the UN.

The Virtual Handshake

Over a month ago, David Teten emailed me and asked me to review a new book he co-wrote with Scott Allen: “The Virtual Handshake”. I usually get a dozen email requests per week, mostly press release about some obscure IT company announcing some technical breakthrough or the water conservation board of North Dakota launching a blog. I usually bin them (with all due respect), or if in a bad mood, I reply with an appropriate: “who cares?” But I was enticed by the offer of a free book and David’s email wasn’t the usual hard sell, anonymous stuff I learned to discard in my newfound blogging minor celebrity.

I accepted and received the book 2 weeks later. I felt obliged to read it.

To my relief,”The Virtual Handshake” is not another “Let’s talk about Kryptonite” story. In fact, it is not about blogging but about networking, both face-2-face and online (although the emphasis is on the latter).

It starts by explaining the values of networks and how they have been, and increasingly are instrumental to individual and group success. It then provides with a practical, step-by-step guide on how to build a credible virtual self, build-up a network and sustain it. I found that David and Scott Allen really worked hard to cover all means of connection, including instant messaging, social software, email, company alumni…and of course blogs.

Because the book tries to cover everything associated with networking, readers more familiar with the topic might find it sometimes pedantic. I also find that advice on how to use networks for marketing purpose (from a business pow) a bit light. Nonetheless, the book drives good points regarding sales (don’t sell but help other buy and value relations for their long term benefits instead of going for a quick shot). It is packed with practical advice, I enjoyed reading it, I learned a few things on the way and I plan to put some of its recommendations in practice. Good reference book for anyone interested in the “how to do it” side of networking. You can read more about the book here and make up your own mind.

Measuring Blogs ROI: Links, Comments Or Both?

Yesterday, Steve Rubel posted on the links vs. mentions debate between Doc Searls and Steve Gillmor. Steve boiled it down to how best to measure corporate blogs ROI. I will not carry-on the baseball analogy as I don’t understand baseball (it is similar to cricket except that they don’t serve Pimms during breaks I gathered). I am not sure I understand the link v. comment debate either. Surely you need both, whatever your reason for blogging is.

Using links as a measure of popularity is based on the assumptions that if readers like what you write, and have a blog, and are so inclined, they will point to your blog. On the premise that there are more blogs readers than blogs writers, that discards quite a lot of your potential audience. Having lots of links to your blog doesn’t necessarily mean having lots of readers too. I am sure that most people who kindly linked to Beyond PR sometimes over the last year and half don’t religiously turn up to my every post. They could just be reading my feed, or, heaven forbids, have forgotten about my blog. It seems to me, but I wait to be corrected that links are used as a default currency since there are no other easily available metrics to measure blogs popularity. Nonetheless, links send traffic to your blog, maximise your readership and gets you ranked higher in Technorati so others would think you are popular thus worth reading.

Mentions show that someone actually bothered to read what you wrote. It is a good way to start conversation too (isn’t it what blogs were set-up for at the first place?). However a mention without a link puts a barrier for others who would like to join the conversation as they will have to find your your post on their own. Why make their life difficult?

So how about a link + mention combo… I would go for that! But if you want to make me even happier: post a comment or send me an email.

Create your own social application with Ning

Ning is a free online service (they call it “a Playground”) for people to build and run social applications. The code is open source and there are some applications already there for others to use, clone and redevelop. In short, they allow you to create your own craiglist, your own Zagat (restaurant reviews), your own Flickr…

Via Richard MacManus

Videoblogger? Become an ad producer and earn $100.

In my post yesterday about the video iPod I mentioned that companies will bypass TV networks and produce ready commercials and short clips for podcasts. My question was who will produce these clips? Ad agencies? Interactive agencies? The newcomers in CGM?

coBRANDiT, the “world's first open-source documentary ad agency” produce such clips. I like their approach: “The use of documentary advertising is predicated on the belief that 1) Consumers are interested in seeing their peers interact with the brand or product in real life environments and situations, 2) Consumers are interested in behind-the-scenes information relating to brands and activities they care about, and 3) Consumers want to participate in the creation and marketing of great products and brands. (…) Documentary advertising can be taken one step further by soliciting consumer generated media (CGM) content-- in effect creating what might be termed open-source documentary advertising.”

They are inviting readers to submit their own clips. And will pay $100 for each acceptable submissions. Here are the guidelines: “Make a video about a brand or product you love from one of these categories: Beer, Gear, or Cars, and make it good. We don't want ad concepts--we want a slice of life. Stylized, silly, serious...it's up to you. Keep it real, and keep it clean (no smut).”

State of the Blogosphere: Technorati reports

• Technorati is now tracking 19.6 million weblogs
• The total number of weblogs tracked continues to double about every 5 months
• The blogosphere is now over 30 times as big as it was 3 years ago, with no signs of letup in growth
• About 70,000 new weblogs are created every day
• About a new weblog is created each second
• 2% - 8% of new weblogs per day are fake or spam weblogs
• Between 700,000 and 1.3 million posts are made each day
• About 33,000 posts are created per hour, or 9.2 posts per second
• An additional 5.8% of posts (or about 50,000 posts/day) seen each day are from spam or fake blogs, on average

See Dave Sifry's post.

Video iPod to launch new fame era for podcasters, marketers and reality TV fans.

CNN is running an article on how Apple’s video iPod could kick start a wave of amateur videocasts. With the price of digital video cameras dropping, broadband usage and video editing software getting more user friendly, it will not be long before budding directors or reality TV celebrity wannabes start filling up the digital airwaves. The implications for marketers and brands will depend on the scale of this new CGM trend:

• RSS feeds will include videocasts (see ANT), search engines will index clips (see Google Video) and new service will help you tag them (see blogtelevision),
• Initially, audience will fragment further thanks to the availability of niche programs, produced by passionates for enthusiasts. Will traditional TV broadcast audience drop as a result? Yes, especially generation Y and X viewers (the former already spend more time on IM and games and the latter on the web - economist),
• Companies will be keen to trial bypassing TV networks and produce commercials or short clips ready to podcasts. Ad agency and media buyers will compete with viral marketing specialists to produce these pilots,
• News corporations will need to work in partnership with “the local guy with a camera who just happened to be there” in the networks’ battle for exclusive. Amateur reporters will start selling their footages via online auction sites (EBay?) and get news agencies to bid for the rights to broadcast their work,
• Everyone will claim her/his 15 mins of fame and that would equals to 78,840 celebrities per year! (this is serious research, based into the cognitive limits of human attention and memory, number of 15-minute fame segments per year, global median life expectancy and current world population).

AOL acquires Engadget and more

Forbes reports on AOL 's purchase of Weblogs for $25M. The transaction includes 85 blogs such as Engadget and Autoblog. AOL will integrate the blogs into its portal by linking to the best entries and create additional blogs to fit with its channels.

Interestingly, Weblogs gets more than $1 million a year through Google adwords alone.

New Kid On The Blog

I just started a new blog on Consumer Generated Marketing on Hill & Knowlton's blogging platform. Have a look. In parallel, I will continue posting on Beyond PR (more so than less) so stay tuned.

Web 2.0 v. Web 1.0

Computex and the print edition of New Media Age are running articles on P2P traffic, based on a report from Sandvine.

P2P services takes 70% of global bandwidth (BitTorrent is the main culprit). Web browsing is only 8.7% of bandwidth consumption.

I thought this was an interesting figure to add to the Web 2.0 v. Web 1.0 debate .

I read Tim O’Reilly’s seminal article and I agree: the evolution to Web 2.0, for lack of a better term is about attitude and expectation. Whether it is technology that led to a change of attitude, or that a shift in our relation to the web led to new technology is an academic debate which I will leave to the more technically endowed.

In the 90s, the web was driven by companies seeking to turn it into a giant shopping mall. Consumers are now reclaiming the web for what it was intended for: a collective space bringing people together so that they could share experience and information. Just picture this: a collection of mega websites competing to attract eyeballs v. loose networks accessible by search engines, tags and connections where you can share information, engage in conversations and co-create. I am caricaturing here but the change is quite noticeable...

This is how I understand it: Web 2.0. is a different way of looking at the web.

Blogs Make Yahoo News' Headlines

Yahoo announced that it will mix mainstream media news with blogs in its Yahoo News aggregator. The system will be tiered with top stories from mainstream news outlets first then blogs with an option to get more user-generated news, photos and links. Yahoo's General Manager said that the company "wants to fuse professional journalism with so-called citizen journalism to provide a fuller spectrum of content to its members". MSM and CGM will be clearly flagged to avoid confusion.

The BBC covers this story and thinks that "the decision could reignite the debate over what constitutes news reporting and whether blogs are as valuable a source of news as that from professional journalists."

Steve Rubel reckons that it will expose millions of consumers to blogs for news content. I could not agree more and I cannot wait to see on the same page the point/counterpoint of a story exposed by MSM and bloggers. One more thing to worry about for PR officers.

From WOMMA to Cillit Bang to Character Blogs

The WOMMA (Word-Of-Mouth Marketing Association) has launched a new blog. I picked-up on this quote from the WOMMA CEO, speaking at the Word of Mouth vs. Advertising conference in New York : "Ads will never again be free from real people providing real feedback -- and bringing to light the underlying claims of every campaign". See full post here.

There is a post on Cillit Bang too... I caught up late on the whole Cillit Bang blog story and I find it rather sad. As Tom Coates highlighted, it is the unfortunate product of a team's ignorance, incompetence and carelessness. Glad they apologised.

I still think character blogs can work if the ad or PR agency who put it together could stick to simple rules:

1. Your entertainment or information value must be well above average to compensate the fact that you are a "marketing gimmick",
2. Engage in REAL conversations with your readers, be human even if you are not,
3. Let the story and the character evolve with the interactions. Don’t get your copywriter to write 60 posts in advance!
3. Don’t comment on other blogs to build up your network. You start from a very low point on the credibility scale and the only reason you want your link there is to get traffic to your blog. Comments are for conversation, not for advertising. Instead, build up your network from directories, tagging, placements, ads, ect… Let them discover you. If bloggers like your blog, they will talk about it and link (they will talk about it if they don't like it too but it will be worst if you spam them). You need to take the time to do it properly. A bit like a grassroots campaign. If you want fast and loud: do an ad.

Blogger Survey 2005

Technorati and Edelman released an excellent survey of bloggers' habits and motivations. The full results (including the raw data for open-ended questions) are available here. Highlights:

- 1/3rd of respondent blog to be seen as an authority in their field. Less than 5% blog to generate revenues,
- Almost half have never been contacted by a company or their PR representatives yet about 70% would like to receive product samples to evaluate,
- When seeking information about a company or a product, bloggers prefer to interact with company employee who blog,
- When looking for product information, less than 5% of respondent will trust a press release and 6% will trust a corporate blog. As opposed to nearly 63% who will trust other bloggers.

80% of UK Teens Use Instant Messaging (IM)

According to a Forrester report four out of five 16-17 years old in the UK use instant messaging. This is a staggering figure. MSN is the most popular IM program by far.

Blogging in Frankfurt

Last Friday, I was invited to speak at a blogging seminar in Frankfurt. Russel Buckley, a veteran blogger living in Munich was a co-presenter. He runs the mobhappy blog.

We had interesting discussions with our audience (PR Officers, marketing directors...) about the potential of using blogs for corporate communication. Interestingly, blogs were often associated with crisis, almost seen as a threat more than a tool for consumer communication. May be it’s bad memories from the Jamba v. bloggers story? I had similar conversations while doing workshops in Italy and it seems to be the first reaction once companies realise the scale and impact of the phenomenon.

According to the Blog Herald, Germany (280K blogs) still lags behind Spain (1.5M blogs), France (3M blogs) or Poland (1.4 M blogs) when it comes to blogging. The election might give German bloggers a boost. Wahl.de is listing some political blogs.

If I match these figures with anecdotal evidence, it seems that the German blogging scene is at an early development stage. This is an opportunity for companies to experiment and lead. As I highlighted in my talk, blogs are not going to disappear anytime soon. The sooner you join the conversation, the more you will learn and the better prepared you will be.

Excel Blog

Via Micropersuasion, the Microsoft Excel team launched a blog. Would be nice to get to know the team more though.

UK consumers trust bloggers' opinions

A survey of 1,100 UK consumers by hosting company Hostway found that 77% use information from blogs to influence their purchasing decision.

Read in New Media Age, 29th of September. Link to full survey results to be updated as soon as I find it...

Firms in the dark over blog threat

The Angel blog published the results of a survey of 50 PR professionals from around the world about how they regard blogs as a business communications tool. The Guardian summarises the findings: "Firms in the dark over blog threat".

Two key facts:

- more than 60% of PR executives interviewed believed that web blogs by unhappy employees or exasperated customers can damage corporate reputations
- More than 80% of US executives admitting reading blogs "at least five times a week," a figures which fell to just 36% in Europe. (This seems quite high to me).

You will have to register to the Guardian site to view the piece.

Apple v. Bloggers: the Nano Story

It looks like a re-run of the iPOD's dirty secret saga which resulted in a class action suit settlement . According to some unlucky purchasers, the Nano screen is prone to scratches and damages. One Nano owner has set-up a website to share his story (warning: some readers may find some damaged products' pictures upsetting) and check whether other Nano customers encountered similar problems. Apple's Nano discussion forum is buzzing with such conversations.

Steve Rubel published a Blogpulse's graph illustrating the increase in blog postings mentioning the problem and The Register ran a story on it.

UPDATED: Apple's response, courtesy of an anonymous reader.

Consumer Generated: from Mayhem to Marketing

Why WOM is back on marketers’ agenda and how to make it work for their brands.

A 2004 Intelliseek study 1 (PDF) found that consumer–to-consumer recommendations—even online consumer postings to forums—carry a higher trust factor than virtually all other forms of advertising, including TV, radio and print. That did not come as a surprise to many long established businesses. In fact, one of them always understood the value of consumer recommendations; its entire sales strategy relies on turning customers into brand ambassadors and capitalising on their social networks to influence others to purchase. That company is Tupperware and it made a fortune by understanding word-of-mouth’s power 50 years ago. Since then, WOM has been reengineered as “Consumer Generated Marketing” and thanks to blogging, its persuasion power is making business media headlines again through a series of high profile customer relations disasters. Let’s review what the forces driving consumers’ propensity to whine back on marketers’ agenda are and how marketers could reclaim WOM to engage into productive conversations with consumers.

Read more at Global PR Blog Week 2.0

Google Defends Google Print And I Promote Project Gutenberg

Good post from Google defending its Google print project in the face of a lawsuit by the Authors Guild. I think that the project can only benefit authors, especially those less published by encouraging people to discover their work.

I found the post on Always On.

If you are interested in the topic, you should go to Project Gutenberg and read about their philosophy:

"The Project Gutenberg Philosophy is to make information, books and other materials available to the general public in forms a vast majority of the computers, programs and people can easily read, use, quote, and search. This has several ramifications: The Project Gutenberg Etexts should cost so little that no one will really care how much they cost. They should be a general size that fits on the standard media of the time . The Project Gutenberg Etexts should so easily used that no one should ever have to care about how to use, read, quote and search them..."

They work with copyright free materials (copyright has expired) or with authors' consent.

Global PR Blog Week 2.0: How PR Should Change in the New Era of Blogging?

The second edition of Global PR Blog Week has officially started. This online event will be held from today till the 23rd of September and bring over 50 influential PR practitioners and bloggers in to discuss how public relations and business communications are changed by new communications technologies.

Full programme available here. Check out today’s article from Niall Cook on how Hill & Knowlton went about setting-up its own blogging platform. I contributed a piece on consumer generated marketing to be featured on the 21st.

Please join us and contribute. To paraphrase the event's welcome message: "All you need is a little bit of curiosity, an open mind, and the desire to learn new things and share your experience and knowledge with other people. Skeptics are welcome, too."

Google Search Blogs: The End Of Bloggers' Influence?

Google launched its dedicated blogs search engine. Many have reported on it and I did not feel that I had anything of value to add to the chatter. However, this morning I came across this old article from "The Register while looking for more information about Google's blog search features.

The article's premise was that a dedicated blog search could prompt Google to remove blogs from its main search index, thus "improving" the quality of its search results. This speculation was based on Google removing Usenet postings from search results after acquiring Deja.com.

A graduate interviewed for the article commented "The main problem with blogs is that, as far as Google is concerned, they masquerade as useful information when all they contain is idle chatter".

The issue: trackbacks. "The low information quality of blog-infested Google results is a consequence of bloggers' attempts to introduce community aspects to what remains a solitary activity. The auto-citation feature 'Trackback' is frequently fingered as the culprit: many search results Google returns are trackbacks."

The article ends by pre-empting bloggers reactions: "One group is likely to protest long and hard, however: and that's people who have taken advantage of this quirk to use Google as their primary promotion channel or reputation creator. "

Putting the genie back into its bottle?

I won't speculate as to whether Google will remove blogs from its main search engine or not but if it did, I suspect that it will remove a big chunk of bloggers' ability to influence others with their views and opinions. If I were Land Rover and the second highest link in a search on my latest car model was a catalogue of disasters told real-time by a desilussioned owner, I will be pressured to react as I would know that millions of prospective buyers search for infos online before purchasing. If this legitimate rant was self-contained within a "blog" section, I may think that there is less pressure to act as it is "not mainstream" and most would not come across it. Food for thoughts.

Would love to hear some views on that.

Why less blogging?

Some of you have noticed that I did not post as frequently as usual this past 2/3 weeks. Fear not, I do not suffer from blog fatigue yet. I have started some part-time studies and I am in the process of purchasing a propery abroad. That and my work commitments left me with little room to sleep, let alone blog. I am getting better organised now and I am back to help spreading good words about why we are at the start of a media revolution (way beyond PR...). I even found time to contribute an article on "consumer generated marketing" to the forthcoming Global PR Blog Week event.

Thanks to whose who kept reading!

More to come...

Yahoo Hires Blog Journalist for Conflict Coverage

Yahoo hired Kevin Sites, a seasoned multimedia journalist (text/audio/video) and blogger to provide a more personal and interactive approach to reporting on conflicts (and compete for attention with mainstream media outlets).

"Yahoo plans to create media-rich packages that put the stories in context. For example, a story about Iraq could include links to other news stories on the conflict, maps of the region and a nod toward other blogs that discuss the war. (...) such multilayered coverage will likely attract younger people to its programming."

Story on Publish.com

I think that this is a brilliant move and a significant milestone in reshaping our stale media landscape.