I am speaking in a few hours at an Infopresse Web 2.0 event in Montreal. Sorry for the sloppy formatting, but I am running behind. Here are my notes:
1. The question: Are the social media a threat or an opportunity to brands and traditional marketing? Answer: a resounding yes.
• Threat: fundamental change in the way people are influenced on what they buy, watch, read and listen to.
Threat: Change is disruptive.
Threat: Traditional marketing more expensive and less effective.
• Opportunity: Social media making communications more efficient/effective than at any point in history.
Opportunity: Dialogue beats monologue. Through blogs, you can find out what customers want just by listening. Most passionate.
Opportunity: A whole new generation is coming of age—the Online Generation. Start now and they may be friends with your brand for 30 years.
2. As True for Canada as Silicon Valley? Nodes on same network. True in developing & developed world. Geography is becoming less relevant.
3. Tipping Point. Little things have already made the big difference and there is no going back.
4. Stats. @ 60 million blogs. 100,000 new blogs started daily. Over 1.3 million daily posts. 2000 a minute. Half Fortune 500 companies blog. Biz blogs not the most interesting part.
5. Most interesting—and valuable is what every day people are doing: Creating spontaneous, grassroots, fast-spreading conversations. These conversations increasingly impact the fate of your products, services, destinations, gadgets, entertainment—just about everything. People are influencing each other without the benefits of integrated marketing campaigns. Without WOMMA & Viral marketing efforts.
6. What’s an enterprise to do? What’s an ad agency or branding team to do? Simple: Join the conversation. How? By offering useful/interesting/unselfish information. (Scoble in the camera store) Not about your own brand. Tell, don’t sell. Become a trusted colleague.
7. Encourage mid-level employee blogging. Personal brand impact on company brand increasing.
8. 2 neighbors at backyard fence. Trust over time. Not about tech but conversation. Goes viral organically, because people serve up engaging information and they want to share it.
9. Blogging 1st tool of emerging arsenal of Internet-based communications tools. These are the social media. This includes YouTube-100 million visitors a day. MySpace, photo sharing, wikis, video and audio podcasts. Even includes Skype and new “cheap talk” Voip tools.
10. Online community numbers misleading. Sao Paolo v. squatter village. What’s relevant is people self organizing along shared interests—Global Neighborhoods. Not forming under the aegis of brand. Don’t recognize institutional authority. They avoid company towns and walled gardens. The customers owns himself.
You need to play by their rules—or you don’t get to play at all.
11. Three more key points on global neighborhoods
• Geography is less relevant. Chat phone in Korea, Saudi Arabia and California malls. Ryan Air. Culture changing by internet.
• Influence is generosity-based. The power is in the giving not branding, not promotional giveaways.
• Social media is kid’s stuff. In that fact, you will find the tsunami.
12. The Online Generation is about to replace the boomer generation in the work and marketplace and that changes a great deal.
13. Example: NY Times habit.
14. Online Generation. Don’t read newspapers…don’t see those award-winning ad campaigns. Authority figures. Sports heroes. Global brands.
15. Again. Members of the online generation trust each other. If you want to get back in, you need to join their conversation on their terms. Be like neighbors on the backyard fence. You can try to game this system, but no one seems to have been able to fool the people for very long.
16. Example: Hotel photo on website, in brochure, then on Riya or Flickr.
17. Huge opp. Online Generation is just starting, just now taking form. Already all sorts of companies are finding really innovative ways to extend their brands.
18. Corp Blog cases:
• Wells Fargo—Disaster avoidance.
• Wells Fargo—Building young relationship.
• Wells Fargo—Hosting a community they don’t control. Small Business Blog
• Hitachi—Leading by giving. "data storage industry" wiki
• CNET—building communities by passion.
Chowhound , Webshots , Consumating & Urban Baby.
19. Personal brand shapes company brand. Scoble/MSFT
20. Social Media different from trad marketing. Treat it separately. Do not try to braid it into your current integrated marketing solutions.
