Insights from the Blogwell/GasPedal Conference in SF

Well, aside from the fact that it was a glorious day in San Francisco (75 degrees and clear as far as the eye could see), the Blogwell event was a pleasant experience. Great turnout from brands, technologists and thought leaders in the social media space, and while many of the case studies were those we might have seen before, it was really nice to hear from the brand reps themselves who seemed to really flourish as speakers in the shorter interval environment. And of course, Andy Sernovitz brought his affable and always informative presentation style into the fold, sharing insights that were truly valuable and doing so in a very non-intrusive way. Andy certainly knows how to talk with people.

So... the trip was a success for several reasons. Starting with meetings we had with two of our technology partners, here's a recap:

- On the brand monitoring/social analytics front, we had some very exciting discussions with eCairn on business intelligence and the semantic web. In a nutshell, outbound keyword emphasis through text mining will become the new SSM methodology (social search marketing). This means that we are not only able to filter out sentiment at the highest or deepest level, but we can highlight keywords and retarget them for use in respective messaging in things like ad units and carry that sentiment over to new profile groups within the community map. More on this in the coming week...

- On the video syndication front, Sharethrough (750 industries) has successfully created an overlay on the YouTube player that can not only track quant and qual data but can break down views into things like share ratios (among a few others). They've already launched two huge campaigns (one for Microsoft and one for Right Guard) using this new technology, and, here's the best part - it's still a completely opt-in mechanism. To boot, the player and respective content can be deployed as a rich media solution, the difference being that you have far greater sharing capabilities. We also talked about how to leverage the platform for dynamic focus group testing both with DR ads as well as actual product integrations; in this capacity, we would use this as both a profiling tool and an engagement "stick". More to come on this in the coming weeks...

- David Witt from General Mills on Yoplait Kids: blogging is just about the only way to reach moms online. Yes, you may have heard this before, but now you're hearing it from the source. Mr. Witt also lent some interesting insight into how mom bloggers provide scale in a very niche category. Another interesting note was on the fact that Mr. Witt's group can track repeat redemption with their coupon programs. He wouldn't give us the goods on actually how they do this (these are proprietary methods), but it was a nice discovery nonetheless.

- Joel Nathanson from Wells Fargo: during the worst of financial times since The Great Depression, the brand basically has made its strongest social media effort. The real takeaway here is preparation - don't wait for issues to arise, build your story and be preemptive. Wells has done terrific job of tapping into its rich history for this. Mr. Nathanson also spoke about how 3rd parties are not always reliable, so it is key to have strong back-up channels for customer service.

- Andy Sernovitz on the FTC crackdown of bloggers: the issues are largely attributable to a lack of a solid ecosystem to manage and protect content. Blog disclosure is easy, but what to disclose is not so easy. The new disclosure best practices toolkit greatly mitigates the risks, and is based on an open forum for collaboration and experiential input. The biggest risk right now is the failure to train. Agencies and contractors must be clear on guidelines with corporate internal groups, and everyone must spend the time to get it right... or at least close. Through a Twitter dialogue with Rob Reed (@maxgladwell) on this, I concluded that perhaps a failsafe is for corporations to conduct an ongoing dialogue with the FTC for "pre-approval" of their blogger outreach practices. More to come on this...

- Hilary Weber from Kaiser Permanente: in probably what was the most recent development from all the brands, KP talked about its new Beta-phase platform (KP Town Square Ideabook) that allows 160K plus employees to share ideas and experiences, as well as maintain basic and efficient communications streams. Some of the really cool features are things like searchable tags that are connected to people's profiles - great organic SEO. Mrs. Weber also talked about KP uses a wiki as a "family tool shed" for the business to house and optimize its information. Using wikis, the internal SM team has no developers, page designer or technologists. The takeaway: there's a big emphasis now on internal communities to collaborate on projects in order to maximize external efforts.

I did not attend the Cisco, Dell or SAP sessions (one can only be in one physical place at a given time...), but we did have a really nice chat with Kira Wampler from Intuit on using specific SM platforms to maximize frequency for their broadcast group - tying back to the dynamic testing methods mentioned earlier. 

THE GRAND TAKEAWAYS...

Social media work as complements to other integrated marketing efforts. We have advocated this for a while now, but it's great to see all these case studies really focus on ROI measurement standards, and also be able to carefully delineate between engagement intent and purchase intent.

Successful outreach is all about trust. We need to trust ourselves before we can trust others to share conversations. A lot of what Andy and the brand reps talked to repeatedly was the notion of reestablishing a system of ethics and values that can transcend other areas of the business. By improving communication streams internally, the end product or service vastly improves.

All in all, great stuff. Aside from the stalwarts, we're seeing a lot of major brands that were skeptical even a year ago start to embrace social media and technology in some very profound ways. 

Here's to investing in the conversation.

Market Branding Versus Brand Marketing

For years, all of us - whether on the brand, agency or product sides - have been attempting to play Nostradamus in determining who our audiences are as well as developing assumptions about their purchase behaviors. Now, we have brand monitoring tools that not only enable us to make more educated evaluations about who they really are and what they talk about, but we can also profile and segment those purchase inclinations into real personas. What this ultimately means is that we are creating markets of opportunity first, and marketing associated brands second.

Take for example the now famous KOGI Korean BBQ case study, in which various social media tools were used to geo-target specific affinity groups in order create coordinated offline experiences. KOGI looked at three key elements to their grassroots activation:

1. Associated interests and social graphs already a part of a larger community.

2. Physical spaces for food consumption tied to these common interests.

3. Types and patterns of media consumption that would keep conversations or buzz ongoing.

When you think about engagement in this way - in which the return on intent far outweighs a sale of an actual item or product - you then realize that product branding can be removed almost entirely from the equation. In other words, community activation relies on branding a phenomenon as opposed to a product. The KOGI initiative could've just as easily been an effort around a category or an industry such as "Korean BBQ" or even something broader such as "exotic Asian foods". The response patterns, particularly through microblogs like Twitter, spoke directly to an experience tailored around sharing fine food in distinct urban settings that engendered loyalty to this market.

This is why brand monitoring leaders like Scout Labs, Radian6, eCairn and Overtone play such a vital role - because brands no longer have to take on the inherent risk of launching a product through empirical guesswork. The nice part about this as well is the fact that in many instances, profiling and segmenting don't require a huge window of time, compared to the more traditional methods involving focus groups and product testing. 

So, in sum, perhaps it's time for brands to not look at themselves as needing to outpace their competitors in releasing new products, but identifying and supporting new market sectors that would essentially incubate a suite of products. Only time will tell, but it seems like we're already heading in this direction, and fast.