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Posts from June 2006

links for 2006-06-30

30 June 2006 | | Comments (0)

Inside the CBC - a public blog for CBC employees

inside the cbc

Tod Maffin is writing/editing "Inside the CBC", a blog for CBC employees that is open to the public.  From the About page:

I don’t get leaked any advance CBC information or participate in any pre-announcement strategy meetings or anything like that. Likewise, I don’t tell them in advance what gets posted here or how. They don’t get an opportunity to review or edit or veto anything. They read what I write the same time you do. I suppose if push came to shove and they told me to take something down or edit it, I would. But having been working with these folks now for a month in beta, I can’t imagine that kind of scenario. In the end, we’re all working toward opening up communication at the CBC — a good goal.

I find this quite fascinating.  Really, a blog for CBC employees that's open to the public?  I love the blog, but I find the positioning a little strange.  Why not just say it's an inside look at the CBC, full stop?

In any case, it's pretty neat.  Tod is a great writer and posts all kinds of tidbits that will be of interest to CBCphiles like myself. 

[Via Darren Barefoot]

30 June 2006 in Blogs and Blogging | | Comments (2)

Tips on leveraging new media to boost mind & market share ... notes from a webinar

I recently attended a Webinar entitled "How to Leverage Blogs, Podcasts & Other New Media To Boost Market Share and Mind Share", co-sponsored by PRNewsOnline and Cymfony.  The moderator was Cymfony CMO, Jim Nail (of Influence 2.0 fame) and the speakers were three pros in this area:

       
  • Steve Wilson, Senior Director, Global Web Communications at McDonald's
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  • Robert Scoble, VP Media Development, Podtech.net
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  • Steve Cody, President of Peppercom (also president of Counselors Academy)

These were my big takeaways ...

Steve Cody:

       
  • PR, as a discipline, is best positioned to use social media.  Used to talking *with* customers.
    •    
  • Blogs can be a good crisis response tool. [me: I agree whole-heartedly with this.  Get your legal folks engaged ahead of time, but set up a blog to deal with crisis response.  Typically, in large organizations, there are multiple steps in taking content live to a website, even when there is an easy-to-use CMS in place; a blog can eliminate some of those steps and put control in the hands of PR/Corp Comm people when they need it.  Also, if it is an environmental or site-specific incident, they can post remotely with a mobile device.  Excellent idea.]
    •    
  • Don't overreact to criticism in the blogosphere.  Most of the time it will be a David vs Goliath scenario and you (as BigCo) can't win.
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  • Be clear on the benefit and purpose of the content you publish on your blog. "If I didn't work for the company, would I care?" (Christopher Barger, IBM)
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  • If PR firms are going to recommend social media to their clients, they should know what its like to do it.  Cody himself has a blog and a podcast.  [me: another great point.  Too many agencies and firms are jumping on the bandwagon without having tried to practice what they preach.  Mitch Joel actually calls High Road Communications on this.   High Road recently announced their new Social Media division.  One Degree had a few things to say about the naming of their division.  But, to me, a more interesting issue is one that Mitch Joel (unintentionally) raised in the comments of the post.  He asked their senior VP, Justin Creally (who had left a previous comment in the One Degree post) for links to High Road's blogs, podcasts and other contributions to social media.  So far, no response.]

Robert Scoble:

       
  • Pitching bloggers on stories requires that you know their context.  Don't pitch a tech blogger about reviewing a movie.  Know the bloggers first!

Steve Wilson

       
  • Why blog?  It fills a gap in other communication channels to the 18 to 40's .. a gap left by TV/print/radio.
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  • If your company wants to publically blog, engage your legal team early.  They can help you with risk management as well as with any regulatory issues, particularly those dealing with financial reporting.
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  • How is the McDonald's CSR blog doing?   We get about 20K visitors a month, but, perhaps more importantly, about 200 blogs comment regularly on what is going on at the CSR blog.  Incredibly valuable learning and interaction.
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  • McDonald's is also video podcasting.  Way better than a 60-second commercial.  Though it is also important to keep track of our commercials and commercials our customers have created on Flickr, YouTube, etc.  It's great to see how they interact with the brand.

All in all, a really informative webinar.  I'm so impressed with what McDonald's is doing.  Internal blogging (including their CEO), the CSR blog, their Olympic Champion Crew blog, their podcasts.  That they are trying all of these channels to expand their conversations with their different customers and stakeholders.  Clearly, they have come a long way from 1994 when Josh Quittner, intrepid journalist, registered mcdonalds.com.

I''m lovin' it!

Update: My characterization of Mitch's intent by his comment on One Degree has been edited per his comment on this post.

30 June 2006 in Blogs and Blogging, Marketing | | Comments (2)

links for 2006-06-29

29 June 2006 | | Comments (0)

links for 2006-06-28

28 June 2006 | | Comments (0)

CMA's 2006 Digital Marketing Conference Keynotes - where is the diversity?

The CMA's blog's latest post announces two more keynotes at this year's Digital Marketing Conference in Toronto.  C.C. Chapman and David Weinberger join the already announced keynotes of Mitch Joel, Joseph Jaffe, and Brian Eisenberg.

So basically ...

Ccchampan and Davidweinberger join Mitchjoel and Bryaneisenberg and Josephjaffe

Or, White meets Bread at the DMC.

Here's the thing.  These guys are all really smart.  And I intend no disparagement of their quality or their ideas. I either know, have met, or heard speak 60% of them. I link to them, schill their books and wax philosophic about their cool ideas. So, I am, in no way, concerned about the quality of their content or their innovative ideas.

What I am concerned about is this:

As marketers, we need to reach out to all types of people.  Men, poor, women, black, Asian, fat, immigrant, lesbian, socialite, tween, Tory, labourer, hippie, zippie and yuppie.  And to do that we need to hear from a variety of voices - voices that reflect the reality of the world back to us.  So that our thinking and our ideas are enriched by perspectives other than our own.  And that we can engage in authentic conversations with our customers.  I'm concerned that five, middle-aged white guys can't do that as well as a slate of keynotes that included more than one gender, race and age-group.

And I know we can do that without sacrificing quality of ideas or presentations.  So what if the line-up looked something like this:

Davidweinberger_1 and Colleendecourcy and Guykawasaki and Nickpahade and Sandraalfaro

It looks a little more like the customers that I'm trying to engage.  And in the above group of people, in addition to David Weinberger, you have the Chief Experience Officer at JWT (Colleen DeCourcy), Manging Director for Garage Technology Adventures and customer advocate (Guy Kawasaki), the president of Publicis Groupe's new "Future's Practice" (Nick Pahade) and the VP and director of account management at Vidal Partnership (Sandra Alfaro). Smart, snappy, innovative people.

So, how do we get this lineup at conferences like the Digital Marketing Conference or MSN's Digital Ad Summit (which was great, but a case study in middle-aged white men speaker symdrome)?

We need to start saying that a more diverse slate of speakers matters to us.  To our business. To our relationships with our customers.  Tell the Digital Marketing Conference Committee that you're not going to pay $743.65 for white bread.

Bonus Link: AdvertisingAge (you might have to register to see some of this content) has a feature each year, "Women to Watch".  This year, they are celebrating the 10th year of it.  It features talented, smart, innovative marketers who happen to be women.  I'm glad they put it together and applaud them for doing so.  But I long for the day when they don't have to.

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27 June 2006 in Marketing, Ranting, Seriously? | | Comments (7)

links for 2006-06-27

27 June 2006 | | Comments (0)

TEDTalks Launches ... I'm deliriously giddy!

Tedtalks_170x170_2 I have attended TED for the last few years and am continually in awe of the speakers and the ideas that come out of this amazing experience.  It's tough to convey the experience to friends and colleagues -- the brain-frying, emotion-charged, innovation jump-starter that is TED.

But now, some of it can be experienced online.  TED and BMW have just launched TEDTalks: audio and video presentations of some of the key moments of TED2006.  Go to the TEDBlog now and get watching.  There are feeds for both the audio and video or you can watch them right there.

OMG .. I can't even stand it.  I'm so excited.  One of my fav speakers ... Sir Ken Robinson (funny and an amazing storyteller) ... is included below.  Are you watching it?  Do it!  NOW!  Also, go to the TEDBlog and see the others that have been posted so far: Al Gore (a great preview of An Inconvenient Truth), Majora Carter (incredible young woman who is transforming the South Bronx), Tony Robbins (even more impactful than I imagined), and Hans Rosling (really cool information visualization)..

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27 June 2006 in Giddy, Innovation & Imagination, Technology & the Internet | | Comments (0)

Netvibes Gets It!

Netvibes_home I was checking my blog stats over my morning coffee (as you do) and saw a referrer from Netvibes.  Not being familiar with Netvibes, I went to check it out.

I can't even tell you how sexy an application Netvibes is.  I'm not a big fan of integrated web desktops because none of them do it all really well.  I'm an avid user of My Yahoo, but its a little clunky.  I've tried to use the personalised Google page, but it's not any better than My Yahoo, so why switch?

Netvibes makes me want to switch.  And you know why?  The elegance and charm of their interface.  These folks have really pushed Ajax to do some very finessed interactions.  I've only started playing around with it, but they have a lot of pre-defined modules to plug into your page.  They also have an "ecosystem" which is a directory of content and services that is managed by Netvibe's user community. Techcrunch has an extensive review of Netvibes' ecosystem.  And Netvibes also has an open API to encourage module development.

But my favourite thing about Netvibes?  The Screen Panel (one of the widgets for changing your settings).  Not a lot of fancy options. And some real, down-to-earth language.  For example: "Give RSS more space? [checkbox] Do it!"

Oh, my *other* favourite thing?  Their blog!  Great example of a beta software blog.  They have a list of features (based on user feedback) that they are working on and whose status is posted.  And for every entry where they introduce a new feature or a feature upgrade, they have a neat little screencam-y demo so you can see how to use it.  So elegant.

Cher Netvibes .. you lovely piece of Parisian software.

Update: Sandy's on the Netvibes wagon too!!

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27 June 2006 in Innovation & Imagination, Technology & the Internet | | Comments (3)

links for 2006-06-26

26 June 2006 | | Comments (0)

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