Not to be outdone by Tania (good internal competition keeps us on our tippy toes of the razor’s edge), i recently came across Sacha Chua’s Gen Y Guide to Web 2.0 at Work.

It’s only 14 slides, absolutely no death by powerpoint, and drawn in the most charming of ways.

starting a blog isn’t rocket science (or a lot of money). If you’ve got something to say and want to start connecting with other brilliant people, i suggest you take the plunge and be smart (not just inane) with your blogging and start learning from others like you, and sharing with others like you!

Not a client of ours here in Singapore, but very very impressive (to me at least!)

I love the way EA identified a user-posted glitch on their Tiger Woods’08 title, and instead of spending hundreds of thousands buying advertising space on television networks, promoting it in banner ads or even spamming you on facebook, simply posted a video response.

Posted just SIX DAYS ago, it’s been viewed 1.6 million times, and dare i say, counting, EA shows us it’s not too difficult to find the opportunity and use it to your advantage.

i believe this keen eye for the opportunity, and the execution of the response, the content behind it and the transmission methods were all due to keen insight into the audience they wished to connect with.

don’t believe me? i think this trailer for their upcoming game “Battlefield Heroes” demonstrates that they understand the changing consumer landscape in the way “inside jokes” or “culturally specific” references are used.

the product is another hint of genius in it’s entirety. making a high quality, credible game available for free online FOR the consumer / fan, is a gift of love to the people who love you already. check out their site to know what i mean http://www.battlefield-heroes.com

it reminds me of when Southpark made all their episodes free for public consumption. it’s a new business revenue model, they’ve almost become their own network.. a micro indie channel perhaps. maybe they’ll sell the content cheaply to other internet tv stations like Miro or Joost, and they retain their creative licenses as well. a lot to chew on, but i think these two ideas show us how nothing’s really set in stone these days. www.southparkstudios.com

Many people I meet ask me what exactly is Digital Influence? And why does it stem from Public Relations (PR)?

Well, to better understand what Digital Influence is, is to appreciate that Digital Influence is a communications discipline. Much like what Public Relations is. We can communicate on behalf of our client, or we give them counsel and how they should communicate, and where they should communicate.

Why do companies have to communicate? To inform the decisions that you make on a daily basis (whether you’re a concerned member of the public, consumer, stakeholder, employee, employer, policy maker… etc) What we consume, is what shapes our perceptions.

Originally, businesses would use the mass media to communicate with the wider audience, but as the media continued to evolve into multiple channels, audiences started fragmenting due to choice.

Then came Web 2.0, faster broadband speeds and the rise of Social Media (Or the media that users share with each other, a bit like a social transaction - i hate that word.) [Pat Law has an excellent post about social currency to help you understand what makes media, social. Link]

With the advent of Social Media, businesses, brands, corporations and finally, the public could communicate with each other using a wide variety of social tools:

Blogs
Forums
Twitter
Plurk
Facebook
Myspace
Wikis
Vodcats
Podcasts

And you could finally have a real two way dialogue, which was what communications was always about. Messages are conversations. What we tell someone isn’t always what that audience will perceive, they will interpret it, and Web 2.0 has enabled the interpretation to be published by that same audience. Thus forming a dialogue.

What’s changing is the way people communicate. We’re no longer content waiting for the 930pm news, or the music the radio wants us to hear, what the TV guides want to show us, when they want to show us. We’re not at the mercy of reading the news the publications deem worthy for us to read. No, we want information on demand.

As communicators, isn’t this the space you want to be? Where the messages you have aren’t forced at people, but accessed on demand by the public? While you’re still thinking about that, the power of information is now with the people, and we are all informing each other. That’s what social media has enabled us to do, inform each other on an amplified level.

Digital Influence, we’re communicators, we’re where the conversations are at and helping brands form bridges into their communities, people who use their products, who become passionate about them, and in turn, brands should also be passionate about their people. -)

Recently, we organised an Open Room event at The Screening Room for bloggers to meet Yasmin Ahmad, the director of the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports latest commercial, simply entitled “Family.”

It’s a simple commercial with one simple message. love that is found in the family.

Yasmin is indeed a true storyteller, who uses unconventional, or rather, imperfect characters to tell universal tales of humanity. MCYS could have chosen to tell the story in the usual way of featuring your regular nuclear family. Two parents, two children and a dog, but they chose Yasmin tell the story in a much realer way.

Watch the commercial and you’ll see what I mean:

The event had the bloggers arriving, before they were treated to Yasmin’s showreel of past work, some of which were fan favorites like Tan Hong Ming in Love:

After they had watched Yasmin’s body of work and the new commercial, it was time to meet the director herself.

I’ll let the bloggers tell you how they felt about the new commercial and their impressions from meeting Yasmin themselves, but here are some excerpts:

“The film doesn’t have such a family. It just consists of a father and a daughter. The family seems incomplete and thus imperfect and the girl a little spoiled yet I think it captures the way we experience our family relations for most, if not all, of us.”
- Ian, on the red dot

“There was a particular blogger who mentioned that because the majority of the population has a complete family unit, they may not be able to relate to the video - to which Yasmin humorously replied, “I watched ‘Finding Nemo’ … I laughed and I cried … But I’m not a fish!””
- Rinaz

“While I was chatting with some of the another attendees, she came in and we got introduced. I was told later that I squealed when she was introduced to us. I got to shake her hand! OMG I even got to take peekchers with her!! I think I might have even hyperventilated.”
- Min Tea

“The standard style of TV commercials promotes government campaigns in a traditional and mostly predictable way, the new Family TVC hopes to leave a deep impression on viewers with its engaging and emotive storyline. Instead of painting a rosy picture of a perfect family, this TVC seeks to touch the viewers deep inside.”
- Eastcoastlife

For me personally, it was a tremendous opportunity to meet and listen to the insights of a storyteller who is so human, down to earth and observant, it was no wonder her work always touches the hearts those it comes in contact with.

if the brand for this is the concept of love within the family, then I think we’ve succeeded in connecting it with her public.

Highlights

See you next Open Room! -)

More pictures at The Open Room Flickr Page

if you haven’t already seen this, i hope it inspires you somewhat that this is a new age of information we’re drawing ourselves into, and the old ways.. well, they’ve laid a great foundation, but they’re going to have to be used to giving some of that control over to us - the user.

i’ve been blogging for about six years already, and so far, there have been no flame wars going on my personal blog that i can recount. It might not be a big thing to you.. but for many corporations thinking about starting to blog, it’s a really big step and they might be rather apprehensive about starting one.

And i’d say that’s an important concern.

No corporation should have to go into blindly engaging audiences with guns blazing. Brave perhaps, but also a bit stupid.

Having that concern really begs you to ask the question, WHY do I want to start engaging my audience? So you go in with the right reasons, and work on your business you think is best, not just because some “Social Media Strategist/Expert told you to, and it’s the “right thing to do”

Remember, crap in, crap out. it won’t be Business2.0, PR2.0, Advertising2.0, Enterprise2.0, Marketing2.0 but CRAP2.0

But as this Social Media practitioner will tell you, engaging your audience is important, because the consumer has changed, old ways of reaching them will not work as effectively, and isn’t the purpose of communications to get your message to consumers in the least intrusive, most influential and sincere way?

And as you engage with consumers, both online and offline, you’ll start to figure out, just what your business really means to them. And it puts you in a better position to service them. Not just sell average one size fits all products for highly individual people. -)

Now, this brings me to my point about The Open Room. You might be thinking, “Yeah! That makes sense, i’ll start a blog and start engaging. But.. should i moderate comments? Or should i disallow them? How should i deal with flamers?”

I’m not going to bore you with a corporate policy on blogging, firstly because I don’t have the time (plus it’s a bit boring) but perhaps just share some real experience i’ve had with my own blog.

I’ve always allowed anyone and everyone to post comments. I like the conversation, and i find that fully allowing comments means people don’t mince their words, and you get truly valuable insights. It also shows that you respect the point of view of the commenter and that both of you have equal parts power and control of a conversation.

Think about it, if you were talking to someone face to face, having a good conversation is having mutual respect for each other, and there’s no facilitator in the middle telling you that you can’t say certain things.

I find this invites mature points of views, and mutual respect.

And The Open Room is just like that. Our reputation is on the line, people who know us personally will know where we’re coming from and not just some fancy agency talking.

The Open Room is literally that. It’s like opening the door of your flat open and having anyone drop by. it’s like a shop that says “All are welcome.”

And how YOU, the reader chooses to behave in this open room is how you will be held accountable. If you’re here to start a flame war, or cause trouble and discension, it would go against the very nature and the hospitality we’ve extended to you. Call it a slap to our faces, but we’ve chosen to be decent and mature, and while we can’t expect it of everyone. We’d love to see goodness and courtesy paid forward.

So there you have it. I also didn’t want to use a policy for this, because I don’t think it’s a one size fits all concept. But it’s something to think about, how you want to reach out to bloggers, corporations and your audience.

What kind of room do you have?

i’m really psyched! Our teams in in the States pulled together this great blog template for us and we’d really like to say a big thank you to everyone there!

As for us here, this really marks a new forray of connecting brands and bloggers. I think there’s a lot of value, not just in reading the conversations online, but having them offline as well. -) That’s what i figured out after working here for slightly over a year, that meeting the various communities within Singapore is how you make real, long lasting relationships that go beyond your professional capacity.

I think as consumers, we’re looking for a real and genuine experience, we’re all unique and individual, so as marketers, you can’t sell us average things, because we’re not average people.

This blog, is not the be all and end all to delivering good social media for bloggers and clients, rather, it is the begining of a new way of doing great things that give us all, a much more meaningful experience.

We’re not officially launched yet, but we’ll see you at the party!

We’ve started a new blog, and what you see here is mainly a beta sandbox. We’re Tania and Brian from Ogilvy Public Relations Singapore, and part of the Ogilvy 360° Digital Influence team. Bear with us while we further tweak this blog.

In the meantime, we’re whetting your appetites with our first blogger social to launch The Open Room!

Who’s “We”?

John Bell, head of Ogilvy PR’s global 360° Digital Influence and board member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA).

Tania Chew, a communicator, connector & digital media strategist with Ogilvy PR’s global 360° Digital Influence team.

Brian Koh, a communicator who discovered his love for social media to feed his appetite for music and works in Ogilvy PR’s global 360° Digital Influence team.

What’s The Open Room?

It’s a concept created by the fun folks in Ogilvy PR’s 360° Digital Influence team aimed at facilitating casual, open conversation between brands and digital media mavens like you.

What’s In Store?

Good grub, great conversation, “touch” stations with fun products from the likes of Playstation, Canon, Intel and Nokia, and a LIVE interactive photo wall.

Date: Monday, April 28, 2008

Time: 5 - 7pm

Venue: 35 Robinson Road, #03-01 The Ogilvy Centre, Singapore 068876

RSVP by Wednesday, April 23, 2008:

Email: brian.koh@ogilvy.com

Twitter: @litford

Phone: 6213-7837