360DigitalInfluence

Out-blog, out-tweet, outlast…10 bloggers, 24 hours in cool digs with hot tech toys…with 2 ultimate winners. All this happening as part of a LIVE display in a storefront window. Geeks go chic? Yes. Bringing blogging, tweeting, fashion and technology to the streets of Singapore? Ohhh yes! And the conversations have already started.

Stay tuned for our “The Making Of” video, which will be up later today.
Here’s the video!

Sleep-deprivation aside, we’re really looking forward to kicking off our first-ever Blogathon event, hosted by our client, Intel and partners, TANGS and Lenovo. More juicy details here.

Want the countdown clock? Grab it here and join us this weekend:

As part of the Young Professionals Chapter’s ongoing new media series at Singapore Press Club, we were invited to share our knowledge and insights pertaining to the little blue bird - Twitter.

Here’s the Twittorial for your reference and download. Let us know what you think.

Click here if you’d like to observe the conversations that occurred during the forum.

Note to self: Try to avoid such timely spill of the cup of coffee when being introduced to the audience

Wow. Pat and I just had a great time learning from Chris Graves, President & CEO, Asia Pacific, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. That’s a pretty big role, if you consider that my position is somewhere really low in the food chain. But you know what’s the best thing? Chris doesn’t behave like that.. He embraces you and talks to you as a person, and that translates into the way he talks to his clients, journalists, bloggers and colleagues.

There’s just something about the way he engages you and tells you stories.

I think it’s a culture thing, and something within Ogilvy to embrace storytelling. Storytelling is a truly wonderful tool for any communicator. It allows you to paint beautiful pictures with words, and it conveys your ideas much clearer because the person you’re communicating with, sees it too.

Despite all the buzz about ’social media’, ‘analytics’, reports, trends, facts and figures.. they all feed into what we do in the communications industry. Whether you’re a journalist, blogger, advertiser, content producer or PR practitioner.. we’re in the communications business of distilling complex ideas and making them simpler so that more people can understand them.

Do you think you’re an effective communicator? If not, why not give storytelling a shot? Be curious, ask questions, find insightful nuggets that set your story apart from someone else. Even if you have no story to tell.. that’s a story to tell! Why are you so quiet? Did something make you feel this way? What happened?

It’s not fluff. You help people understand! That’s a truly remarkable skill when we’re talking about imparting knowledge, helping to shed light on problems and conveying great solutions that can help society.

I’ll leave it that today, but be on the lookout for the videos we interviewed of Chris today. He answered some great questions from the blogosphere.. and just pick out the way he says things, how he conveys his message. There’s so much to learn, and I hope you’ll get something out of it. Look out for it after the weekend -)

Hi everyone,

Christopher Graves, our President & CEO of Ogilvy PR Asia Pacific is currently in town! We are taking this opportunity to invite everyone, and anyone to ask him any questions they may have pertaining to Social Media. We will be interviewing him on video, of which will be shared with everyone on The Open Room.

Just a bit about Christopher for your information:

1. Before joining Ogilvy in January 2005, he worked for 25 years in business news.

2. 18 years was spent with Dow Jones on both editorial and business sides.

3. He was one of the founders of Wall Street Journal Television.

4. He was also the Managing Editor of Asia Business News (ABN), Vice President of News and Programming for CNBC Asia, Vice President of News and Programming for CNBC Europe, Managing Director of Business Development (EMEA & Asia) for Dow Jones Consumer Electronic Publishing (WSJ.com), and Managing Director of Far Eastern Economic Review.

5. Far Eastern Economic Review, a 60-year old magazine, won magazine of the year in Asia twice during his tenure.

6. He is a frequent public speaker and moderator, appearing at such events as the World Economic Forum (Davos and Asia), Global Entrepolis @ Singapore, World Islamic Economic Forum, and the Boao Forum for Asia.

7. He has interviewed leaders in public—most recently former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Philippines President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, former Prime Minister of Singapore Goh Chok Tong, Singapore founding father Lee Kuan Yew, India’s Minister of Trade Kamal Nath and China’s Minister of Science & Technology Wan Gang.

8. He once played a guitar in high school so bad, his band had to wear helmets because the audience threw stuff at them.

Instead of having us, the Digital Influence team, craft questions for his video interview which we’ve squeezed in tomorrow for recording, we thought we’d leave the questions to you, the creators, curators and consumers of Social Media. The people who matter.

Please email either Brian or myself (Pat Law) at brian.koh@ogilvy.com or patricia.law@ogilvy.com by 12 midnight today with the following details:

1. Name:

2. URL (if any):

3. Email address:

Hurry along now!

2008 was a great year if you worked in the digital industry. So many advances in technology, huge leaps forward in the numbers of people connected to the Internet and using high speed broadband to access content and a rock solid acceptance of digital (mobile, Internet, email, search, social media) by the general public – in fact, if you’re Generation Y, you’ve never known anything else. Below are some of important things we learned throughout 2008 and a few of the trends we should see in 2009.

The maturity of search marketing.

There’s a lot of talk about moving marketing dollars away from traditional media into search marketing during times of economic uncertainty. This has been validated by two things – Google’s revenue figures and the persistence of Microsoft in trying to buy Yahoo!’s search business. Google’s numbers speak for themselves. As for Yahoo!’s search business – while Microsoft might have gotten some strategic things wrong in the past, I wouldn’t want to put my money at risk by betting against Microsoft this time around.

The move to search marketing is very simple. If you think about search marketing as a direct response channel and not for its branding potential, the reason is clear – search marketing is about sales. Search marketing for a lot of companies is the most effective way of growing sales. This isn’t true for all industries (particularly FMCG, where search is the most effective drive-to-web strategy but not direct sales) but it’s where companies in the IT, professional services, travel and automotive industries are putting their marketing budgets. This was the trend in 2008 and this will only increase in 2009 as budgets need to be harder working and more effective.

The rise of social networks.

2008 saw the rise of social media – Facebook becoming the dominant player, MySpace narrowing it’s focusing onto music and movies, Friendster leading South East Asia and Bebo being bought by AOL.

Facebook has long been the darling of media and the public, despite skirting dangerously around privacy issues a number of times this year. If you look at a lot of the social networks, they are now becoming surprisingly similar – a person’s profile, user generated content, third-party applications and often a wayward business model. This can be directly attributed to Facebook’s success and popularity with its audience.

Social media is very popular. OgilvyOne Singapore released a report titled “Can Brands Have a Social Life?” that focuses on social media in Asia.  It identifies a staggering 456 million people in Asia (of a total Internet audience of around 571 million people) who are engaged in social media activity. Admittedly, this is more than social networks, including blogging and other social interaction, but the numbers are extraordinary.

Social Networking going mobile.

The Japanese had a whole new perspective on social media. Mixi and Mobagetown, two of the leading social sites in Japan, are attracting tens of millions of people who are accessing their services through mobile devices. While other countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong have over 100% mobile penetration (i.e. there are more mobile devices than the country’s population), use of data services and applications is still in its early stages. Japan leads the world with its sophisticated mobile market and it will be really interesting to see how Mixi, Mobagetown and other mobile-focused social media help shape the social media landscape. It feels like only a matter of time before one of these players’ moves onto other mobile-savvy markets in Asia and across the world…

Blogs as buying guides.

Asia is really driving the proliferation of blogs and blogger activity. This is particularly seen in Korea and China but is becoming more common across the world. This of itself is not the big issue because people have always wanted to express themselves. The major trend that is starting to affect marketers is how blogs have been inadvertently commercialized and used by consumers as buying guides. Consumers trust other consumers much more than they trust brands, so it’s no surprise that blogs are now being seen as buying guides for new products and services. The automotive industry is a great example of this – once you’ve done your online research from the brand’s website, compared prices on a few different websites, many people are now going to blogs to see “real world” experience. Does the car drive well? Does it breakdown often? How does the automotive company deal with complaints? These questions are no longer being answered by call centre staff or showroom personnel but by real people and their blogs.

The year of the job seeker.

With the doom and gloom of the current economic downturn one of the unfortunate trends is that more and more people are now facing unemployment. With so many people facing an uncertain future and a lot of people losing their jobs, 2009 will be a great year for the job classifieds sites (think Monster.com, JobsDB, ClassifiedPost, SEEK, etc.). Job classifieds sites make the majority of their revenue through job ads, which will decline, so these sites will have to evolve or die out. The savvy job boards are already working on talent management tools, interactive CVs, career content and other tools that will help candidates better promote themselves. These sites will have a huge increase in site traffic and if they are clever in working out ways to commercialize this increased audience or monetize their job seeker toolkits.

For the same reasons, there should be a significant increase in the use of business social networking. Recently LinkedIn.com release a new batch of tools – introducing networking groups, applications (similar to Facebook) and other features that allow business professionals to connect and network with each other. LinkedIn.com is now posing a legitimate threat to online job sites and print classifieds simply because it allows people to connect and network in a much more interactive way. 2009 should be the year LinkedIn.com and other business-focused social networks come into prominence.

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!

Warning: this is a fairly long post that contains quite a few buzzwords.

More and more often these days, I hear from companies who want to “go digital”. Yes, “digital”, “social media” and “Web 2.0″ are rolling off the tongues of many marketers and it’s great that more and more folks are beginning to recognize the importance of communicating on the fast, fluid and sometimes fickle platform that is the Internet.

However, I find that many folks are clambering onto the online bandwagon and shooting from the hip without proper thought about the whys and hows.

Some common loose cannons:
- “I want to start a blog/Facebook group.”
- “Let’s invite some bloggers to our event.”
- “I want a microsite.”
- “Create a viral video for me.”

While these are all elements that can be incorporated into a digital influence program, they aren’t one-off solutions that can be pulled out of a hat and just thrown into the marketing mix. One of the first things I always ask clients is “what’s your objective?” The next thing I ask them to do is listen. If we don’t know what people are saying about our brand or products online and the places where these conversations are taking place, how can we figure out the best way to engage them?

Starting a blog, Facebook group or microsite is easy as pie. But if you build it, will they come? Keeping something like that going, however, requires commitment and compelling content. Don’t start something if you don’t have the time or resources to sustain it. Having credible, knowledgeable spokesperson(s) to front a corporate blog is key, as is having a rolling calendar of fresh, interesting content to put out there for readers. And, of course, the next step should be opening it up to reader participation and inviting additional contributions. Direct2Dell is a great example of how this works.

I’m all for companies involving bloggers in events, especially when there are interesting announcements, products and/or personalities that are relevant to the bloggers’ interests. But knowing what makes bloggers tick requires involvement. Communications professionals need to be in the same spaces as netizens in order to understand how they work. We spend so much time putting together media profiles and briefing books, building media relationships and poring over newspapers and magazines clipping away…we should do the same with the bloggers we want to engage. Set up an RSS reader and subscribe to bloggers’ feeds for a better understanding of what they write about. Then reach out and comment at the very least. It’s amazing how much one can learn by looking at someone’s blogroll and clicking on. Simply blasting out a generic press invitation to bloggers to try to get more bums on seats and score your “digital outreach” brownie points ain’t gonna cut it. Pat Law’s said it before and Ben Koe has a another neat post on the state of “pitching bloggers” that has spawned a few other interesting reactions from fellow netizens.

And give the bloggers content they can easily use. A standard paper press kit is pretty useless and swag bags will only go so far. Try adapting a social media release with links to more information and multimedia that can be posted, embedded, tagged and shared online. If that’s too daunting, consider jazzing up the standard online press room with podcasts, links (to event photos on Flickr, user videos on YouTube) and other multimedia content.

I can’t stress enough that digital influence is not a magic bullet or a shot in the arm. It can start simply by setting up Google alerts with keywords about a brand or product, and searching for your clients on YouTube and Facebook. That’s where you get your first online insights from. From there, it’s a matter of clicking on and building that knowledge for a better clue about the space.

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

I hate using the phrase “pitching bloggers” ‘cuz it sets my teeth on edge and I think creates a negative perception from the get-go…but for lack of a better phrase, here are 11 points straight from one horse’s mouth that every communications professional should hard-code into their heads. We need to stop propagating PR flackdom!

I sometimes don’t blame bloggers for sliming some of the more clueless folks in my industry because we sometimes get so lost in The Message and in trying to please our clients that we lose sight of what it is we’re really here to do. COMMUNICATE. And, as far as The Open Room is concerned, communication has got to be open and real. Remember how to talk to people? Like, really talk?

When I’ve spoken about Digital Influence…both internally as well as to clients and prospects…one of the things I always stress is the need to listen and understand. Blankanvas’ points #7 and #8 are your starting points. How can we ever know how bloggers tick if we’re not online in the space and using the tools? If you haven’t figured out RSS and the basics of Technorati yet, you need to NOW, otherwise chances are you’re going to get it all wrong.

To all our digerati friends, we hope you can join us for another Open Room chat ‘n chill session ‘cuz we’ve got Rohit coming to spend a couple of days with us. The face behind the award-winning Influential Marketing Blog needs little introduction, and will be coming to town fresh off a stint in Beijing, where he’s been busy for the last few days at the Olympics, doing some pretty neat stuff with Lenovo’s Olympic Blogger Program (I’m so envious).

When: Monday, August 18 @7pm (yes it’s happening real soon!)
Where: The Ogilvy Centre, 35 Robinson Road, Level 3
RSVP: Drop me an email ASAP so I can save a seat for you

Rohit recently launched his book, Personality Not Included, which is full of practical advice for brands looking to regain their human voice. PNI’s been steadily climbing the charts and was recently chosen by Soundview Book Summaries as their best business book for the month of August (a big honor considering the thousands of new books they evaluate a year). Join the PNI Facebook group for updates.

For the Twitter-mad, follow Rohit at Twitter (watch out for the mad chicken wallpaper!)