eCommunications for global organisations

For those of you who have still to experience the power of RSS (or Really Simple Syndication), take a look at this short video by Commoncraft that explains RSS in plain English. It’s time well spent.

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Sclipo is a website where people can share skills and knowledge. The content is based on user-generated videos which users can also evaluate. The videos cover a plethora of subjects from making the perfect caipirinha to creating an ashtray from a coke can. You can even make money as people can pay you for the help provided through the videos.

Sclipo is also the winner of the Startup 2.0 contest, whose final was held last month in Bilbao. StartUp2.0 is a competition of European websites that work in the field of 2.0 technologies.

Here is the full article on emarketing by Philip Weiss recently published in the CW Bulletin, the IABC’s e-newsletter.

Back in the 1990s, marketers were under assault. Everything is changing, they were told. Digital is upon us. Discover this new world of communication or your job is on the line!

Then came the dot-com bust. Some people even seemed slightly relieved—believing that things weren’t going to change after all. And yet the Internet didn’t just keel over and die. Indeed, after 2001, its relentless growth continued unchecked, forcing marketers to take notice.

If you work in advertising, PR or any other field of traditional communication, you might not have noticed that the industry has changed radically. Most agencies are still obsessed with the “big idea”—which generally means something that will look nice in a print ad or on TV, and yes, maybe it can work online, too.

Some agencies are shifting their focus. A recent study published in the U.K. by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers found that in 2006, advertisers spent more money on web advertisements than on print for the first time ever. Meanwhile, the mainstream media is picking up on Web 2.0 and seemingly getting very excited about it. The cover of Time magazine announcing “you” as its Person of the Year for 2006 is a great testimony to this. We live in a collaborative world now, Time’s Lev Grossman explained, and the people making the biggest impact are you and me, sharing information online in ways that were unheard of a few decades ago.

But what does all this mean for communicators? Put simply: Embrace the changes and start learning again! Based on experiences working with global communication teams in leading companies over the past decade and confronting the same dilemmas time and time again, here are seven tips for joining the new generation of communicators.

1. “If it moves, measure it.” This is the motto of Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay, and is what The Economist describes as the main reason for advertisers’ increasing shift to the Web. In the past, advertising was always more art than science, an idea captured famously in a quote from retailer John Wanamaker: “Half my advertising is wasted, the trouble is I don’t know which half.” On the Web, however, marketers can directly link consumers’ actions with exposure to a particular ad message or campaign.

2. Keep it simple. Don’t let IT take over a web project! Make sure you understand enough about the technology to be able to lead the project. Technology is just the instrument, and the most powerful campaigns are done with simple technology (e-mails, blogs, simple sites). Don’t get carried away; look at what really simple technology and brilliant ideas can achieve.

3. Content matters. Make sure you understand how to write or create good web content. The skills of traditional publishing are just as relevant online. A journalistic approach and wide participation in your communication activities are crucial to the success of an online communication program. Plan for this in your campaign—don’t blow your budget on a great system and online media if you don’t have the resources to sustain content throughout your campaign!

4. Without traffic, you might as well stay at home. You cannot hide from failure with a web campaign. You will know exactly how many people have taken part (by visiting your site, signing up to your promotion, etc.). You need to ensure that you have a plan to generate traffic to your site. You can start with what is now the key to a good traffic generation plan: setting up a Google Adwords campaign. Then find partners—portal sites that target the same audience—and test the relevant channels to start getting the message to your audience.

5. Embrace your customer. Traditional marketing is based on command and control; Marketing 2.0 is about getting customers to become an integral part of your marketing effort. You need to learn to trust your customers and ensure that you engage with them in a public way so that you can convert them into fans. Then they will start spreading the word for your company or your brand.

6. Break down the silos. Advertising seldom communicates with PR teams or products and sales teams, instead remaining isolated. Create a unified and integrated approach to different communication departments! The only reason companies avoid doing this is historical—no one would build a company with isolated communication departments—so be the one who starts breaking down the silos and live dangerously.

7. Added-value thinking is the killer application. In an increasingly globalized world you will not get paid much for execution. What will distinguish you is your ability to add value to any project you are involved with. Learn how you can provide continuous “added-value thinking” to those who pay your bills.

So watch out for the Internet, and for those out there who enjoy a challenge, embrace it!

Flickrvision is a really cool application and mesmerising to watch. Just released this month, Flickrvision is a mashup of Google Earth and Flickr. You can see photos as they uploaded in realtime and a small snapshot of the photo is displayed over the map location. David Troy is behind this creation, he also developed Twittervision which is based on the same concept and shows the location of the latest tweet (short Twitter messages).

In January 2007, the Economist Intelligence Unit polled 406 senior executives across different industries from around the world on the adoption of Web 2.0 within their organisations.
The findings make an interesting read. 79% of respondents see Web 2.0 features such as blogs and social networks as a good way to increase revenues. While 58% say that the use of the web to partner with customers will have an impact on some aspect of their business.
However, although senior executives are enthusiastic about the potential business benefits of ‘Web 2.0′, they cite that their IT departments often lack the resources and expertise to create more interactive web applications.

To download the full report in pdf, click here.

The results of the Second European survey of PR Professionals are now available and it makes for an interesting read.
The online survey was conducted at the end of 2006 with over 400 PR practitioners participating from 24 countries. The lead researchers of the survey are: Philip Young, University of Sunderland, UK; Swaran Sandhu, University of Lucerne, Switzerland and Ansgar Zerfass, University of Leipzig, Germany. Philippe Borreman’s blog has a useful summary of the main findings and you can download the major results of the survey here (in pdf).

The other evening I was having a drink with friends and we were discussing the phenomenon of virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life. Basically we’re not that well informed and we had two questions: why and how? Why are so many people spending so much time in these parallel worlds, even to the point of neglecting their real lives? We concluded that “People need to escape, pretend they are someone else or to meet new people<. To go a little bit further, I thought part of the answer to “Why?< was probably in the “How?< so I decided to read a bit more about the trend.

Online games like World of Warcraft have not really evolved over time with new features but thanks to the internet players have the ‘connected to other real players’ experience. The success of these kinds of games is the experience of playing with ‘real’ opponents or allies.

Linden Lab, the publisher of Second Life, only provides a virtual 3D environment: no buildings, cars, special weapons in fact there is practically no ‘official content’ provided. But sometimes less is more! This original minimalism is probably the reason why it took quite a long time to take off: the world had to be created by people. Launched in July 2003, Second Life now has more than 4,500,000 residents (i.e. real people playing online). It is becoming a key part of real life. Residents create or buy their environment: houses, clothes, virtual pieces of art… The imagination of residents and their virtual budget is the only limit. Real places like Mont-St-Michel have been recreated, and you can even visit it.

Political groups, universities and big companies such as IBM, DELL, Amazon and many more have bought virtual land for promotions. They’ve built virtual billboards, paid for virtual sandwich board advertising, organized virtual events and handed out virtual goodies (T-shirts, cars, …)
A virtual currency called the Linden Dollar is used to buy the creations of other residents. The interesting thing is that it is possible to change real money against Linden Dollars, and vice versa. As residents retain the rights to their digital creations, this allows hundreds of people to earn enough money to live in the real word. They build houses, craft goods or cut virtual hair. For instance, Reuters opened an office and Adam Reuteurs (Adam Pasick in real life) reports on the news from Second Life. Visit his blog and check the currency chart (Linden vs US Dollars). The money and goods flow in Second Life can be compared to a real market economy.

Basic membership is free. So why not create your own avatar (virtual person) and discover why these virtual words are becoming the next big thing, with very real consequences on our lives.

Here is a great site for Guinness The Story of Hands apparently it’s the first time Guinness has featured user-generated content. It’s really well done and the concept is simple. You create your own film by choosing from 26 hand animations, all you have to do is create a smooth combination, pick your music, choose a title and then send it to a friend. Some of the best clips can be viewed on the site. Took a look – it’s a fun way to spend a few minutes creating your own film.

ZN, in collaboration with Eyeplay, has developed an online quiz for ING Expat Services.
‘Lost in Brussels’ is fun and easy to play, it will show you the sights of Brussels and test your knowledge of the city. There are also prizes to be won, including a weekend for two in London. Click here to play.

That’s how Tariq Krim likes to call his great aggregator. When a French Web entrepreneur has full page coverage in the Economist, this must say something about his business ideas.

What is NetVibes?

NetVibes is the great proof of concept of Web 2.0. An “aggregator<, which enables you to select the information you like, your own personalised homepage, composed from an aggregation of data feeds (RSS). For instance, my home page includes:

• To do list
• Calendar
• Gmail inbox
• Business and sport news
• Weather bulletins
• FTP service
• ZN blog entries

So now the culture is changing, companies should stop their race to spam you all the time, and provide qualitative information that will win a space on your home page.

Why Switzerland when it is a French company?

Unlike its competitors (Google, Yahoo, MSN), Netvibes is neutral, i.e. it does not try to push any of its own products (they have just the one). It is not even intrusive on your desktop, since you can only access it via your browser. That’s why it grew so fast and consistently.

Success figures

15.000 people registered on the launch day in September 2005, now it is a community of more than 12 million people across the 5 continents. A great entrepreneur in the US way, but not yet quite the US guru performer…