I will be in London for Blogging4Business. Neville Hobson will be speaking, I am a frequent listener to his podcast with Shel Holtz. Also there will be Belgium’s own Philippe Borremans, who works for IBM and key member of IAOC. I really look forward to the session on the business value of blog tracking and contributing here…

It was interesting to see the organisers “eating their own dog food” as early potential participants complained that they are expected to enrol in a conference with no confirmed speakers. But they have left the comments there and responded to them, which is how it should be done, a proper online dialogue.

Attentio was invited to the European Business Summit by the Brussels Region. We had front row seats for the Mozart recital which was supported by the EU choir, it was beautiful and a real treat to see 100 people combining together so well, perhaps an analogy for successful companies. Later there were speeches by the Austrian chancellor and Benoit Cerexhe who is the Brussels Region’s minister for economy and employment. They both focussed on the importance of innovation and R&D growth targets for the EU, some work required, but general optimism.

As with these events I received a black bag with goodies. The real gem was a copy of the Horizons 2020 report compiled by TNS and Siemens AG. It provides “A thought provoking look at the future”. I went straight to the Internet section and not surprisingly there was a piece on the future of social media. While there is much hype of Myspace and Bebo at the moment, this is just the start apparently and I quote: 

“The Internet is seen as humanity’s “collective memory”. It serves as a medium of self-determination and self-preservation. Almost everyone has a personal web-site, many of which take the form of i-blogs that their owners use to underscore their individuality and communicate with the outside world. Further progress has been made in personalizing electronic media”. (P.64 - Life in the year 2020, TNS/Siemens AG).

This means that there will be even more information available for companies to get access to, to get a broader understanding of what their consumers and stakeholders really feel about their brands and products and we think this is very exciting. Where 5 years ago the content posted on the Internet was mainly company generated going forward this balance will be shifting.

The work of Emanuel Rosen focusses on the top 10 industries buzz has impact on. Buzz is online word-of-mouth embodied by the connectedness of blogs, UseNet and other forums. It is interesting to see this recent article in B2B where Masterchem a manufacturer of paint primer tracks blogs. This is not an industry perhaps associated with generating many online customer conversations but they tracked 1000 postings on their brand alone. As more people use blogs and other forums it will mean that the importance of tracking will increase for more industries.

For the record, Masterchem use the blog tracking as a replacement for focus groups which they feel do not give the full picture, meaning that the unstructured nature of online conversations give a more representative feel. Of course focus groups and structured questioning methodologies have a huge role in consumer insight, but increasingly the best place to get a quick read of the “online” brand will be from listening to the pulse of the Internet…

Walmart are now working with bloggers in an attempt to breakaway from only mainstream media positioning. They provide them with information, trips to Head Office and other ways to help the bloggers position them more favourably. Of course it raises questions on bloggers maintaining an independent stance but it is not surprising that companies will try and influence the influencers. What still remains the case though, is that bad products and services create negative buzz and good products and services create good buzz amongst bloggers, no trips to head office required…

This article is from the Washington Post and explains how food company ConAgra picked up blog buzz for shifting trends in low carb food and made changes based on this information. They are also tracking sentiments toward chicken consumption in connection to avian flu. They mention that companies are using technology tools to help with masses of information posted in blogs, UseNet etc. (The type of technology that Attentio has, of course…)

All of the below is posted by Ritesh Patel in an article called ”The Future of Advertising”. He in turn is positioning a presentation from John Stratton, VP-CMO of Verizon Wireless at the Madison & Vine Conference. Basically he is discussing a radical change in media mix, which we agree with here at Attentio. It is an interesting read.

John Stratton, VP-CMO Verizon Wireless. “Last year I spent well over a billion dollars buying space, time, air, hits and clicks across a multitude of mediums”, said Mr. Stratton. “So if you’ve been selling me this stuff, you probably need to know that I’m not perfectly happy. And I’m not alone”, Mr. Stratton said “media and advertising agencies have been dabbling in the new media, but now it’s time to jump in with both feet. We’ve been playing a game of incrementalism, in which we throw a few points of our spend at a variety of emerging channels, seeking to gain some insight into what will work and what won’t, but all the while maintaining the vast majority of our spend on the foundational mass media plan that has carried advertisers for 30 years. My view is that increasingly, large advertisers are going to scrap that approach in favor of a far more aggressive one”, he said. Having sampled and tested a wide array of new and different delivery platforms, advertisers, I believe, are going to move to a bland sheet approach, building the whole of their media mix from the ground up.”