Entries Tagged 'Mike Spataro' ↓

Both Mike and I have been talking about Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff’s, at the time, up-coming book groundswell lately. This highly anticipated book really solidifies the importance and power of social media, which we are all actively working to understand, define, and harness.

While I was at the Forrester Marketing Forum last week I was able to pick up a copy as well as a couple signatures from the authors. Returning to Seattle I was bombarded with requests to borrow my new book. Being that my signed copy may eventually put a child through college I went over to Amazon (just down the street) and picked up 25 copies for the office.

Congratulations Charlene and Josh on a great addition to the growing library on social media and technologies.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

With the rate at which our presidential candidates are holding press conferences to offer apologies for mistakes by their campaigns, it’s seems like we are going to need to evaluate their performances as a campaign issue.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen more campaign coverage about candidate apologies over the past month than real issues like the faltering U.S. economy. Are our candidates and the people associated with their campaigns less savvy than in previous years, or is the media (including new media) on a mission to force politicians to face the music - and TV cameras - on a more regular basis than in the past? Maybe a little of both?

• McCain apologizes for remark about Obama by event host;
• Obama aide resigns over ‘Hilary is a monster comment;’
• Ferraro quits Clinton campaign over Obama remark;
• Obama apologies for pastor comments.

I haven’t seen this much back-pedeling since the last edition of “The Moment of Truth.” At the current pace we can expect there to be roughly 15 more apologies between now and the November election.

Mike Spataro

Dave Balter and his hive of BzzAgents have published a white paper to trigger some thought provoking discussion around ROI models for social media and word-of-mouth.

Called “Valuing Advertising’s Original Medium: The Conversation,” the Bzz team tries to make a case for assigning value to word-of-mouth in a CPM environment, arguing that while advertisers recognize the benefits of consumer-generated media they really don’t know how to calculate a value to the medium. That’s not easy to do.

It’s an intriguing idea, especially when you consider the team’s methodology resulted in a whopping $300 CPM for word of mouth campaigns. BzzAgent does great work and like many in social media circles today, the need for better measurement models and tools remains very high.

If you don’t like the paper you can at least check out why Dave has the coolest CEO photo on the Web.

Two of the world’s largest PR agencies - Edelman and Ketchum - have released comprehensive studies that contain numerous insights related to social media and a variety of other worldwide corporate and media trends.

Edelman’s “8th Annual Trust Barometer” takes a global look at corporate trust and credibility. Some of the more interesting findings from my perspective include:

• More people in Brazil, Russia, India and China use social media for company information than here in the states;
• Google is moving up the ranks as one of the most trusted sources for corporate information, right up there with CNN and the BBC;
• Social networks ranks among the lowest in providing credible information about a brand in the minds of most consumers; and,
• young people seem to show higher levels of trust in business than older influential consumers.

Ketchum’s Report, “Media Myths and Realities” focused more on media usage than corporate trust. It’s key findings included:

• the way professionals communicate is out of sync with the way consumers use media;
• communicators need to include focusing on connecting with individuals in addition to mass media channels;
• consumers in emerging markets are setting the pace for media use; and,
• social networking sites lag far behind other established media channels and sites in overall usage by consumers.

It’s good to see these agencies and others including social media analysis in these annual reports.

Mike Spataro

Business Week’s 2008 Customer Service Champs edition contains a variety of interesting rankings, facts and sidebar articles that underscore the new media challenges faced by those in corporate America today. Although we’ve all heard most of these customer service horror stories before, it’s still good to learn about the progress some brands made from last year to now. The trend for many brands to do more is definitely up from last year.

Unfortunately, Business Week plays the scared tactic card again (like many publications have done in the past) in its Consumer Vigilantes piece - profiling angry out-of-control consumers smashing their products to gain attention and rebates. While there is no question that some companies deserve such wrath and need to listen more closely to their customers, the vast majority of brands have exceptional customer service. If you’re in the business of honest measurement of consumer sentiment about brands like we are, then you know most companies do a pretty good job at taking care of their customers. I doubt we really need to constantly profile out-of-control consumers to gain the attention of most brands today.

Business Week was smart though to balance its coverage with a more realistic view from Jeff Jarvis called “Love the Customers Who Hate You,” that points out how and why customer service is fast becoming the new marketing of this century. Lots of others, like John Bell and Pete Blackshaw also offer their views on the new rankings.

Mike Spataro