Hi all,
The following may be of use to those looking to introduce their brands to blogging.
It covers the basic types of blogs, what drives bloggers to create content, and how brands could potentially drive chatter on the web through getting started with blogging.
As ever, all thoughts are encouraged!
Google hosts a conference for the good and the great each year. Our very own Sue Unerman was there and delivers this round-up of the best of the best:
Agenda : Day 1
Opening address Lord Mandelson.
Said nothing for half an hour about making what we could of the world after the storm and being pragmatic as opposed to idealistic. He fears a W shaped recession and admitted that the govt is underequipped to deal with the 24/7 digital world (echoing Andrew Neil at our first Age of Dialogue Conference three years ago).
Best bit was when Richard Eyre asked him to guarantee that the internet would not be regulated in a way which might hamper entrepreneurialism and he asked the question back : “Do you really think the people of this country want a totally unregulated www?” Richard had no answer.
*The World in Data – Hans Rosling.
Well worth watching his act if you haven’t seen it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SynjhagPiw
Panel1
Staying the Course
CEO and Chairs of Daimler, John Lewis and Telecom Italia
Bit tame as you’d expect.
Franco Bernabe “Not all that is new is good, not all that is good is new”.
Charlie Mayfield J. Lewis “I can see a time when we make more from assembling a bbq than selling it”
*Panel2
Staying the Course – Nassim Taleb and Ian Bremmer.
Taleb author of brilliant book The Black Swan says “the more you study economics the less competent you’re going to be…. the past is not similar to the present.. we’re in something we’ve never seen before”.
“Forecasting is futile, being prepared is worthwhile”. Watch at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9nTsM5npZ8 .
Taleb says the nation state is irrelevant in the time of Google, get rid of nation governments. Bremmer says local and state issues are a bigger concern to people than ever.. they don’t care about the rest of the world now.
Prince of Asturias
Bit dull.
Prince of Norway
Dignity in development
“what will you say to your grandchildren when they ask you what did you do about the major challenges of our time”
Talked about Millennium Development Goals (we haven’t made much progress… nb one of the goals is gender equality – delegates 90% male)
Panel – Reinventing media
Lively debate especially enjoyable rant from Pedro Ramirez of El Mundo against Google.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-LfwlIr7pE
Realising Responsibility
Mo Ibrahim and Mary Robinson on ethics.
*Itay Talgam – Conductor
How to lead – well worth watching http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGF6E0R5tj4
Day 2
Panel – the road ahead
Deutsche Bank, Banesto, George Osbourne
Lively and honest debate re financial crash… Fantastic question re ethics vs regulation from the floor.
Anshu Jain says “bankers suffered from an excess of animal spirits”
*Prince Charles on Rainforests
Stop cutting down trees!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-G-XSRqPWA
Combining Tradition with Technology
Chief Surui – his tribe only met the outside world in the sixties.. now he’s using Google to fend off loggers. “Technology is an instrument for dialogue” . He’s been chief since he was 17!
Panel New Frontiers
Spinvox, Spotify, Playfish, Space adventures
Panel Collaborative Creativity
Nice presentation of Nike Plus, Havas have a Global Youth piece of research and are proposing to hold a conference : One Young World next Feb chaired by Kofi Annan, you have to be 25 or under to attend (and pay £3k). Nice bit of promotion for Havas though, why we should expect the next generation to come up with answers to the problems this generation have created is another question. Tony Davidson from Weiden and Kennedy wants to build a giant sundial in the desert. Chaz Jenkins talked about the YouTube Orchestra
*Panel Citizen Politics
Inspiring and humbling story from Oscar Morales Founder 1m voices against FARC – do not miss this.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7225824.stm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQWWK4tb9RU&feature=channel
*Google perspective
Larry Page and Eric Schmidt double act – whats next ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se-wlHw9XQM&feature=channel
*Fireside Chat
Then joined by Richard Branson who is the only man with any answers… to war (Elders Group), to global warming (BioChar and inland lakes in deserts as seas rise), to Darfur (just done a 3 day fast).
Can’t knock the creativity, energy and enormous ideas and charisma.
Closing reflections
Nikesh sums up (and tells people off who are leaving the room!)
Short highlights here at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD7UfiDbrQc
this week i have mostly been thinking about data, charity and turkey . . . data and charity from a work perspective, turkey from a “go away and do no work for a week perspective” . . . so next week this will be brought to you by our own version of BAD (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc8zkz9XSRU) – Betts, Aves and Davies . . . anyway,
1) http://google-cpg.blogspot.com/2009/04/paid-search-builds-brands-unilever.html
apparently search works . . . or something . . . well, helps drive brand metrics for a rather large fmcg company – which leads me tenuously to
as far as i’m concerned don’t ask what google can do for your brands ask what search data can do for your planning (those of you who have been party to learning to love data know what the hell i’m talking about)
2)
this is just interesting as a way of visualising data, moving people, telling stories, it will also wind up your creative agency friends no end 
. . .
whilst on the charity tip
at the harlequins annual dinner dance (oh yes i move in stratospheric circles even though i look nowt like a highly networked driver individual type ) a man talked about this charity . . . http://www.hopehiv.org/ – his presentation technique was genius – he gave all 800 people at the dinner a tenner (a real one) not from the charity, nor from quins, but from his bank account . . . and said they could do three things with it . . . . 1) keep it (if they thought they were worse off than aids orphans in africa) 2) give it back (if they already did lots of work for other charities) 3) turn it into more money . . . i guarantee he at least doubled his money not by asking for loads of money, but by talking about small, environmentally realistic amounts, on which . . . (oh yes, look at that for flow)
3) http://trendwatching.com/briefing/
trendwatching’s may briefing is about “innovation jubilation” . . . building on the links walshy and i have fired you to mr neumeier’s work, the simple question is how fit for purpose is what your brand is doing and saying RIGHT NOW (are you in tune with people trends or just projecting stuff to overcome brand barriers) . . . most of our tools are too slow to help with this – one thing that isn’t ? real time search data
i’m off for a week of swimming pools and water slides, don’t be surprised if i look even more knackered when i get back . . . at which point i will post something in more detail on data (you can’t wait can you ?)
see ya
binns
hello, so i’ve been thinking about some things beyond swine flu this week . . . but i’m only going to post about one – data, i love it, we all love it, we are all going to talk about it a little more over the coming weeks and months . . . looking forward to it
1) so, question one i ask you – are you the algorithm?
2) The Guardian came to see me the other day, and we ended up talking about data not about media, so it was actually a meeting i enjoyed . . . they are doing some frankly fascinating stuff . . .
Now, I’ve never massively been into the Guardian as a paper but as a brand i find it interestingly plays into john grant’s bubbles thing - from the long term deep investment in festivals through this move into open source and all the way to their linked datablog . . . http://tinyurl.com/qgo8j3 . . . some people (including themselves) are already doing some ace stuff with this including this mash-up of google maps and mp travel expense claims
and this for the footie fans amongst you http://tinyurl.com/d94mjy
for me, the thing this raises is about what story you tell with the data (and in a nod to team zen, how), because the data itself is neither useful nor interesting, its what you do with it that counts (as they say)
which takes me to where i will start with those of you in planning teams as we go on this whole data + deniro = success tip . . . we tell stories for a living, those stories are the stories of how to change consumer behaviour for sure, but to steal from 1964 “the medium is the message” (maybe we’ll post next week on 60′s and 70′s cultural theorists, a lot things are coming full circle/into our line of sight now) – treat data as a spreadsheet or a bar chart and we’re all in trouble, treat it as one of the narrative voices in your story and we are getting interesting . . .
3) it seems the emeritus mr hollis has posted about something similar overnight -
oh, and just because i quite like razorfish (always have done) an added extra
4) Razorfish’s annual client summit http://tinyurl.com/c5v5b7
there is some really interesting stuff in here (props walshy) – i like the reinvention of consumer research as community and influence research thought, but there is loads of other stuff hidden under a wealth of twitter nonsense
much like the rhythm, data is gonna get you . . . watch out
so, i offered you beauty and here it comes may 1st, one of those days that i’ve always found a little more beautiful than others – anyway i’m not really one for joining the dots, so play around with it all . . . where were we ? buckminster fuller and this
“when i’m working on a problem i never think about beauty. but when i have finished . if the solution is not beautiful, i know it is wrong”
some say this may even start with the brief . . .
all your favourite ad agencies briefing templates . . . have a look and sort the wheat from the chaff . . . they all have interesting elements to them (well most of them) but check out the one that ended with a drumming sodding monkey – oh yeah, i know, we’ll start with a blank piece of paper – empowerment generally requires some structure though boys . . .
weekly design podcast – just might expand your horizons, frankly it might not as well . . .
the importance of clarity and white space in the aesthetic of beauty (maybe) also an interesting point of the pursuit of trends in there somewhere
4) http://tinyurl.com/dklc32 or
just in case you missed it in your weekly dose of zen, – me and walshy think this stuff is important so we are giving it a combined frequency of 2 – and across different formats – deal with that postar . . .
i found myself getting asked why i hadn’t covered “brand experience” in a presentation to some people selling toothpaste on a global level yesterday, interesting question, my high falutin reply being “everything about a brand constitues its experience, sometimes that will be phyical, sometimes it won’t but you’ve got to ask yourself what value are you adding” . . . and then i found the above – not being a car man i hadn’t really ever thought about the dealership aesthetic, but apparently audi have . . .
have fun in the sun
binns [show_avatar email=chris.binns@mediacom.com]
The Guardian came to see me the other day, and we ended up talking about data not about media, so it was actually a meeting i enjoyed . . . they are doing some frankly fascinating stuff . . .