Enterprise Web 2.0 - 5 Good Reasons Not All CEOs Should Blog

It's like when you buy a car, suddenly you realize everyone else is driving the same brand. I've discovered some excellent Social Networking sites. Until (if) I find some time to put some original thoughts together, I'll agregate some of the best of what I see out there -Bryan

Enterprise Web 2.0 - 5 Good Reasons Not All CEOs Should Blog: "For those CEOs who are inclined to pass on the joy of blogging but aren't quite sure why, let me give you five good reasons why your instincts may just be right.
1. The same reason most CEOs don't do their own televison commercials. You may be lousy at it. Writing is a form of public performance and unless you're a natural like Jonathan Schwartz you might embarass yourself and your company.

2. It's time consuming. It took me about an hour and half to research and write this post and I've written for a living for the past 40 years. Unless you can spare (and commit to) the 3 to 4 hours a week it will take you to write a couple of decent posts, don't do it. You'll wind up with a nearly deserted blog like Whole Foods president John Mackey's, which was last updated more than a month ago.

3. The reasons your legal department has flagged: running afoul of safe harbor requirements, intellectual-property issues, possible defamation claims, unhappy employees or customers chasing common-law tort actions for who knows what reasons. Sure, the lawyers are overly-cautious assholes; but sometimes they're right.

4. Blogs are so last year. Blogs can be valuable marketing and public relations tools and most companies should be able to find ways to use them effectively. But, the whole CEO blog thing has been over-hyped and may not age well. (All the cool guys will be doing video blogs next year.)

5. The foot-in-mouth syndrome. Are you really going to provide 'vital' information to investors (or anybody else) in your blog. Are you going to discuss new products that are in the works that your competitors don't know about, companies you may be eyeing for acquisition, talks you're having about being acquired, the suspicion that you may not make the numbers next quarter). As the 'primary' source of this “vital” information to investors (to use Professor Stross’ construct) are you really going to use your public blog as the key method of sharing what you know. If you are, please give me a chance to see if I own any stock in your company so I can sell it before you start blogging.

eMarketer Sizes Up Marketing's push into Social Networking

The good news is that social networking is an area where many marketers are eager to test the waters. The bad news is that, in time, many social networking ventures will no doubt be shelved as grand experiments.

"The overall concept of social networking is a powerful thing and it is not going away," says Ms. Williamson. "The underlying concept will influence the way advertising is done in all media, not just online."

People use social network sites to form connections with other people and bridge their online life with their offline life. And companies whose business is built on creating buzz need to tap into those connections in order to effectively market to tastemakers. Social networking, by bringing together friends and strangers alike, enable instant communication and provide an easy way to share content (whether self-created or from another source) and offer a single source for viral marketing and word of mouth.

"Hollywood studios and automotive companies have been at the forefront of social network marketing. They are businesses with a steady stream of new products to promote," says Ms. Williamson. "But even for companies whose products are more mundane, or not youth-targeted, social networking provides opportunities."


(This excerpt has been republished with permission from the good folks at eMarketer)

The bigger the brand, the more vulnerable it is to consumer demands

BUSINESS POLITICS | Brands are so important today that firms tremble in the face of public opinion

BY SEBASTIAN MALLABY

Motorola used to be a manufacturer of cell phones. Then it came up with its ultra-slim Razr handset and became a lifestyle company as well. Apple made the same transition years ago: It is not so much a computer maker as a style iCon. At certain select nightclubs, Coca-Cola is selling its black sugar in funky bottles etched with glow-in-the-dark graphics. This redesign helped to propel Coca-Cola onto a recent Business Week cover.

So what, you might say: The cool quotient in products may boost profits and amuse consumers, but what's its significance for the future of the United States? Quite a lot, actually. The rising power of brands has implications for public health, globalization and the environment. It may even be changing the political equation.

Not long ago, the value of a company consisted largely of its "book value": physical assets such as factories and equipment plus money in the bank. But today book value accounts for only about a third of the stock market capitalization of the top 150 US. companies, down from three-quarters two decades ago. In the new economy, corporate value lies in intangible assets: patents, databases, know-how—and brands.

So brands are eclipsing factories in value, and big brands appear to be crowding out smaller ones and reaching all around the world. Ten years ago Unilever sold its foods and detergents under 1,600 brand names, according to Kevin Keller of the Tuck School of Business; now Unilever uses fewer than 400. The world's biggest companies (Citiigroup, General Electric, IBM, Microsoft, Toyota, Wal-Mart) sell most or even all of their products under one or t\VO brands.

As brands have grown bigger, they have also grown more vulnerable. Marketing gurus such as Tom Collinger of the Medill School describe an unnerving revolution: The owners of brands used to sustain them with huge advertising budgets, but now consumers form their views of products in Internet chat rooms. It almost doesn't matter how much America Online spends on advertising. A blogger recently recorded a company salesman refusing to cancel an account when asked repeatedly to do so. The Monty Pythonesque result is all over the Internet, ruining whatever might be left of AOL's brand.

If brands are both valuable and vulnerable, political consequences follow. Mighty companies have so much riding on their corporate image that they quiver in the face of customer opinion. And if they are mass-market companies, customer opinion is the same as public opinion, so corporate bosses become as sensitive to political and social shifts as elected officials.

Consider public opinion about junk food. Parents don't want kids to eat it, and Ronald McDonald understands. McDonald's has added salad and fruit to its menu; the home of fries and burgers has transformed itself into the biggest buyer of apples in the US.

Meanwhile, Wendy's has stopped frying its food in trans fats, which have also been banished from Oreo cookies and Frito-Lay snacks; General Mills makes its Cheerios and Wheaties out of whole grain.

Or consider public opinion about globalization.

No regulation compels Nike to pay more than the prevailing wage in the poor countries it works in. But the value of Nike's brand dwarfs its costs of manufacturing, so it wisely chooses to do so.

No regulation, or at least none that is enforced effectively, prevents furniture companies from despoiling Third World forests. But U.S. stores with brands worth protecting insist on certification from the Forest Stewardship Council.

The fight about including labour and environmental standards in trade agreements rages inconclusively in Congress. But corporations do not suffer from that sort of gridlock, so they're ahead of the curve.

Or consider the environmental behaviour of U.S. companies at home. This used to be the classic case of politics leading business: For most of the past generation, regulators have forced environmental rules on grumbling corporations. But in the current debate on climate change, this order has reversed itself. Impatient companies are capping their own carbon emissions: Wal-Mart has promised to double the efficiency of its vehicle fleet and achieve a 30cent cut in its stores' energy usage.

Its motive is not complicated. Internet-enabled critics have assaulted WallMart, and the firm's polling has suggested that eight per cent of shoppers have quit visiting its outlets because of its stance on social issues. An environmental makeover was essential to the brand.

Washington Post-reprinted in the Vancouver Sun, August 11/06

viral agency? maybe irritatingly rash-like

Agency.com makes a lame “viral” pitch to Subway for their account by posting on YouTube.

Open Season on Agency.com ensues. Coudal takes the first rifle shot...

On Advertising: A move to anarchy ( International Herald Tribune)

"The so-called Web 2.0 phenomenon, reflected in the popularity of social networking sites like MySpace.com and video-sharing services like YouTube.com, has created a new breed of amateur creators of advertising. And the ad industry, eagerly casting about for ideas to stave off its prophesied demise, is starting to embrace them.

Few ad campaigns are considered complete anymore without a prominent Internet presence, preferably with an interactive element to draw in consumers and get them to 'engage' with the brand. Increasingly, this interactivity takes the form of customizing part of a marketing campaign; in some cases, advertisers are going even further and allowing consumers to make the ads themselves"

More here: On Advertising: A move to anarchy - Business - International Herald Tribune:

Microsoft Live Labs: Photosynth

Microsoft Live Labs: Photosynth: "'What if your photo collection was an entry point into the world, like a wormhole that you could jump through and explore'"

Social Network

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A social network is a social structure made of nodes which are generally individuals or organizations. It indicates the ways in which they are connected through various social familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close familial bonds. The term was first coined in 1954 by J. A. Barnes (in: Class and Committees in a Norwegian Island Parish, "Human Relations"). The maximum size of social networks tends to be around 150 people and the average size around 124 (Hill and Dunbar, 2002).