360DigitalInfluence

Here are the slides from the latest presentation by our team at Ogilvy, presented as part of the series done with The Wall Street Journal and GoToWebinar on Social Media for Business.

Campaign Asia just reported on the expansion of our regional Social Media team, with Lucille Snape and Annie Hammel joining as Digital Strategists and Koby Geddes as a Digital Analyst, all in Sydney. Welcome to the team!

Full details below. Our expansion is proceeding at breakneck speed, so do get in touch with me if you are looking for a social media job. Some relevant characteristics of successful candidates: Passion for Social Media, bordering on obsessive; super intelligent; super hard worker; super fun; good taste in music.

Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence Recruits Three Key Hires

Sydney, 13 August, 2010: Ogilvy 360 Degree Digital Influence has further expanded its social media capability with the recruitment of three new specialists into its practice.

In response to increasing client demand, Lucille Snape and Annie Hammel join the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence team as Digital Strategists and Koby Geddes as a Digital Analyst. Lucille previously worked at Euro RSCG, Koby at OMD Australia and Annie at Hachette Filipacchi Media in the US.

The appointments come just 12 months after award-winning strategist Brian Giesen moved from Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence in Washington DC to head up the Australian operation, and help manage the Asia Pacific practice.

“Since the appointment of Brian our team has quickly grown to six specialists who are full-time social media practitioners,” said Graham White, Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence’s Managing Director in Australia. “This reflects the growth, adoption and opportunity for social media in our clients’ communications programs.

“There is no doubt that Australian organisations, both public and private sector, are rushing to embrace social media,” he added.

Brian Giesen, Regional Director, Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence, said: “Social media is not just a new channel. It represents a fundamental consumer behavioural shift that requires marketers to change how they market, how they are organised and importantly how they measure success.

“Consumers get social media. But companies, by contrast, have been playing catch up,” Giesen said. “The good news is they’re learning fast that it’s not optional and that a comprehensive strategic approach to integrate social media is essential.

“For Ogilvy, it’s of critical importance to have an expert team to guide them through it. The addition of Lucille, Annie and Koby to our existing team will further strengthen Ogilvy’s social media capabilities and our ability to deliver successful, strategic campaigns for our clients,” he said.

“We anticipate further hires in the near future,” he added.

Ogilvy PR is part of STW Group, Australia’s leading marketing content and communications services group. Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence is Ogilvy’s word of mouth marketing discipline that integrates the power of social media with digital marketing.

Our Hong Kong-based Smoothie Strategist, Hayden Faram, whips up another delicious and healthy afternoon snack for the 360 Digital Influence team.

This video on Social Media in APAC created for a recent internal meeting of our regional Digital Influence team. Enjoy!

Two great new members of our regional Social Media team: Scott McBride and John Stauffer. Welcome!

Wanchai Computer Centre is Hong Kong’s gadget heaven. Not only do you get a wide range of amazing gadgets, but they are cheap, due to Hong Kong’s tax-free status.

Similar in spirit to Tokyo’s Akihabara or Thailand’s Pantip Plaza, Wanchai computer center is one of those unique Asia tech bazaars. (Sadly Taipei recently moved their computer center from old bomb shelters to a new building)

This video was done by Tem Hansen and Andrea Fenn to welcome members of Ogilvy’s regional Digital Influence team to Hong Kong for our regional Social Media summit.

It is an internal only meeting, but we plan a Hong Kong Foursquare swarm. Let me know if you want to join!

Two recent studies, with interesting visualizations, take a look at the sociability of the Fortune 100. (h/t Daniel Brenikov for the links)

Disclosure: Many of the more social companies are Ogilvy clients.

The consultancy iStrategy created an infographic to help visualize data on the Fortune 100′s social savvy.

NetProspex has another take with a chart of the top 50 companies on Social Media.

@bdgiesen and I had great fun today presenting this deck from Ogilvy’s Sydney office. Incredible live interaction online with 107 Tweets reaching an audience more than 63,000 total followers.

Join our webinar next month when we do “Foursquare for Business”!

At a recent tweet up in Shanghai, I met up with PhD candidate Marcella Szablewicz who is currently doing research into the gaming communities in China. Based out of Shanghai, she is doing qualitative research with gamers from different communities and has gathered some interesting insights.

For one thing, gamers in China are very much defined by the type of game they play and there is much hidden snobbery.

The intellectual snobs prefer Warcraft — a traditional role playing game (RPG) with few graphics — while others prefer World of Warcraft the wildly popular and graphic game.

Some domestic games are chosen out of pure nationalistic feel, while others are preferred for their easy and relaxed feel. Others are considered electronic (mind) athletics, but each game type has a label.

Marcella also does research beyond the gaming industry and into youth culture and the Internet.

There is a whole new discourse now when people are starting to talk about the fear of loosing their kids to the Internet. Internet addiction is a common worrying trend in China, Marcella said.

Find Marcella Szablewixz on LinkedIn

A video describing our partnership with GoToWebinar and The Wall Street Journal for trainings on Social Media. Join the next one on June 2!