360DigitalInfluence

Hurry! Space is limited for this 30-minute webinar and registration is required.

Join the award-winning Social Media team from Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide for a free 30-minute online seminar powered by Citrix GoToWebinar and done in partnership with The Wall Street Journal Asia.

This webinar will provide concrete examples, action plans and case studies, including:

· 5 key steps for a business-to-business strategy;
· How to build and engage a community of potential and current customers;
· Real-life case studies from successful business-to-business strategies;
· The highly popular – and now extended – Question and Answer section;
· Much, much more…

The seminar will be led by Brian Giesen a senior regional strategist in Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence team and moderated by Graham White, Managing Director of Howorth Communications in Sydney.

Join us Wednesday, 3 March at 11:00am (Hong Kong time):

http://bit.ly/aWsvrI

We are lucky to have Chris Ramsey, one of the co-founders of Radian6, here in Sydney next week and are hosting an event with him at Ogilvy House in St. Leonards. The session will be held next Thursday morning and the topic will be “The Social Web: A Guide for PR Practitioners”.

The event is being organised by Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence and In the Public Interest (Frocomm Communications). Here is some information about the session from the event flyer:

The speakers will discuss the following topics:
1. The power of listening, analysing & measuring: Chris Ramsey, Radian6 USA
2. The power of engaging: Brian Giesen, Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence
3. Q&A with audience

Date: 4th Feb 2010
Time: 7.30am-8.00am networking; 8.00-9.00am presentation
Venue: Ogilvy House, 72 Christie Street, St Leonards NSW
Price: $25 (+gst)

REGISTER HERE!

What do hydrants, voicemails and denial have in common?  They’re all now closely associated with the Tiger Woods brand, according to new research from Nielsen Online.

Today, Nielsen Online provided me with a Brand Association Map demonstrating the impact of the controversy on the Tiger Woods brand - based on analysis of online discussion about Tiger Woods both before and after the controversy.

Not surprisingly, as a result of the recent controversy the Tiger Woods brand has gone from being closely associated with video games, golf and other sports to other, well, less wholesome topics.

While the jury’s still out on how long it will take for the Tiger Woods brand to recover, one thing’s for certain - these less wholesome associations will take far longer to fade away.

The Huffington Post in conjunction with Hopenhagen.org is sending one person to Copenhagen for the UN Climate Change Conference to both represent concerns of people around the world and to report back daily as a HuffPost citizen journalist.

Australian Cathie McGinn has put in her submission for the HuffPo Citizen Journalist competition, and we’re doing everything we can to support her bid to get there. So please help. Vote for Cathie, and when you’re done, get others to vote. Once you’re done with that, tweet about it. Then, once you’ve done that, share it on Facebook. And don’t forget to become a citizen of Hopenhagen! Call it bias if you will, but I think there is no one better suited for this role, than someone living in a country that is already feeling the effects of Climate Change.

Since 1950, Australia has already warmed by up to 0.7 per cent. We are seeing more heat waves, an increase in the intensity of Australian droughts and have experienced a 70 mm rise is sea levels. In Asia, crop yields are declining, and the retreat of glaciers is unprecedented. This is real. It’s happening now, and it would appear that the changes are gaining velocity with each day that we choose to do nothing.

Hopenhagen is change – and that change will be powered by all of us. Change will not happen unless the people demand it.

[Disclaimer: Ogilvy PR Worldwide Pty Ltd are a global partner for Hopenhagen.]

For years and years, search has always been the number one reason people go online. Nearly 9 times out of 10 people will start out an Internet session by using Google, Yahoo! or Bing to find a new site or look for information about a product. Advertisers and marketers have spent countless dollars trying to get their attention through sponsored ads.

But, interestingly, new research released from Hitwise earlier this month suggests that in Australia and in other markets across Asia Pacific search may soon move to second most popular online activity - behind social networking. According to the Hitwise report:

Social networks and forums are set to eclipse Search Engines and become the most visited industry for the first time over the coming months, most likely during the weeks immediately before or after Christmas.

The report also shows that search is already the #2 online activity behind social networking in other APAC countries, including Hong Kong and Singapore. Other key findings from the report:

• 11.7% of all visits to social networks originated in Australia
• Facebook is currently the #2 Web site in Australia - and it’s projected to overtake Google
• Search is a popular activity within social networks (MySpace = artists, Facebook = entertainment/utility)
• 26 minutes, 13 seconds is the average time spent on Facebook per visit

These trends could have huge implications on the massive budgets that are spent very day on pay-per-click and search marketing globally. Already, consumers are spending exponentially more time on social networks (27 percent of all time spent online in Australia in the past month was spent on Facebook, according to Nielsen) than search engines.

As more and more brands become not only findable but engagable on social sites, we could start to see social networks as being not only the #1 online activity but the #1 place online where smart brands invest their marketing and advertising dollars to build community and engagement among their customers.

Next week we are hosting the third Webinar in our “Executive Guide to Social Media” series, which is a partnership with the Wall Street Journal.

The session is going to be focused on what to do when a crisis hits and we’re fortunate to be joined by John Bell, the global managing director for Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence and Jamie Moeller, who heads up our global public affairs practice.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM Sydney / 11 AM to Noon Hong Kong
REGISTER HERE

Here is a quick overview of what will be covered during the Webinar:

The best time to respond to a crisis is before it happens. That is a communications fundamental. Now in age of Twitter, mobile phones, blogs and Facebook, the speed and style of our response has changed dramatically.

Brands that are used to tightly controlled messages are thrust into the back and forth of social media. Detractors are savvy with the ways of YouTube and inciting crowds. Customers and stakeholders often demand that their brands be more transparent and engaging than ever before.

This webinar will include concrete examples and action plans answering numerous questions, including:

• How can you prepare for a crisis today?
• How do you rally your Marketing and Communications team to use all of the resources of the social Web and effectively manage a crisis?
• How should you assemble a plan?
• What NOT to do in a crisis

So get your crisis questions ready and register now as space is limited and we’ve had more than 2,000 registrations for previous sessions!

Consumers most distrust banks and telecommunications firms, according to new research released in Australia by Grey Group Australia and conducted by Sweeney Research

According to a report in AdNews, the Grey Sweeney Trust Scale Survey, will offer a new perspective on trust in brands and organisations. It was an online poll of 1500 people, conducted in Australia in August. Key highlights:

70% said firms are money hungry and too focused on profits.

20% highlighted banks or telcos as organisations they no longer trust

54% could think of an organisation or brand they no longer trust

59% placed more trust in Australian companies than overseas firms

Reassuringly, Aussies do have high levels of trust for charities, with The Salvation Army the most trusted brand. This is followed by Google, Australia Post and Medicare. When they look at the business sector, airlines are the most trusted, beating food manufacturers, sporting bodies and supermarket chains.

Does the rest of Asia concur with these findings, or are us Australians just a very different animal?

The New Oxford American Dictionary has announced it’s 2009 Word of the Year:

unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.

Who would have thought that with all the talk of short form communication eroding the English language, social media would make such a significant contribution? LOL.

I am attending the Digital Marketing and Media Summit in Melbourne today and just attended a great session from Mark Higginson, Director of Analytics at Nielsen Online.

Mark shared some interesting new research from Nielsen Online today about Facebook and social media usage here in Australia:

• 8 hours/month:  Australians spend on average 8 hours/month on Facebook
• Australia Leads: Australians spend more time on average per month using social media (any social media site, not just Facebook) than any other country (7:12 hours/month per Australian on average)
• 8 million Aussies: the current number of facebook.com users is 8 million Australians/month
• 13.7 million overall: there are 13.7 million active monthly Internet users in Australia

I think these statistics are remarkable because they show that Australians are doing more than checking out sites like Facebook and Twitter, setting up an account, and then abandoning the sites after a short amount of time. That’s a common refrain of non-believers out there. We Australians are, as Mark correctly observed, addicted.

Here are some resources for anyone interested in learning more about the landscape of Facebook + social media here in Australia:

• Facebook for Business:  presentation created by myself and Thomas Crampton on business strategies for Facebook. This was tailored to Asia Pacific and delivered as part of our partnership with the Wall Street Journal Asia.
• Australian Social Networking Jumps:  link to a Digital Media news story about how Australian social networking jumped by 29% - from Comscore, Ausgust 2009.
• History of the Australian Social Web: much-Dugg interactive timeline of the Australian social media and digital evolution
• DMMS09 Twitter Stream: feed of Tweets from the 2009 Digital Media & Marketing Summit
• Asia Digital Map Australia + Social Media Posts: all of the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence posts on Australia

Today the Charter for Compassion was unveiled to the world. To help raise awareness of this event, we have created a video about what compassion means to Australians.

We encourage everyone across Asia Pacific to blog and Tweet about what compassion means to you today and to read - and affirm - the Charter through an embeddable widget!