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

Bad news sell… or a laughing matter does.

On Tuesday, Malaysia’s Information, Communication and Culture Minister gained celebrity status on Twitter, and here’s why.

While the world is focused on the misfortune and issues in Haiti, Malaysia had its own share of the limelight at the start of 2010. We made news with our recent torching and vandalising of churches following a court ruling that allowed Catholic publication, The Herald, to use the word “Allah” to refer to the Christian God.

In the spate of events, a student was charged for posting a church attack hoax on Facebook — he was charged with threatening public safety in relation to a comment he posted about the recent attacks on churches.

Amidst all this clamour, Malaysia’s Information, Communication and Culture Minister, Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim, had stepped forward to advise Malaysians, especially Muslims, against being totally immersed in the Internet culture, especially Facebook and Twitter.

In recent news reports, he said that facilities such as the Internet could not be accepted wholly because it was a form of business introduced by the West and “Malaysians were just users”. Datuk Seri Dr Rais was quoted as saying that when using such facilities, the people must upkeep the values taught by Islam, Buddhism or Christianity to maintain our culture.

Following this. the local blogosphere and twittersphere were astir with comments about what he said. Twitter-ers have started making jokes about him being too old and regressive-minded, and have made #yorais a trending topic on Tuesday (moving up from no.8 to no.4 within the hour I was writing this). Thanks to the hashtag creator, too.

I was trying hard not to ROTF in stitches reading tweets about “Rais Yatim is so ancient, he…”

Now, I wonder how he (and the government) is going to influence the people to resist (being totally immersed) the powerful allure of Facebook and Twitter (and ultimately the Internet). This is especially when Pikom — the National Information and Communications Technology Association of Malaysia, expects the Internet penetration in Malaysia to grow between 10% and 20% this year, and broadband penetration to reach 50% from the current 32%.

Last week Google announced it’s real time search feature, which I believe is set to forever change the way we think about and use search.

If you haven’t seen it in action yet I recommend you go to the Google home page and search for something topical like climate change.

In the results some movement should catch your eye and there they’ll be - real time search results. Take a moment to just sit back, relax and let the strangely compelling waterfall of information wash over you.

Once you wake from the dull, Google-induced trance you’ll have hopefully experienced an epiphany similar to mine:

Right at this moment people all over the world are talking about you, your business, your brand, your event, whatever it may be, and now as soon as they say it - Google will display it.

So how are we going to influence the conversation and harness the power of real time in 2010?

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.

Today we held the third in our series of Executive’s Guide to Social Media, done in cooperation with GoToWebinar and The Wall Street Journal.

I moderated the session in which Digital Influence Global Managing John Bell and Managing Director of the Global Public Affairs Practice Jamie Moeller presented on how to deal use Social Media in a crisis.

As always there were great questions and discussion afterwards. You can hear all the questions and answers (as well as the presentation) on this video of the presentation.

Watch this blog for the timing of our next session!

Social Media for Crisis Management from 360 Digital Influence on Vimeo.

Third in our series of Executive’s Guide to Social Media, Social Media for Crisis Management presented by John Bell and Jamie Moeller

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!

We have been fooling around with “What does the internet think?” a little bit in here for a bit of fun. And with the big news of the day being the Microsoft Windows 7 launch I thought I would see what the internet thought about Windows 7. Little did I know I would uncover a massive conspiracy.

My first search I used the fastest method, and asked the Internet to use Google only, and here is the result (click for a full size):

I thought to myself, “Gee, I didn’t think that the internet was that apathetic about Windows 7!”

So I thought I’d rerun the search based on Microsoft’s own search engine, Bing:

I smelt a rat. So the final search I took the slowest option and checked against ALL search engines:

Is there something fishy going on at Googleplex?

—

Disclosure: Microsoft is an Ogilvy client, however they haven’t paid for or endorsed this post, but this blogger thought the results were extremely amusing. This blogger doesn’t really believe that Google is tampering with the scores… or are they?

We have all read about how, Facebook is growing in India. But it seems that now following Obama, even the Indian government is trying to make its presence felt in the social media. The most recent addition to the list of Indian political leaders trying to connect with the one billion populace of India, of whom only 5 per-cent can  be on internet, has been our Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh. After reading a Reuters article on how our PM has been spotted on Facebook, I could hardly contain my curiosity and ended up finding Dr Singhs’ profile on Facebook. What I found looked authentic enough, though I have a few questions.

Since  Government officials are barred from the use of social networks, how did Dr Singh actually get around to doing this? Also somehow the picture of our Prime Minister, updating his status on Facebook, while at work, just doesn’t quite ring the right bell in my mind. It would be interesting however, if he does come up with a “How well do you know Manmohan Singh quiz”

Also why isn’t the national portal being used for this? According to me, the Indian government could have taken inspiration from the White House and established a Government page on Facebook. Sooner or later this needs to happen as a lot of business decision makers and practically the entire urban youth is on these sites and this segment is quite important for the government to connect with.

A social media element which can be mashed up with the national portal to enable the citizens to make maximum use of the services can also play a very important role in promoting democracy in its true sense, in the world’s largest democracy.

However, to summarize, whether it is the Government’s PR machinery which has made this page or Dr Singh himself, what is heartening is that a change is happening and sooner or later, the day won’t be far when the government utlises social media more actively to communicate with the people.

As for now what next Dr Singh? A twitter account? Infact Shashi Tharoor recently tweeted that the PM had enquired about what was twitter. Which shows his interest in twitter as well.

In traditional Facebook style” I Like This”.

Join me, Josh Mehlman (Editor, NETT Magazine) and Suzi Dafnis (Community Director, Australian Businesswomen’s Network) and find out!

Next week Wednesday, we’ll be running a 1-hour session on Facebook for Business.  Here are the details:

Lunch+Learn Webinar
Title:    Using Facebook to Build Your Brand
Date:    Wednesday, 14 Oct 2009
Time:    12 noon Australian EDST

REGISTER HERE!

During the session, we’ll be giving practical tips and covering:

• 5 ways to a rapid-start strategy in Facebook
• How to engage your Facebook community
• Real-life examples of how businesses of all sizes use Facebook to build their brands
• And more…

We’ve all vented one time or another about a negative customer service experience. Maybe it was the rude flight attendant, or the twelve-transfers it took to speak to a live human being to resolve an issue.  The challenge for many brands today is that Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and other forms of social media make it possible for hundreds or thousands of people to see and hear these negative experiences.

I like the analogy that Rohit Bhargava used last week that when there’s an unanswered negative review online, it’s a bit like having someone next to you have their phone ring but they don’t answer it.  You might think, what’s wrong with you - why are are you ignoring your phone?  Social media makes it possible for the entire world to see that person - or brand - choose to oddly ignore their ringing phone.

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