After getting well oiled in the pre-reception, most of the standing-room-only crowd rushed the seats, then started grabbing their phones as the moderator told them how to email, text, or Twitter questions to him for the panel [but, sigh, Twitter wasn’t working at the time]. Then, off we went into into a very candid, revealing look at how big-company brands are thinking about social media today, and—do tell—how some of them are actually even doing something about it.

Since I couldn’t Twitter the proceedings, a skill I’m becoming quite well-honed at, I had to....yes, take notes on dead trees. But, hey, whatever works. Now I’m gonna give it back to you straight up, as I heard it—well, at least some of what I thought were high points worth writing down.

General Mills’ Cuene got things started with a bold prediction: “In a few years, there may be no better way our brands go to market than social media.” He noted there are lots of consumers doing things with his company’s brands on MySpace that they of course didn’t ask the permission of General Mills to do, but implied that at least some of that is good for the brands involved. Best Buy’s Koelling spoke briefly about his new social network for company employees called Blue Shirt Nation, which already has 22,000 users—and even has a chapter devoted to it in the back of Charlene Li’s book, “Groundswell” (just out). Kleckner was asked about Target’s Facebook page and said it now has 33,000 users. That’s without any real marketing, though, he pointed out, noting he’d like to see it promoted more. What’s General Mills doing on Facebook? moderator Kraabel asks. “Well, nothing,” admitted Cuene, “but we’re looking and thinking” and agreed that “there’s tons of unauthorized things” people are doing about his company’s brands and products on the social networks. What’s surprising to him, he said, is that there isn’t too much monitoring by the company yet, “except what we do in corporate communications...the brands are doing a little, but it’s mostly head-scratching.”

When the moderator asked the panel who’s doing social media well, he got an answer from Target’s Kleckner that drew laughs, considering the makeup of the panel: “Circuit City.” I assumed that to mean a social initiative of theirs for consumers, which I wasn’t aware of, as opposed to the successful internal effort we’d just heard about from their rival Best Buy. “We don’t really have a corporate voice doing that (referring to Circuit City’s effort),” Target’s interactive marketer said, obviously with a tinge of envy. [I found it interesting that Circuit City had gotten the jump on Best Buy in this manner, since that also happened in 1999 when CC’s full e-commerce site beat Best Buy to market by 10 months. But I was to find out later that Best Buy isn’t too far behind this time. I guess Number Twos have to try harder—and in this case, CC is a very distant Number Two.] Fingerhut’s Smith said his take is that “the companies doing well in social media are those that are responsive.” General Mills’ Cuene said “it’s a huge challenge for us both in how we respond, and in what we say. We’ve been built for one message, one campaign. We’re not well set up for this.”

Best Buy’s Koelling is not aware of many companies doing social media well, but said “to engage socially, you must be useful” and “successful companies are providing people with tools.” General Mills’ Cuene said a “ ‘how-can-we-help-you’ mentality (akin to a retail salesperson’s) needs to be drilled into companies”—and he includes his own. Target’s Kleckner says companies need to keep working on “how to translate physical experiences to online experiences.”

But it was at this point that things got even more interesting. Best Buy’s Koelling was especially eloquent: “We’ve allowed corporations, for a long time, to be NOT social. Now they have to be able to show up at the party without being boring or dangerous.” But he wasn’t done yet. “Who’s gonna teach us how to do this social stuff?  Our agencies?  I don’t think so—It’s going to be the customer.” Fingerhut’s Smith agreed wholeheartedly, direct marketer that he is: “You have to listen.” And it was then that General Mills’ Cuene gave us a critical insight into his own company’s thinking: “The question we ask internally is this: what does your brand look like when it wants to be social.”

Thinking this discussion couldn’t get much better, and seeing I already had a ton of notes, I was glad to see I hadn’t quite run out of paper. But we weren’t done yet—moderator Mike Kraabel of Gage kept pushing, so I flipped my notebook over and looked for more places to scribble: “So how are you measuring this stuff?” he says. “What’s the ROI?” Which Koelling jumped right into with this gem: “Social media is so cheap these days, if you can’t engage your customer, you’re doing something wrong.” Fingerhut’s Smith cautioned patience: “Online display advertising has been evolving over 10 years, so we need to give this time. We’ll see in social media over the next few years how people interact.” But General Mills’ Cuene had a very specific recommendation for the marketers in the audience (at least, we presume, those in consumer packaged goods: “The social media budget should be under product development. If it’s under advertising, it will never ROI out.” Best Buy’s Koelling added: “Part of me hopes we never see an ROI equation for social media.” He related a great story [Shel Israel, are you listening? your tweet about how we we all love stories was so true]—about the little town in Iowa where he was raised. The longtime general store there, a very successful business, never advertised. The owner just knew everybody in town, and what they wanted. “Social media takes us back to a time when people were more normal—when they interacted with each other.”

Okay, panelists, said Kraabel, sitting up straighter: “How do we turn back time? How do we get management to spend money?” [This guy has a way with words.] Well, said Fingerhut’s Smith, “We’re not turning back time. Consumers have always owned brands...Now, we’re just accelerating how they interact with and build brands.” General Mills’ Cuene threw in his take: “Finally, with social media, we can do at scale what the general store did.” And Best Buy’s Koelling gave some great advice: “You must be willing to TRY—to do small things. Be authentic and customers will be forgiving.” And that’s the challenge at big-brand companies like General Mills: “We have to find that authentic voice,” echoed Cuene. Koelling continued his advice: “If you want to create something good, do something that will enable you to listen—it’s a much easier sell.”

No one would disagree that this social stuff is much easier when you’re talking about younger audiences. “So, how do we expand it to older consumers?” asked moderator Kraabel. Target’s Kleckner was totally honest: “We haven’t figured that out yet.” Fingerhut’s Smith related that his demographic, as we all know, “is not exactly bleeding edge.” (It tilts to older, lower income, and rural.) But, he said, “they do want to be heard. And we’re working on some private communities.” General Mills’ Cuene added that “with newsletters and web sites, we’re trying to bring older folks in.” Best Buy’s Koelling answer to getting older people in: “Bigger type?” Then he got more serious: “Apps on Facebook are mostly silly, childish stuff. Older people aren’t interested in what’s being put out there.” General Mills’ Cuene reminded everyone, however, that “we’re in the early stages—slow down, watch, be patient. A little maturity can help.” [And, doggone it, that was music to the ears of the gray-hairs in the audience! I agree that marketing still benefits from the voice of experience, even in these rapidly changing, social-mania times.]

The final question you might have guessed: “What about the future of media? Where are we going?” The first insight came from General Mills’ Cuene: “Consumer content generation is only increasing and happening faster. This isn’t going away.....Pretty much everyone is a media outlet now.” And another good point came from Target’s Fleckner: “Calling it social media is kinda weird. It’s really about ‘experience’.” And Best Buy’s Koelling agreed: “It’s not about ‘media’—it’s something else. Really platforms. And it’s still a little ‘Wild West’ out there.” He also noted that we won’t be seeing anymore big social networks. “There’s no room for them!” But Koelling ended the panel discussion with a great wrap:

“Brands are going to have to figure out how to act like people.”

Amen, brother!

Thanks to MIMA and all the participants for another great networking event, a really eye-opening discussion for a lot of people.  And now I’d love to hear your reactions—please do so via the open comments section below!  Hey, I’m listening, see?  Always tryin’ to do my thing to be social… :-)

But there was an absolutely great front-page piece in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday: For All You Do, Bud, This Blog Is About You.  Here’s an excerpt:

(Jim) Arndorfer, 37 years old, is a full-time employee of Miller Brewing Co., the U.S. arm of SABMiller PLC. A former reporter for Advertising Age, he now runs Brew Blog, a free Web site dedicated to breaking news about beer. Especially news about Anheuser-Busch’s beer.

Brew Blog is the latest and perhaps most unlikely front in Miller’s drive to rattle Anheuser. Mr. Arndorfer tracks the St. Louis company’s every move, from earnings reports to management changes. He relishes revealing details of its products before Anheuser does.

Okay, this is funny!  I think it’s one of the best front-page pieces in the Journal in a long time.  [But then, I would—I’m a blogger!] A great, big shout-out to the reporter, David Kesmodel.  The competitive antics of these two big brewers is no secret; it’s the stuff of ad industry legend.  But, more than this, I think the Brew Blog is a great case study in corporate blogging. Here are some reasons why....

1) It’s going the competition one better, bigtime—another way to get a leg up with the consuming public.  Launching such a blog is a brilliant move by a number-two player.  Why wait for blogs to become commonplace in their industry?  Seize the moment and grab the spotlight!

2) The Internet has made everyone a publisher these days, so why not a beverage company?  (Or any manufacturer or consumer products company, for that matter...) Sure, as a big firm, Miller’s no stranger to publishing its own content—it’s had a “Brew” magazine for some time.  But print’s old and tired.  Hat’s off to the company for taking things a big step further and extending its publishing efforts to the blogosphere.

3) Don’t just talk about getting the CEO or some VPs to start blogging.  Frankly, it’s very hard to build a sustainable blog that way, and is often flat-out boring as hell, besides… :-) Hire a journalist!  I’d say somebody in Miller’s marketing ranks was very, very smart—they went out and got one of the best.  Think about it: print journalism right now sucks as a business, and good people are being cut loose right and left, or looking for challenges elsewhere.  What better job for them that to run their own blog?  Mr. Arndorfer must be having the time of his life!  He’s reporter, editor, researcher, fact-checker, everything, for his own little “paper.” Maybe even the business manager, too.  Yes, he’s a “micropublisher.” And many more hundreds—thousands!—of companies should have one.

4) The Brew Blog isn’t fluff—it reports real news, does the hard work of research, to dig out stories in the industry that matter, even before some of the traditional trade press does.  (Just read the WSJ story above to prove that point.) But it leaves the Miller marketing and PR stuff to other areas of the corporate site. Here’s how the Brew Blog explains itself on its About page:

The “Brew” site aims to give beer people daily analysis, commentary and some original reporting on the current state of the alcohol-beverage industry....If you work in the beer industry, or cover it, or just watch it with interest, we hope that http://www.brewblog.com will be one of your daily stops on the Web for beer industry market analysis.  Even though “Brew” is published by the Miller Brewing Company, this is not the site for Miller press releases and the “official” word from the company.

5) Most of all, though, Brew Blog is a fine example of how a big company can reach out and really engage with its public—and with bloggers and the media as well.  Good journalism gives people a reason to visit, and to come back, and any visitor has the opportunity to participate in the discussion.  Here’s more of how the blog describes its purpose:

We want this site to be the home of an active and informed dialogue about the American beer business.  The best way that can happen is for you to share with us your opinions about the stories you see on Brewblog.com.  Every story on Brewblog.com has an orange link that says, “Comments.” To post a comment of your own, just click on that link.

Congratulations to Miller Brewing, to blogger/journalist Jim Arndorfer, and to the brilliant people who hired him and gave him his charge!

What do you think?  How can companies today win with blogging strategies?  What’s yours doing?  Is there an opportunity in your industry to do something innovative?  Or maybe just plain rattle your competition!  :-)

Me?  I’m switchin’ to Miller.....

It’s a very nice, well organized site, with lots of information, and I would encourage anyone either new to PR, or just interested in getting up to speed with the latest thinking in blogger relations best practices, to bookmark it.  What are the biggest surprises in the findings so far?  Well, to me they are....

• 52% of the PR execs surveyed think they “do a good job identifying the specific interests of individual bloggers and sending them relevant information”
• while 65% of the bloggers surveyed say they don’t

The most insightful comment about the study that I noted, however, came from this article in the current issue of PRWeek:

Many PR pros don’t realize bloggers take part for various reasons, among them business, personal fulfillment, or to serve an audience. “It’s important to not just know where the blogger is coming from intellectually, but also to understand what is motivating them to blog in the first place, and to develop an approach that corresponds,” said Evan Kraus, SVP and director of APCO Online (one of the firms sponsoring the study).

That’s a critical point, I believe—and very good advice for PR practitioners. It’s really part of a major question many people seem to be wrestling with today: are bloggers journalists? Lots of folks, including many in PR, disagree on this point. But it really comes down to a matter of definitions. I tend to agree with those (including Dan Gillmor) who say anyone who chooses to write in a public forum—keep a “journal,” if you will—is in fact a “journalist.” Sure, there’s a wide disparity in writing skills (and critical thinking skills) across the blogosphere. But, face it, the number of good, generally well-regarded, and reasonably well-read bloggers out there—the vast “long tail” of what I maintain is modern journalism—already far exceeds the number of people employed in traditional journalism. Their voices are being heard. The world is changing. And it’s good to see the PR profession recognizing that, and trying to help its people understand best practices—what works and what doesn’t in communicating with bloggers.

The other thing about bloggers vs. traditional journalists that I find very interesting is the matter of transparency. I’ve written about this before. In fact, I was featured way back in November 2006 on what I think is the best blog on the topic of the changes happening in the field of journalism: Mark Glaser’s MediaShift on PBS.org.  In fact, I started a very good discussion there about Bloggers Leading Mainstream Journalists in Transparency. And I was delighted to see that Dan Gillmor agreed with my viewpoint when I saw him here in the Twin Cities a month ago.

Want to read a little case history of a company that doesn’t know how to deal with bloggers?  (One of many, for sure.) Check out this post I did yesterday about Best Buy on my other blog.

One final thing: here’s a link where you can download a PDF of the entire “State of Blog Relations” study.

What do you think about blogger relations becoming a major focus of PR?  Is it, in fact, now a legitimate specialty in the field? Maybe one that only younger PR practitioners understand?  Or maybe only PR people who also blog?

So, what happens now? Here’s a great look at what we might expect, a post by Clint Boulton on eWeek’s GoogleWatch blog. He looks at several “questions left unanswered in the wake of the conference call.”

The Journal noted that the OpenSocial initiative started slow last fall [I saw one of the first public presentations about it at the Defrag conference in Denver in early November], and that, in those early months, “many developers were disappointed with the technology.” But yesterday’s announcement is a significant win for OpenSocial. Wade Chambers,VP of platforms for Yahoo, said that Yahoo signed on because it felt the emerging standard was “rapidly maturing.”

Looks like it’s got “the Big Mo”—that is for sure. Facebook has to be worried...or least they’re thinking really, really hard right about now. And now everyone’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Microsoft—an investor in Facebook and current suitor of Yahoo—isn’t yet talking.

What do you think? 

With clickthrough rates continuing to decline, ad spending hardly going up in the current economic environment, and the lack of ad relevancy getting talked about more and more (especially on social networks!), suddenly advertising is not seen as the panacea it once was. It would appear that commerce—selling real stuff—must be the next big thing.

An article just published in The Economist makes it clear that the current state of the social network leaves something to be desired from a business standpoint: Online Social Networks: Everywhere and Nowhere. The subtitle says it all: “Social networking will become a ubiquitous feature of online life. That does not mean it is a business.” The piece doesn’t speak explicitly of the need for commerce on social networks, but rather of the lack of profits from advertising. The implication is clear that, if these online entities exist to make money (and, after all, virtually all of them are dot-coms, not dot-orgs), they are in serious need of a business model. Or will they simply become a loss leader to something else, as web mail has become?

Charlene Li, Forrester Research analyst, said it clearly at the Graphing Social Patterns (GSP) conference: “One thing missing from social nets today is the thing that made the Internet go mainstream: shopping.” It would appear that online commerce represents the next frontier in the evolution of social networks. I’m certainly hearing the topic pop up all around me. At GSP, Ben Ling, product marketing director for Facebook’s platform, said he he thinks “transactions are part of many social interactions,” though he didn’t elaborate. One surmises Facebook is hard at work trying to figure out how it can make money from people buying and selling things on its network. Its first attempt at an ecommerce-related feature, Beacon, flopped badly due to privacy concerns. But don’t imagine it’s giving up. Nor MySpace. At GSP, Amit Kapur, COO, said it “has 150 engineers and product managers working on monetization technology.” He said nothing specific about experiments with ecommerce, choosing instead to focus on what it’s doing to woo more advertisers with its new “Hyper Targeting” ad capability. But it would be foolish to think MySpace isn’t working feverishly on ways to enable ecommerce on its network as well, to secure a juicy cut for itself.

Is commerce happening to any large extent in other social networks?  It could it be on Hi5, Orkut, or some of the others popular outside the U.S.—I don’t know. Some could probably cite examples of certain small, niche networks being set up with commerce transactional capability. (One would think Ning is trying to help its 100,000+ niche social networks monetize.) As an example, could a network of enthusiasts of a certain brand or type of collector car enable its members to buy and sell parts amongst themselves? But would the operator of such a niche site make a significant amount from the small-percentage commissions on these sales? One could assume that charging membership fees (or advertising) would be more lucrative for them.

But back to the big fish. Facebook now lists almost 20,000 applications that users can choose from to place on their profiles. (Many of these are also offered separately by their developers as widgets that can be placed on any web site or blog.) Facebook breaks these down into 22 categories, but amazingly there isn’t one called “shopping.” The closest might be a category called “Classifieds,” but most of these are more of the “personals” variety, and there are many apps on Facebook, here and in other categories, that use “virtual currency” in their transactions—not real money. A search on the keyword “eBay” pulls up 40 apps on Facebook, though the majority of these have nothing directly to do with eBay, and even seem not appropriately classsified. Only two were developed by eBay itself: one called eBay Marketplace, which has—get this—only 66 “active daily users,” and another called eBay To Go, which has only 6. At GSP, the VP of marketing at Widgetbox, Pam Webber, said that Facebook’s eBay apps are not doing well (no lie!), but added that a popular one on WidgetBox is used a lot by eBay sellers, who place it on their own web sites or blogs.

So, what’s your take on how commerce will or will not take off within social networks? Do people want to buy when they’re being social?  Do “friends” want to hawk their wares to each other?  Do they want to share shopping tips? (That seems reasonable; I’ve mentioned new purchases several times in my status updates.) Do “commercial” matters belong on Facebook or MySpace at all?  Is commerce a way social nets can finally start to make some serious money?

UPDATE (3/25/08): So, you say Amazon should be able to do something on Facebook? We’ll soon see.... Amazon launches two new apps for Facebook (Internet Retailer).

Guess what, friends?  One of those topics is Social Media!  And I heartily recommend you bookmark that page now—socialmedia.alltop.com—because I think it’s a fantastic collection of sites and blogs in this burgeoning field, which can be a real challenge to keep up with. [Okay, so NewMediaWise is one of the sites listed—what can I say? These people are brilliant… :-) ]

Seriously, I know of no better way today to get savvy, real fast, and stay up on developments in social media, social networking, the distributed web, and the socialization and widgetization of the web in general than this site.  It gives you a great, quick overview, on one page, of all the latest news, opinion, research, analysis, and blog posts of all types in the wonderful new world of Social Media. Visit this page daily and you’ll become an expert in no time. 

And I’m not alone in my praise of this site. It got a nice review from Chris Shipley, Executive Producer of the DEMO conferences, as well.  Please let me know what you think of Alltop!

Then, I noticed that Guy Kawasaki posted on his blog today on the topic of The Myth of A-Listers and Influencers. He wrote about a CNET Networks’ three-part study called “The Influencer Study: Challenging Perceptions.” An excerpt from Guy’s post: “The flow of information isn’t coming just from a small group of connected individuals at the top. It flows between networks, regardless of the size of the network. Instead of a pyramid, the model of influence is more accurately shown as a diamond, emphasizing the importance of the large number of moderately connected influencers.”

So, there you go.  Blogging continues its growth and maturity, and there’s a broadened understanding now about the influence of those blogs.

Bell is no rookie. Essentially retired, I think we can assume he didn’t need a job: his last reported total compensation (when he was chairman/CEO) was $$3,289,403. The man has lived and breathed advertising his entire career, rising up from the lowly rank of account executive at a small but influential agency in Minneapolis. (I know because I worked there, my first job out of college. I recall he managed the General Mills Wheaties account—and it appears he definitely learned how to eat his.) Here’s David Bell’s bio.

The other significant part of the story, which Mediapost’s editor Joe Mandese points out, is that several startups working on dashboard tools for buying ad media should now be very, very worried.

But back to David Bell. Think about this people. Google, a relative newcomer to the long-standing advertising industry, hires the head—and figurehead—of one of the top three ad holding companies?  Are you kidding me?!  This certainly marks a memorable turning point in the disruption of an industry.

If it doesn’t point out, again, the power of the Internet, I don’t know what does. So, uh, please—take this thing seriously… :-)

UPDATE 3/12/08: And for more on this topic, read Google’s Latest Olive Branch To Agencies.

Sure, digital agencies are different.  But what about their big brothers?  They still control the great bulk of the spending.  What is the deal with ad agencies? Will they ever get it?  There are some great independent blogs about advertising—that is, that do not come from inside agencies.  One is mentioned in the above post or comments. Another is AdRants.  But will ad agency management themselves ever get with the program?  PR agencies have—bigtime, as a matter of fact. What’s your take on the reasons for this—for such a disparity?

The best blog post I’ve read on Twitter is this one from Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine. Read the comments, too—the impact of microblogging on PR is something you may be surprised to learn.  And I just caught an interesting post on how a blogger, having only discovered FriendFeed, is now longing to understand how it can help him manage his time—specifically, his blog. (That’s because the fuel of blogs is time. Like oil, there’s a finite amount of it.  Ever think about that?) Here’s his post: Wish I could run my blog with FriendFeed.

So, just what is microblogging doing to blogging? That’s what I’m wondering. What do you think?  Are bloggers now moving away from doing longer posts— where thinking, writing, maybe some research is actually a requirement—as opposed to just blurting something out?  I mean, how much time can a blogger spend, even if he/she tries, in planning a measly 140-character “Tweet,” as Twitter posts are so playfully called. (Yes, “Tweet” is already to “microblog post” what Levi’s is to jeans, Kleenex is to tissues, and Xerox is to copies.) I hardly know a blogger who isn’t Twittering like a maniac these days.

But stop Twittering for a while and think about it: How much time does it take away from one’s regular blogging? And now you have to add reading FriendFeed to that list as well—plus, let’s not forget about commenting on items you read on FriendFeed.  I mean, there’s only so much time in the day, isn’t there?  This 24-hour thing is a zero-sum game, no?

I was struck by reading online that one of my web friends, Jeremiah Owyang (easily one of the most prolific bloggers and Twitterer’s out there), apparently stays up half the night doing his thing. People still need to sleep, don’t they?  How much more RedBull or Jolt can we consume, and how many more “blogging tools” can we stand?

I got it—somebody needs to invent a way to have our dreams automatically posted to a blog.  Then we got all 24 hours covered!  Talk about “open” web communications.  We could call it DreamBlog....or how about Drog?

Or not.