Over the past couple of weeks I’ve revisited why I never pursued a career in research - it’s seriously hard work! However, many weeks of hard slog have resulted in a great pay-off, with the launch of the Asia-Pacific Digital Brand Index (DBI), a regional study of online conversations about major technology brands that Edelman APAC conducted with our partners Brandtology. All the details are on this site - but it spans eight APAC countries and incorporates 800,000 mentions of 233 major technology and telco brands, spread across over 4,000 online sites. Whew!

After looking through the data, we decided to focus on country-by-country launches and results, because (mock shock, horror), when you roll the results up at a regional level, the insights become less meaningful. If anything, this exercise has reinforced just how hyper-local social media environments, channels, topics and successful brand engagement really is.

It’s a point well-made by Blair Currie in a recent MEDIA post. However, my point is not that regional social media strategies are not important, but that any expectation that regional silver-bullet targeting, content and engagement strategies exist is misguided. The recent downturn really stressed local over regional and for social media this is also true. Regional marketers still have a very important role to play - esp. in terms of social media policy and strategy formation, driving best practice, benchmarking/measurement and central creation of strong online content. The more that regional marketers can gain a deep understand what’s hot in key markets, which people and sites are most influential for a particular topic and what other firms are doing that is successful or can be learnt from, the more valuable they become.

Shared insight and measurement also helps to better connect regional and local colleagues, so we hope that the DBI helps in the age-old debate about measuring the impact and effectiveness of social media. This is especially so in comparing the performance of brands in markets and across the region - that’s why we created a series of Indices that help local and regional marketers to find a common language and measurement benchmark around important areas such as conversations volume, engagement (or mentions per unique voice) and channel volume and breadth.

Just because I know you want to know, here is the ranking of the most discussed technology brands across the eight markets in Asia Pacific:

1. Google
2. Microsoft
3. Nokia
4. Samsung
5. Sony
6. Intel
7. AMD
8. Apple
9. Yahoo!
10. Dell

Disclosure: Edelman represents technology brands around the world, many of which are included in the Digital Brand Index.

With 800,000 pieces of data to review, there’s a whole range of other interesting insights, but more on those at a later date. Would love any questions or feedback you have on the DBI (apart from how bad I look on the below video, ok?!) - let me know.

I love the Silicon Alley insider chart-of-the-day feed (and it’s well worth subscribing to). The chart below was especially surprising, because I knew that the smartphone (esp. touchscreen) market is hot, but it seems that we’re only 2 years away from the pivot point where the phone really starts to become a seriously major way to access web and social media sites.

Mobile Marketing for real by 2011

However, the reality is that I’m still hearing (and seeing case studies of) very few brands talking about mobile marketing in a serious way. Asia still has a way to go before broadband is ubiquitous, but it is the fastest region in the world for mobile adoption. I’m still not having many conversations with brands about mobile marketing - many are still not optimising websites for mobile. However, forecasts like this show it’s a format that will soon be impossible to ignore. Will that be enough - I hope so!

I presented at last April’s Mobile Marketing forum in Singapore and the general consensus remained that mobile remained a massive opportunity unrealised (SMS Gupshop not-withstanding). I’m looking foward to discussing the Asian reality of the opportunity further around mobile marketing further at SPIKES Asia in September and will actually probe clients and industry people I’m meeting more about mobile in the next few weeks and will share what I hear/find.

Interested in your insights and perspectives about mobile marketing - it is massively interesting - but from a marketing perspective is it for real, about to happen, or still a fad? As always, let me know.

Last week I was in Beijing with Edelman regional president Alan VanderMolen. Alan has been deeply involved on the mainland since the early 90s. A trip with Alan to any regional market always includes meetings with a range of interesting personalities, from in-house leaders, to top-tier media, to online influentials.

Currently, there’s no doubt about the number one topic for the marketing industry in China - how to successfully plan for and integrate social media into programs. Luckily Alan had his video camera and has published a fascinating range of posts and interviews on his ‘Full Count’ blog that gives a great overview of the latest perspectives around the internet in China, including:

- Roger Chen, GM Image and Citizenship for Microsoft Greater China

- Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of leading Chinese internet and media firm Danwei

- Rui Cheng-gang of CCTV-2 (dubbed by Fortune Mag as China’s Lou Dobbs)

- The recent China Trust Barometer results

- a perspective on China from Edelman Europe head David Brain

If all else fails, Alan can also point you to the best place for beer and ribs.

Alan is passionate about the evolving online opportunity and probably the most senior regional agency leader blogging and active on Twitter today (keen to know who else you’d place on this list?).

Upcoming market visits include India, Japan and Korea - where he’s got another range of interesting meetings and interviews planned - worth staying tuned into. I also know he’d welcome any feedback on what content/interviews people would like to see in the future.

Last night tier-one social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter were subject to a huge attack (known as distributed denial of service -DDoS). It got me thinking as to how many marketers now just starting out with social media might be negatively impacted by today’s big news? I hope none!

Imagine that you’ve set up an event and you’re projecting aggregated tweets onto a large screen for all the attendees to see. Or that you’ve set up a competition on Facebook that runs for 24 hours. Would you shrug your shoulders and say ‘that’s just the Internet,’ or would you be seriously concerned?

Hacker attacks and DDOS are nothing new, but I don’t think there is massive awareness as to some of the risks that marketers and communicators need to factor in when using the internet - esp. if you’re leveraging a third-party platform that you don’t have direct control over. Don’t get me wrong, this in no way is supposed to be a ‘the Internet is too scary to use’ post(!!), but I do believe that last night’s events reinforce how important it is for brands and agencies to have a deep and ongoing understanding of the platform that they’re working with.

To that end, I came up with my 5 Social Media Tips for Marketers:

1. First rule of using technology - always have at least one back-up plan. We’ve all had the situation where the PC or projector wouldn’t work at an important presentation and out have come the print-outs, or flip-charts. Even though the cloud is very robust at the moment, fortunately, many social media platforms allow you to download client versions that you can run if the live connection doesn’t work. You can also load your content up to multiple sharing sites if one doesn’t work and try to have a broadband USB connector, just in case the internet doesn’t work like it should at your venue.

2. Be extra vigilant if embedding content from a third-party site (e.g. Youtube, Slideshare etc) onto a corporate or branded website. Create super-strong passwords and limit then number of people who have access to them. Often if content from third-party links are changed, the link stops working. However, the last thing you want to see is someone else’s mash-up of your CEO’s speech playing on your home page.

3. Reduce the risk of phishing. If you’re going to use email to communicate with customers or consumers, be very public about what email address/domain people can expect to see things from and publish a list of guidelines on your site about what people should and shouldn’t expect from you (e.g. you wont ask for their back details).

4. Where possible, moderate. Hashtags are an awesome marketing tool, but the issue is when someone starts to also use your hashtag in a less than complimentary fashion - www.skittles.com is a great example of this and why they ask for your age before you can log in. If you’re all for free speech, then all good, otherwise you can use third-party software to moderate tweets that appear at your event (but won’t work for www.search.twitter.com). Also, if you have a corporte (or personal) blog, make sure comments are set for moderation first before they are published - this is good standard practice and should be outlined in a social media policy.

5. Always believe there’s someone out there smarter than you who doesn’t like you! It may or may not be conincidence that the largest hacker’s conference in the world happened the week before last night’s outage. The number of people with amazing hacking skills is huge. I suggest a psychology of ’what if they gun for me?’ is taken into any planning to create a program that balances the risks and opportunities of the internet. Again, this is not fear-mongering, it’s good common sense.

Maybe we should also celebrate the fact that our timezones mean many of these DDoS attacks happen while we (and our customers) are safely tucked up in bed.

That’s my quick thoughts - there is no doubt another DDoS is around the corner - keen to hear any other of your tips to add to the list!

Recently, Google Japan started a Youtube Q&A site for upcoming Japanese general election, with artists, movie directors, actresses etc posting questions to the candidates via YouTube. This marks the first time Google’s moderator service has been used for politics in Japan and follows the strong influence and impact of social media in elections across many other Asian countries (also, let’s not forget Obama ‘Change, we can believe in‘….). Despite a 10 week crash course in 2002, my Japanese language skills are non-existent. However, examples of the Youtube videos can be found here.

According to Asahi Shimbun, the site opened on 13 July and by 28 July:

• 6,256 people had already participated in the moderator and 4,536 questions are posted.  Pro or con posting are over 25,000,
• Candidates have not uploaded answers yet, they will be uploaded on 30July
• This system was first used on Obama’s predidential election in 2008 and was very popular in US, but this is the first time used in Japan.
• Yahoo started a “minna-no Seiji” (everyone’s politics) site 3 years ago and this time average page views per day are about 1 million, which is twice as large as last general election.

Japan has very much been at the bleeding edge of digital/mobile adoption and marketing. The evolving importance of social media as an additional channel to reach and impact people in advance of the upcoming election will be fascinating to watch. In such an important country for our region, I’m expecting great innovation, but probably after this year’s election is finished (e.g.  Twitter not being allowed this year).

Interested to see how Japanese brands react to the governments growing use and whether this further increases the integration social media into marketing and media strategies going forward… To go with its powerful advertising and direct heritage, I also believe Japanese online/social media marketing can be truly world-leading, what do you think?

HT to my colleagues at Edelman Japan for this information.

Stumbled on this chart via the excellent Business/Alley Insder ‘Chart of the Day‘ on Twitter. Even senior PR leaders now realise that a massive consolidation and reduction of traditional media is not good for any marketing service provider. Sometimes visuals are so powerful not much more needs to be said…

Business Insider: Business Magazines Headed for the Abyss?

Two months ago, I posted this on Twitter: “Doing a survey - will share results. Mandatory for agency people to disclose client r/ships when writing online? Best way how?”

It’s a well-covered topic and from that tweet, I received 17 DM replies and have had follow-up one-one-one conversations with another 7 people. It’s all very unscientific, but these were the results:

- 18  peeps pretty much said yes, absolutely, every time
- 4 said, yes - but only if you’re promoting something you’re working on
- 2 said no - it doesn’t matter/takes up too much space

In terms of how to disclose, this was all over the place, but with a common theme and included:
- disclosure:XX is a client (good for blogs, tough for Twitter)
- disclosure
- disc. client
- #client

This Tweet needs a disclosure

Two people said that if you need to disclose a relationship, then don’t post about it in the first place! One, an in-house comms pro, said that their company code of ethics forbids them being seen to actively promote their own products online at all.

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association, which every major agency is a member of,  is absolutely clear about agency/client disclosure is required, esp. in the following excerpt:

“We comply with FTC regulations that state: “When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product which might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement (i.e., the connection is not reasonably expected by the audience) such connection must be fully disclosed.”

Despite the delay in posting the results (sorry bout that!), I’m currently seeing an increasing number of tweets, posts, social network status updates etc from agencies promoting client events. One that drives me really nuts is when I know an individual/firm has authored a post/tweet and sent it out from a branded asset (e.g. Twitter), then re-tweeted, or re-posted it through their personal social network. Even with disclosure, this seems questionable.

Where I net out is that I  don’t see a problem promoting client activities, news and events - as long as there is a very clear disclosure about the agency-client relationship that allows the average reader to understand that there might be some form of relationship or commercial consideration driving the post. It’s something that I touched on in a previous post - people deserve at least that level of respect.

The disclosure that I use and have urged everyone at Edelman Asia-Pacific is #client (esp. for twitter), or disclosure XX is an Edelman client.I’m sending another email out today to reaffirm just how important these disclosures are to protect both our client’s brands, as well as our own.

Nobody and no firm is perfect, but constant visibility and reinforcement is crucial. I urge all my fellow agency digital and marketing leaders to continue doing similar and take personal responsibility to act as disclosure champions online. In order to have credible social media I really believe it is that important!

Thoughts, as always, much appreciated.

A recent NY Times article highlighted the tension between those bloggers comfortable making a living from their online efforts, and those with an almost journalistic fervour that blog posts should be unbiased and free of commercial endorsement. This debate is manifesting itself in may ways.

- MomDot, a well-known mommy blogger network has proposed a “PR Blackout Challenge,” urging all its bloggers to spurn all paid and product giveaway posts between 10-16 August and get back to talking “about your kids, your marriage, your college, your hopes, your dreams, your house and whatever you can come up with for one week.” Just looking through the comments demonstrates the polarised views of the community, including the classic line “…I feel ya… but I probably won’t take part in the Blackout.”

- I love smart firms like Nuffnang, but its success has definitely increased the commercial considerations of a number of bloggers across SE Asia and Australia who won’t consider any form of brand engagement, unless it’s driven by elements such as pay-per-post - an area currently receiving close scrutiny by the US Federal Trade Commission. I personally believe that bloggers can be paid to post, as long as there is stringent transparency about the relationship/transaction. However, I’m seeing less transparency these days - but, that’s a topic for another post.

- There are also grumbles against events like a Blogathon in Singapore, where high-value prizes are being given out to selected participating bloggers and the creeping realization that the event is about hardcore brand promotion, rather than promoting blogging or raising money for charity, which is the well-known focus for a ‘Blogathon.’ I don’t know many journalists who would get involved under a structure like this - celebrities yes, media no.

Maybe it’s jealousy by the bloggers who don’t get the big blog ad dollars, or the fancy prizes. However, the net-net of all this is that people are now extremely wary about what is paid out there and what is not. Edelman China recently outlined five examples of brands that got burnt on the mainland for falling on the wrong side of paid disclosure and transparency divide. The clear rule of thumb for marketers is to ensure that you clearly understand and have mitigated the risk before engaging online - and if it’s wrong, just don’t do it. Some people (yep, some of them marketers) tell me the average person doesn’t care and that as long as they are entertained, damn the torpedoes. I could not disagree more!

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association recently spent the month of June debating the issue “We stand against marketing practices whereby the consumer is paid cash by the manufacturer, supplier or one of their representatives to make recommendations, reviews or endorsements” for its code of ethics. A fascinating range of viewpoints and insights if you get a chance to review.

In short, I believe there needs to be a (simple) common industry ethics charter that gives brands, agencies and bloggers a simple, yet consistent set of ethical guidelines to shape campaigns. There is no doubt in my mind that agencies should be the ones with the biggest vested interest in driving this, esp. as we nearly all use variants of the WOMMA ethical guidelines, just with different words and focuses. When I say agencies, I also mean agencies across the entire marketing spectrum - I’m seeing way too much client promotion from a whole variety of agency leaders who don’t disclose that they’re promoting a paying clients events? They should know better!

A commenter on the WOMMA ethics debate called Richard summed my position up nicely - “If you’re paid cash for anything by a company or brand, you’re an employee of that brand, and if you’re blogging about it, you should say so every in single post: “I’m an employee, or “This is a paid endorsement.” Readers deserve at least that much consideration and honesty.”

If maybe it’s not the payment that’s the issue, but the disclosure by the blogger or the agency person trying to promote a client event about the commercial relationship - what’s it going to take to make it easy for consumers to tell the difference between paid and non-paid? Again, does it really matter? Ok - off my pulpit now. Appreciate your thoughts.

If you haven’t seen this amazingly well-done video yet, then hurry up!

Despite the entertainment value (and people everywhere are already asking me to use it in presentations), it asks a truly scary question about what the future of the marketing services industry might look like.

While some sectors/people feel decoupled, I’ve come to the recent realization that really no one is immune - the internet has the power to disintermediate it all, even the internet marketing firms. However, I’m not seeing the urgency that I’d expect when ‘the sky is falling.’

So enjoy, then ask yourself ‘is my firm, my job and my entire industry potentially at risk?’ Let me know what you think. JK

After my last blog post and given that I’m a New Zealander, this will be my last reference to Australiana for a while - promise!

This week marked a momentous milestone for the PR industry globally, with the awarding of the inaugural PR Grand Prix and PR Lions in Cannes yesterday. Even adrants had a little fun at how giddy the PR industry was to be included. Congratulations to Cumminsnitro (or SapientNitro as they are now) Brisbane for doing the region proud!

However, given how notoriously gobby PR and comms folk are online (esp. given how parochial we are about regional success), I’ve been amazed to find almost no commentary, pick-up or re-tweeting of the news? I’ve got some thoughts about why this might be:

1. Hardly any PR/comms people in the region knew that there was a PR award at Cannes this year? Even I know I didn’t until April when the judges were announced. When you look through the full list of PR entries, a lot of the “industry-great-and-good” are missing, esp. from Asia where many of the entries are from firms that are more advertising-focused like Leo Burnett or Hakuhodo.

Given the raft of PR-related entries for the recent Asian Marketing Effectiveness Awards and the proximity of timing for the submissions for Cannes, I’m surprised there wasn’t more from the PR powerhouses in markets like China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore - or even Australia.

2. The cost. I was talking to one senior advertising leader who said that their agency had spent $56,000 on entries and were sending only three people up to Cannes, half their number of attendees from last year. Most PR firms can’t justify a massive cost versus reward for major award entries - not just entry fee, but cost to produce sizzle reels, presentation boards etc etc. It’s a shame that cost could potentially be a barrier to good PR work being profiled.

3. Relevance in today’s world. I’ve read a lot about how the mood at Cannes this year is a lot more somber. Makes sense after a year where corporate greed transformed the relationship between consumers and institutions and general trust levels have fallen through the floor. While the theme at Cannes this year is “Ignite Your Creativity” I’ve got wonder whether the average PR Pro feels more invested in campaigns that drive societal issues like environmentalism, rebuilding trust, or managing major the raft of major crises (did anyone say Sanlu?) that have dominated the landscape this year? Again, when you look through the PR entries and shortlist, it is very skewed to consumer marketing programs.

4. In-house versus agency as heroes? Again, looking through the list of entries, the group being most profiled are the agencies or consultancies. This runs counter-intuitive to most PR people I know, who would prefer to see the client take the limelight in the partnership that makes great campaigns come to life. Maybe, it again comes back to this concept of the ‘big idea,’ but I’d imagine that the in-house press and PR team at Tourism Queensland spent many, many sleepless nights fielding and responding to the needs of the global media around ‘best job’ - so who’s PR award is it really?

5. Was it really a PR campaign? I remember when Ben Southall was announced as the winner, that Tourism Queensland positioned the campaign as much more of triumph in advertising. Even USA Today lauded ‘the advertising campaign‘ for winning a PR and direct marketing award? I know the lines are blurring, but I also think that most PR Pros feel that this was always positioned as an advertising campaign (sorry esteemed Cannes PR Lion jury), and can’t take it to their hearts even though the media relations and online engagement was so successful. Makes me wonder why this didn’t win the Integrated Lion, given the great way the various marketing techniques and tools came together.

An Asian winner as the first recipient for a major PR award should be getting more online, offline (and pub chatter) love and be trumpeted from up high by the community - but it’s not and I don’t think it will. A shame really.

From reviewing the short-list, my ‘from-afar’ favorites are “The War Against Dengue” from Brazil and The Great Schlep from the US. Both have all the elements that I think are important for today - a greater good at heart, targeted at different audiences, requiring smart channel and materials management - success mostly garnered for little to no cost, versus a campaign with a $1.2 million dollar spend.

This is not a ding on the esteemed jury (maybe a pitch to be on next year’s panel??), but the flat response by the industry (at least on this side of the world) has got to be an issue for further discussion.

Why do you think the response to this award has been so flat? Which PR campaign from Asia do you think deserves special mention? Interested (as always) in your thoughts.