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.

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.

I recently completed a project, part of which required us to identify in-house marketers across the region who are active and influential online. Fascinating exercise, if only for the perverse pleasure of segmenting and targeting those most likely to recoil in horror at the thought!

The original intent was to find in-house marketing directors or CMOs who blogged or participated in bulletin boards about the industry or their firms - not necessarily the communications lead, or online evangilist like Scott Monty, but local versions of marketers Dave Knox, Randy Tinseth or Andy Lark. However, while we found many high-profile marketers on social networks (esp. Facebook), they rarely connected to business (apart from the odd status update about a local initiative). A number also hang out on LinkedIn, but nearly always with limited functionality (ie. resumes) on their pages and no links to outside content or personal web pages/blogs. Still relatively few on Twitter - many with protected updates.

To be honest, I was not surprised when I saw the rolled up results. More disappointed. It reminded me of the Australian Tourism “Where the bloody hell are you?” advertisement…

The Asian marketing version would be - “Your customers are all here… the tools to engage them are freely available, and often free… you can find out if they’ll like your content before you build it… they’re all talking about you… Where the bloody hell are you?”

While Neville Hobson has the list of CEOs who blog, I believe we should be calling out and celebrating in-house marketers across Asia who are already active in social media and leading the way for the rest of the industry.

Maybe some honour blogroll/Twitterroll on the MEDIA site somewhere?

Let me know what you think about this and most importantly who you think should be on it?