Unlike other conferences, iStrategy believes that quality, not quantity, is what is most important. Limiting the number of attendees to 300 senior marketers, the conference adds value by ensuring a more intimate and interactive experience.

Offering workshops, live interviews, and valuable networking opportunities. iStrategy Conference Amsterdam convenes on October 25-26, 2011 and features  it’s best ever  line up with compelling contributions from  over 30 of the industry’s leading speakers  including Randi Zuckerberg, Jimmy Wales and brands such as Microsoft, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Spotify, Orange, Rovio, Heineken and more.

‘Inspiring Growth and Innovation with Open Business’ is the name of the Ninety10Group workshop that will be led by Jamie Burke (CEO and Founder of Ninety10 Group), David Cushman (Author, Co-Founder and MD UK), Dinis Guarda (author and Head of Communications and Marketing) and Gianluigi Cuccureddu (author and MD Netherlands) with guest speaker Laura Kenyon, Digital Communications Specialist at Greenpeace.  This workshop goes through how social media is both disrupting and transforming the way you do business today. Join us to go beyond Likes and Followers to the real value of making your company, its products, services and communications, a better fit with the customers you serve.

The workshop will provide a door through which to listen, connect and collaborate with a diverse range of experts, potential partners and customers. Through sharing current challenges and ambitions for  your business  we will showcase our approach to Open Business: a set of pioneering  tools for bringing you closer to your customer and delivering  competitive advantages across the full spectrum of your business activity from  marketing, PR and internal communications through to customer service, CRM, Insight, brand development, service and product innovation.

The workshop will conclude by launching two pioneering new projects powered by Ninety10Group: www.openbusinesscouncil.org

www.socialmediacouncil.eu

EXECUTIVE
The Executive role is a first step on an exciting career path for someone with a passion for the tools and techniques of social media and the desire and ambition to join a vibrant, fast-growing organisation in a sector bursting with innovation and opportunity.
During your first year you’ll receive exceptional training and guidance, preparing you for promotion within 12 short months. We recruit into this role with your long term development very much front of mind.
We expect the successful applicant to be capable of becoming a share-holding partner within three short years and a director of their own arm of the business within 5-6. On joining you will have a clear career development path mapped out with rewards and incentives marking the way.
Our career structure is designed to recognise and reward the work and experience our employees gain at 90:10 and give each member of the team more to inspire and aspire to.

The role:
The Executive role functions as the one-year entry point into the 90:10 Group business.
The Location:
Our London office at 88 Kingsway, Holborn.
Function: You will provide vital day-to-day support to the London office and its team while gaining an understanding of how the office / business operates. You will gain hands-on experience in community culture – the 90:10 platform approach to delivering business efficiencies through social technologies and techniques of co-creation.
You will be trained in the best online community auditing/monitoring and data processing tools and techniques with expert leadership. You will also be supported in responding to day-to-day client management issues.
You will be required from time to time (with any necessary training) to update our own web resources, take notes in meetings and support the senior team in a variety of administrative roles.

Essential: Excellent written and communication skills in English. Computer and web literacy. Business and client focus. Excellent eye for detail and accuracy. Must have the right to work in the UK (you will be based at our office in Holborn, London, right next to the tube).
Advantageous: Knowledge of/experience in social media monitoring technologies. As a multinational, multilingual business, additional languages are also clear advantage as is evidence of effective personal participation in social media. A qualification in Research or Communications OR equivalent working experience will make you stand out, too.

ASSOCIATE
The Role:
The role of associate is a client-facing role which requires a year’s experience within 90:10 Group or equivalent skill sets. We expect the successful applicant to be capable of becoming a share-holding partner within two short years and a director of their own arm of the business within 4-5. On joining you will have a clear career development path mapped out with rewards and incentives marking the way.
It is a continuing development role in which you will perform the following functions and develop the following skills:

Functions: Support the Group and the London office in the following ways:

• Create report documents, coordinate meetings and provide clients day-to-day service.
• Manage the delivery of social media monitoring reports, audits and local accounts.
• Attend presentations to clients
• Interpret industry news for your local office.
• Develop hands on experience in community engagement (outreach etc)
• Perform Data processing/Social media monitoring
• Support executives in their training in data processing/social media monitoring
• Identify and share best practice both in London and throughout the group.
• Monitor development of social media activity in relevant markets
• Monitor developments in the brands and orgs we work for with specific focus on accounts you are responsible for.
• Identify and share, and where directed, pursue new business opportunities

Demonstrate and develop an interest in and understanding of :

• Managing large local and / or multi-regional accounts.
• Leading all listening and audit presentations to clients and their agencies
• Using audit and listening outcomes in marcomms planning processes, idea creation and strategic support.
• Co-creation initiatives and workshops through all their phases.
• Creating and sharing slide-decks and demonstrating strategic capability.
• Costing of projects and invoicing of clients.

Further your interest in and understanding of :

• Ninety10’s approach, products and services
• The businesses, brands and organisations we work with
• Your blogging and other areas of expertise to demonstrate thought leadership in social media.
• All aspects of our social media monitoring processes – from commissioning to delivery – including technical and client-relationship aspects.
• Business transformation through social technologies

Essential: Experience in and off social media monitoring and reporting is essential for this particular Associate role. Must have the right to work in the UK (you will be based at our office in Holborn, London, right next to the tube) and have excellent communication skills in English.

Advantageous: As a multinational, multilingual business, additional languages are a clear advantage as is evidence of effective personal participation in social media. A qualification in Research or Communications OR equivalent working experience will make you stand out, too.

We intend to appoint to these roles immediately – there is work waiting to be done! If you or anyone you know would like to discuss these rare opportunities please email me david@ninety10group.com with your CV, current salary details and availability, today.

Hence the survey below. From inside Ninety10Group.com it feels like social media monitoring is becoming really important to organisations – that they value it and spend time, effort and hard cash on it – and that they are starting to get the most from it.

But here’s your chance to confirm or deny my hypothesis. Results to be shared as soon as they become significant. Please share it as widely as you are able. Many thanks.

To take part in the survey CLICK HERE

Related articles

• How to: Decide When To Pay for Social Media Monitoring (oneforty.com)
• How Do Your Social Media Monitoring Efforts Stack Up (webguild.org)
• Social Media Monitoring Gaining Ground But Has Plenty of Room for Growth (marketingpilgrim.com)
• Social Media Monitoring Made Simple (e1evation.com)
• Social Media Monitor Makes Tracking Facebook & Twitter Brand Growth Simple (mashable.com)
• Hearsay Preps Social Media Monitoring Tool for Enterprises (pcworld.com)

MySpace now offers a variety of channels to its users (videos, tv, movies, games) and has set itself the ambition of being the landing page. There are two problems with this: Engagement and ambition.

In reality, people never go to just one page for all their social entertainment, and having that set as your ambition, seems unrealistic when there are so many new social sites emerging and already established. If for example, you are in the states, you’re more likely to go to hulu.com (a free online streaming channel in the US) for your video and movies than to MySpace, which is a newbie on the block in terms of streaming video. Although Hulu isn’t social (you can’t connect with your friends on Facebook, you don’t have a wall people can post on etc.) it’s extremely easy to find what you are looking for, and that’s what makes it popular. Easy access to relevant content.

Although it could be argued that MySpace is attempting to create user engagement, the problem is that it’s doing too much at the same time. MySpace claims it’s not a social platform, but a social entertainment platform and wisely recognizes and leaves the social graphing to Facebook. This raises a question about what social entertainment actually is.

You could argue that MySpace relies too heavily on Facebook but this allows them (MySpace) to focus on its content. Syncing with Facebook is an intelligent way for MySpace to allow its users to find interests and likes of friends. Jumo for instance recently launched a social site connecting people to non-profit organisations, pulling on Facebook’s feed in a similar way.

There is of course a risk in relying on Facebook to pull users content through. If Facebook goes down, which is only a question of time as everything has an expiry date on it, so does the entire social graphing model for MySpace as well. In terms of providing users with a social aspect i.e. connect with your friends and see your friends are watching/listening to, will go down the drain because they use it as a selling point.

If you don’t have a Facebook profile, you won’t have your friends’ feed to create and suggest music for you, but will have to select that yourself. The reality is that the programming that suggests music for you is clever enough to figure out what you’d like. The Facebook sync is, and should be regarded as an additional feature, and not necessarily as the foundation.

The reality is that MySpace would have done much better in creating a content related website by teaming up with other likeminded music sites such as Bandcamp, GrooveShark, Last.fm, Spotify and even Billboard which has the added feature of ranking the most active artists on the world’s leading social networking sites. Linking that with Spotify and pulling on your friends’ likes and music interests from there seems like a much safer bet to me in terms of creating value for users in time spent and content absorbed.

I was recently interviewed by a business journalist in Turkey and thought I would share my answers with you.

How is the business world benefiting from Social Media?

The overriding, but by no means only available, benefit businesses are getting today from social media is a direct doorway to their consumer and stakeholders like never before.

The most increasing utilisation of this is for business intelligence, offered by what I regard as the nirvana of market research; real-time access to ‘answers without questions’ from a sample size in the thousands if not tens of thousands to almost any business question; be that product, brand, Comms or service related.

The rise of micro-blogging and smart-phones sees this becoming increasingly relevant to all brands no matter what the product. In the past you would never have got someone writing a blog post about their favourite cup of tea or chocolate bar. Now on places like Twitter you do and in the context of their whole lives. This is a goldmine of rich data as people list alongside their updates all their interests not just generally but this very minute.

From a communications perspective brands are playing the part of the media owners. If they create enough interesting content and are prepared to invest time and resource into the engagement of their audience they can have unmediated relations with their consumers and their peers.

If they are consistent and strategic in their communications they contribute to a growing communications & retention platform they own with the social network rather than renting eyeballs from media owners. This means a shift away from wasteful on-off campaigns to iterative planning and ongoing communications. This proximity allows for CRM to feed into new acquisition through peer-2-peer communications as brand engagement and therefore advocation becomes increasingly visible in peoples ‘life-streams’.

Any example-setting corporations, what’s done, how did they benefit?

We work with a number of clients all capitalising on this opportunity in different ways. With Honda Europe we feed real-time and actionable data across a number of departments of their business ranging from; Marketing through to Product & Corporate PR to Customer Service and Customer Insight.

They are responding by resolving negative issues in open environments, demonstrating they care, as well and reporting their subject matter to those who could benefit from the insights internally. They identify those advocates engaged in positive conversations generally or in owner forums and use them in the planning and launch of future communications activity. Recently crowdsourcing a roadtrip around Europe called Live Every Litre where 60% of the team were from outside of Honda or their agencies.

We work with retailers who are engaging those representative and influential of and in specific consumer groups in social media for ongoing and continuous feedback to inform product stocked in store as well as their broader business strategy.

The overall benefit is two-fold. One is your output (be that Comms, product or service) are a better fit with the consumers needs but also the means through which to communicate this benefit become less wasteful and more efficient.

What will the future bring and how will social media transform businesses?

As this data flows into and across a business it will become increasingly apparent there is more of an opportunity to innovate via social media; across the whole supply chain than there is a threat and reason to ignore it.

Opening up your business in social media does require a converged response team including at the least; PR, Customer Service & Marketing but ideally everything through to HR and New Product and Service Development.

When you open up a social media profile you have to be prepared to answer any question, not just say the good stuff. These can and sometimes will be negative so you must be prepared to workflow this quickly to the people who can respond and this takes planning. The same goes for valuable insights to dramatically improve the business. Not sharing these should be a serious issue for any business.

The Net result is business will need to evolve to become real-time, responsive, open and inclusive where possible protecting its sensitive activity.

The biggest strain we see on our clients is in the staffing of these new roles. Whose job is it? How are they measured and rewarded? How and where can they hire people for these roles and how much should they be reliant on an external supplier to plug the gaps?
The big challenge will be how much does businesses shift spend currently going to external agencies and use it to create internal teams to manage these opportunities. Employment laws and an incorrect uncertainty of the permanency of social media mean businesses find it difficult to commit. This is why often why we provide interim staffing solutions to plug internal gaps on a day-to-day level as well look at the bigger strategic piece.

What range of services 90:10’s offer/provide?

Social Media Unit / Staffing
Daily Listening
Insight Auditing
Change Management
Social Media Setup
Cocreation initiatives (NPD, NSD)
Social Media Campaigns

Image via Wikipedia

Sir Tim Berners Lee’s Scientific American Essay is something of a wake up call in a world where all the internet success stories seem to be closed and controlled.

Facebook and Apple are surely very big deals which are hard to ignore and which don’t

exactly play by the principles of open.

Sir Tim – the man most often cited as the father of the worldwideweb (not the internet – that’s just the tubes) – points out that the reason the web scaled at all was because of its very decentralised status.

No Government, no organisation, no one decided how many news sites there should be, or whether or not to make blogging software available with free hosting, or how videos could and should play or if and when social networks of the Facebook variety could and should emerge. Or even who should pay for what.

The web – as I often say – functions just as the economy (and just as evolution and the weather, too) in that they are complex adaptive systems: Fundamentally not controllable from the centre.

The web grows adapts and evolves through iterative experimentation. It is threatened by stagnation. When elements stop interacting they lose their ability to adapt, to become fitter, to add value.There is a simple rule of networks: Reed’s Law.

It states that one extra node on the network doubles its value. The opposite is also true. One node removed from the network halves its value (there is a 2n equation at work for the mathematicians among you).

It means that cutting our connectedness (and not just connections between people but also between objects and objects of information) reduces the opportunity for groups to recombine to solve issues important to them. It reduces the web’s ability to adapt to the needs of its users.

Every time you see a silo, that’s what’s happening.

Facebook, iTunes. Successful silos. AOL, The Times Online. Successful silos?

The web can wait. It’ll outlast them all.

My bet is that open will always beat closed in the end. There may be market and commercial advantages in closed states that are sustainable for a reasonable length of time – at least in company reporting cycle terms. But these are actually just blips in the life of the web and of the economy.

The greatest value the web will bring us is in helping us find people who care about the same things we do to help us solve a problem or create a solution right now. It’s a simple concept that delivers never-before-available efficiencies. Instead of the one-size-fits-all wastage of mass production, the web offers us the tools to scale relevance and for those who care about the same thing to discover each other and to self-organise.

The web then is far from primarily a comms tool. The misnomer of social MEDIA has fooled too many for too long. The web is far more a tool of creation. Messages – the expression of our metadata – make the connections but it’s what happens as a result of those connections, not the expression itself, which is critical.

The web is not for taking from it’s for making with, others.Breaking out of silos means more of us find more of the right people to make things with.Creating silos restricts our access to making value.But the biggest silos of all have yet to be tackled.

It’s relatively easy to blame the latest most successful social networks (harder to blame Twitter now its data is shared via Google anyway). Government’s are another easy target. The toughest to overcome are language and access.Imagine the extra value we’ll all be able to create when all those extra nodes connect with us.

Related articles

• Berners-Lee Sounds Alarm Over Appified, Siloed, Regulated Web (tjantunen.com)
• “Berners-Lee: Apple, Facebook are enemies of the web” and related posts (blogs.reuters.com)
• Tim Berners-Lee: Facebook could fragment web (guardian.co.uk)
• Tim Berners-Lee criticises Facebook’s ‘walled garden’ (telegraph.co.uk)
• “Tim Berners-Lee: Each Social Networking Website Is A Silo, Walled Off From Others” and related posts (pulse2.com)

Every week we enter into a new discussion with a large organisation about their challenges which often results in some kind of orientation session and us laying out a series of steps to get them on the path of opening up their supply-chain bit-by-bit to the consumer in a way that works well with their business operations. Think of it as a manual revealing how to assemble all the constituent parts and apply the tools, bit-by-bit.

We are incredibly process driven. In fact it’s what we sell; a series of tried-and-tested processes each building upon the other. Most clients hire us specifically because of this methodical approach because it offers them reassurance that what they are building is going to stand the challenging test of day-to-day use, with all of its unpredictability, and last. But it takes time, patience and a lot of detail.

To some in their enthusiasm or anxiety to ‘do social’ this process and its complications seem like overkill. Perhaps everyone else seems to promise them the tactical outcomes, that may or may not come out of our processes, including a strategy in days. Often they decide to try and push ahead without reading the manual. I can understand why. Impatience is, regrettably, a personal trait of mine but through experience I’ve learnt, in the end, it pays to read the manual properly.
Increasingly we have those same people return some months later with an appreciation for the real challenge ahead of them. We don’t take pleasure from this fact. Actually we constantly reassess how we can allow our process to be more flexible and our thinking more pragmatic so they see the value of our particular manual before they start off in the wrong direction.

Whilst we always commend experimentation and recognise there is a value in learning the hard way what not to do. Inevitably the aborted route of rapid self-fulfilment has led to some tears and a lot of wasted time.

Hopefully nothing catastrophic happened along the way – but the feelings about the space are almost certainly soured. So whether with us or another take some time at the beginning to really scrutinise your method.

We hear that 400 US and UK hotels and restaurants are considering a group action against Tripadvisor (the user-review travel site) for ‘false’ and ‘unfair’ reviews.

That’s the language of defamation. Apart from the legal complexities of cross-border legal cases, we have to wonder why they don’t go the whole hog and attempt to sue the entire internet?

In the world of peer-to-peer there is less publication, more conversation, in the way content is distributed.

Publication is far from the end of the story. It’s the start of a conversation – in which facts, assertions and, yes, opinions, can and should be challenged. Who to sue is, therefore, far less clear than once it was.

Taking legal recourse against the source assumes the world (and tripadvisor in this case) is simply a one-to-many broadcaster, rather than a many-to-many reality. If you’re going to sue tripadvisor why not also take action against those who wrote the reviews, or who shared a link, or who quoted a passage? That’s what is open to us in libel cases – sue the creators of the content, those who published it and the distributors. In reality the legal focus falls on the publisher.

On the web we are all publishers.

On the web the originator of the content is the person who wrote it, not the provider of the platform – because the means of production resides in the creator not the publisher.

As I explained in a post on my personal blog (fasterfuture.blogspot.com):

“When we talk about means of production, we often think about the machinery to produce. But that does not mean the device.
“In a mass production world the connection between the machinery and the process is clearer. Traditionally a newspaper owner needed to own a printing press. They also needed to employ a team or writers, photographers, editors (etc) to produce the content. Which was the means of production? The printing press or the producers of the content? The two were so tightly connected it didn’t matter.
“On the web the owner of the means of production of content is the person who creates the content. In reality this was always so. In the past the owner of the means or production of content had no access to the printing press. Now they have (or at least to its equivalent in the form of the web – where of course everyone is a publisher).”

Beyond the rights and wrongs of who to sue – why would someone getting bad reviews call in a brief instead of responding to the complaint? What don’t these guys want to learn about providing a service which is a better fit with the needs of their customers?

Threatening to sue people for the expression of fair opinion creates barriers to becoming a more effective business. You need to know what is wrong with your business from every perspective so you can make it better. A better business gets more customers and generates more profit.

The social web means we have never had a better set of tools for learning from your customers  in real-time. Extreme real-time insight – at scale.

Those that take advantage of these tools will become a better fit, more relevant, more efficient. Those that don’t won’t.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Hundreds of hotels plan potential lawsuit against TripAdvisor (gadling.com)
• TripAdvisor faces legal action from upset hoteliers (telegraph.co.uk)
• The challenge of 3D printing to the role of the organisation (fasterfuture.blogspot.com)

I’ve been working professionally in the digital space for over 16 years starting in the early days of the web in 1994.   I’m now firmly entrenched in one of Europe’s top Social Media consultancies. 90:10 Group based in London with offices in Spain, France, Germany and Italy.  We provide advice to Europe’s leading brands.

We’ve gone through some exciting times since 1994 and I can pinpoint about 3-4 major crossroads when the internet connected in a serendipitous organic intersection that was beyond the control of any particular person or company.  Pure synchronicity.  When technology becomes an organism.  Finding the most efficient path.  Like a river finding it’s way to the sea.
Over the next few weeks i’m going to be blogging about some of those special moments and what it means for the future of the web.

Naturally, over the years people frequently ask me:  “What will the web look like in 3 years”.  In the last few years I’ve always answered this question with something along the lines of:

“The web will be interactive, exciting, personalized, fast, social, always on and media rich.”

Innovations powering this view included:  Broadband, browser ubiquity, web standards, RSS (real simple syndication) and the unprecedented universal business and consumer adoption of all things digital.

As many people know, I’m a huge fan of widgets and mobile apps like http://www.trafficwatch.co.nz.  Even with innovations like the iPad, I was still locked in a “version of the web” confined by the web browser.  (or “browser like” native apps)

Until now.

With the launch of the London Barclays bike rental scheme we are finally living in a web connected world.

An invisible web.   Like electricity.  You don’t see it.  It just works.

While most people are focused on the health and environmental benefits of the bike scheme, I’m fascinated with the technology which is enabling this real world implementation and radical web innovation.
We are smack bang in the middle of a huge crescendo of web innovation.    At the heart of it is API development.
I’m going to be talking more in future posts about the power of the API.    The API is changing the web as we know it.

Before I lose you with Acronyms.  API stands for Application Programming Interface

API – BORING?    no.  Is a DVD boring?   Don’t let an acronym turn you off.

While it might sound like it just for programmers it’s changing EVERYTHING on the web.
Practically ever major website is heavily investing in API development and I’d venture to say that if you don’t develop an API your website will be an island and WILL NOT be relevant in the future web.

Here is a great post on the rise of API culture.
Let’s take a closer look at the London Barclay’s Bike program:

The activity:  Biking around town:
The analogue solution :

Analogue Bicycle Solution

You need to:

• Have a desire to bike to work or home.
• Research a bike.  Ask experts, surf the web, talk to friends and purchase a bike.
• Invest hundreds of pounds in your shiny new bike.
• Buy security equipment to protect your new investment.  Locks, codes, keys, and chains.
• Carry your seat and any other items which could be stolen with you around town and into your office when you leave your bike.
• Bring your bike up to your office?
• Find a place to park your bike.  lock it to a pole only to get it removed or receive a ticket.
• Have bike stolen.  Inevitable.
• Forget where you parked your bike.  (pub culture)
• Catch a ride home and leave your bike. (The Round Trip problem)
• Damage, Puncture or technical malfunction of your bicycle.

The Digital Solution =  “None of the above”.

Here is why:

The proposition is simple and easy to understand.  There is no commitment.  Check it out on the Transport for London Website.

I’ve subscribed to the program at practically no cost and I can dip in and dip out of the program as little or as much as I want.

The Bike Stations / Docks are wired and web connected.

There is an API for developers to develop apps which can be openly and freely used to develop useful web and mobile solutions.
Mobile Apps connect to the web which connects to the bike stations.

Apps tell me where the nearest bike station is.  Apps tell me if the rack is empty or full using GPS and mapping based on my current location.

If you do have a puncture or problem wiht a bike, you park it and hit the button letting the system know maintenance is required.  and take a fresh bike!

My mobile device  is now the most important possession in my life.  More important than my wallet or my ID.  Something I carry everywhere.  It’s my beacon to determine where / when I can pick up or drop off a bike.  It also serves as a map and timer to enable me to stay under the free 30 mintures.  I also have been a big fan of Map My Tracks which tracks my physical activity.

This is the new web.   The invisible web.  The web is seamlessly integrated into our lives.  minute by minute.  it’s always on.  It’s always with us.  It provides value way beyond what we would pay for such services.   Value that pays for the your phone many times over.
Parents spent $2,000+ on Encyclopaedia Britannica set in 1988 now the iPhone/iPad version costs only $19.99.  Today a single app can pay for the entire value of your iphone or android device.

I’m excited to see this kind of innovation taking place.  It’s just the first taste of what’s to come.

Open source, API, crowd sourcing and mobility all being driving forces behind innovation.   No single company or no single person knows more than the crowd. A mantra we believe in at 90:10 Group

More to come.    For now, get on your bike!

For some more stunning examples of data use and API development specifically around the London Bike program check out:

http://data.london.gov.uk/datastore/inspirational-uses

A strong brand is an illusion …. I’d rather say simulation that becomes reality because people believe in the story. Let’s call it religion. Or love.

Some examples:

1) Is an Audi a better product than a Mercedes Benz? It’s not. An Audi is the story about the young, quick and nimble owner. That’s why I buy one. It’s a statement. My statement to the rest of the world. I do not necessarily buy a better car – but a better statement for me. And that makes it the better car.

2) The product is just one part of the whole story: If people believe a roadster that lacks some rear seats, a roof and all comfort is the better car to make their statement …. it is the better car. The story becomes reality because people believe in it. Why?

People want to believe, people want to be part of sth., people want to distinct. That does’t work with commodities. Distinction needs an emotional and rational superstructure. Destinction needs brands.

3) Opel ist a great product – but nowadays a louzy brand nobody wants to buy. If you destroy the brand, you destroy the product.

4) Coca Cola ist water, sugar and some colouring. A commodity – but with a wonderfull little secret, a great corporate design and a brand story. Destroy it and you have just water, sugar and some colouring.

That’s where social media and the idea of participation comes in.

Social media has the ability to enhance and sharpen the brand. And bring it closer to the peoples’ desires.

Social Media has the ability to improve the product according to the brand story and the needs of the people.

That’s how social media closes the most critical gap for every company that produces and sells products today.

In history of brands, mass communication was the most important tool. But a brand never needed mass communication. So the end of mass communcation won’t kill the brands, One to one conversation has always been a wonderful way to build a brand – the strongest to learn more about customers desires, the strongest to sell a product.

Thats why social media can make brands even stronger., sharper, more consistent  – more relevant. And help to deliver a product that meets this promises.