Rolling Talks

All she needed, all she wanted..

..was genuine affection, say a bit of inspired love. Who would blame her? Lets pray she eventually gets what she wants. She sure deserves it. Hat tip to Kris ;)

Forrester Consumer Marketing forum

On Thursday, I'll be attending one of the most exciting events of the year with one of my business partners, Simon Mc Dermott from Attentio. Thursday's night is blogger dinner time with - among others- Jeremiah Owyang , Peter Kim and others Spanish celebrities ;). Unfortunately our favorite one won't join. Amaia, we'll miss you! Can't wait to be there. Plus qu'une fois dormir :-)

Rolling Talks Social Media Workshop

That's it: what kept me real busy these last 2 weeks is over. I've been lucky enough to organize my first Social Media Workshop for the consultants of The House of Marketing, the Belgian highly reputed marketing expert consultants' company. Many thanks to Véronique Vergeynst who made this possible and who helped a lot with the organisation phase. During the 3 hour workshop, I presented two parts: one over Social Media landscape from a user point of view, the other was about the impacts for marketers. I also invited 6 great professionals to share their experience with social media.
Thank you again to all my passionate speakers, Julie from Skynet, Diane from Dell, Nathalie from Electrabel, Pierre from Virtual Words Translations, Simon from Attentio, and Jacques, stuck in Milan, but will be for next time ;) ( Have a look at the agenda here ).

If you're interested to have this workshop - or a similar one- home let me know.

Pitching la suite

Talking about Pitching, I just stumbled upon these mirrored blogs, the Bad Pitch and the Good Pitch. Makes me think of theses kids' jokes: "Bad Pitch and Good Pitch are in a boat...".  I'll be doing an article over pitching and buzz seeding for the next Inside, so if you feel like sharing experiences on the subject, drop me a mail. Lurkers, I'm talking to you :-)

ROI on SM is IR4MI

Driving back from France yesterday night I was listening to one of the biggest Belgium life music festival 'Francofolies de Spa'. Lot of interviews from artists I never heard of before- but for a few years now each time I'm driving long distance I have to listen to and sing the animals' songs- mummy-pleeeeeeeease!! cd...So maybe you'll have heard about Uman? If not, as suggested by the artist himself you go to MySpace and search for them (Uman). Nothing extraordinary here (logic basic approach for artists, and as far as the music is concerned probably not as entertaining as the kids' hits). What gave me food for thoughts was how the guy described his experience and interaction with people/fans on the social platforms. At one point, he talked about 'immediate return'.

It's so fucking obvious - like brilliant quotes. I'm adding it to my list on ROI quotes: 'ROI on social media is IR'. Could add 'for modest investment'. In other words "ROI on SM is IR4MI". Source Uman RollingTalks

Talking about sources, during his last seminar, Jean-Luc mentionned 2 interesting sources for 'music & social media':

1. MySpace Music Marketing: How to Promote & Sell Your Music on the World's Biggest Networking Web Site
2. Borey Sok

Both on my pile of booksandblogs to read...

"I'm not just a kid- I'm a producer, publisher and promoter'

Interesting reading on the impact of SN in kids life and the influence on marketers. Chosen bits:

• "Kids want more freebies, more connection and more production utilities, and brands have the opportunity to jump in and facilitate." 
• "the majority of teens are spending more time with new media than traditional media."
• "Nearly half (47%) of 9-17 year olds, including more than half (55%) of teens, report participation in one or more advertiser branded activity types in the last month."
• "Overall, 20% of teens report adding branded content to their own websites in the last month"

On what they want:

Want to know how brands should NOT engage with bloggers?

Have a look at the Passoa Tent-xperience blog.
A very good example of 'NOT TO DO '

• no human voice (who post? no identity)
• zero authenticity but advertorial content
• no frequency (4 posts since the lunch in May and 3 of them on the same 14th of June)
• no interaction (3 comments),
• no commitment ( no concept, no introduction)

No nothing...I'm disappointed and really surprised. Yesterday I registered to the BuzzParadise program (shortly put: bloggers register to spread the world about brands' campaigns). BuzzParadise is one of the leading buzz, blog & viral marketing in France, part of the Vanksen group. They have a nice blog, Culture Buzz and I guess I expected them to be amongst the 'best practices' as far as implementation is concerned.

I was quite excited to see this morning my first invitation by mail (I hardly noticed the fact they don't check on Mac mail software before sending their mail - speaking about targeting influentials, that would be a point to consider. My subject line looked like this: Passoã: Êtes-Vous prêt a passer un=?UTF-8?Q?=20Et=C3=A9=20frais, =20fruit=C3=A9=20et=20exotique=3F?= ). Anyway, I felt ready.. and I still am as I want to understand how they can screw this up... I know sometimes clients want it their way but there's no chance this client will ever want to go further or do it again after this flop... and jammer genoeg, the blog targets the Belgian market :-(

Want to know how brands should engage with bloggers?

Take a look at 'Vous et nous' - vous being the brands, and nous being the bloggers- reminds me faintly of something here :-) French initiative whose objective is to explain brands how they should engage with bloggers- i love the  'La France parle aux Français' sounds of their motto. Buzz seedings or other concepts described and listed by agency. Great insights for marketers. Go and learn .
Would be great to have the same kind of listing for Belgium. To be discussed with blogging experts fellows :-)

Honoured member of 1st Belgian blogging experts

I was invited by Jean-Paul De Clerck, founder of i-scoop and owner of interactive marketing portal Digimedia, to join the first Belgian network of blogging experts. I'm delighted to join them and can't wait to share our experiences - particularly with JP, Robin and Philippe - don't know yet the others members Tom Cuylaerts and Michel Dirckx. And to embody a Voltaire's daughter ;-)

More info on our services on Business Blogging :-)

How do you bring the love back ?

No personal questioning but the new Microsoft Digital Advertising Services' campaign, a video ad, whose objective is to position MDAS as the reconnector between the advertiser and the customer.

I do love the video and the positoning, the will to be part of the answer on 'how  a brand can effectively and qualitatively communicate online with its consumers? '- and this is way beyond advertising on Messenger or in-game advertising.

If you want to convince people to invest online today, you have to give them reasons why they should. Telling them how many of their consumers are online is no more an option, you have to show them what they are doing online, how they are doing it and what they are saying. Show them that, be it their initiative or not, they already have their online identity. A reputation to manage. 

So as i suggested to Geert, this could be some idea for the next video: