1000heads speak out in Milan
By Mike DavisonThanks to James @ Kinross and Render (www.kinrossrender.com/), and Kevin Perlmutter, European head of PR @ Xerox, we recently received an invite to speak at the Xerox international PR summit in Milan and, of course, obliged. It was a bit of a rush job – getting in and out of Milan and up and down from the speaking podium all in one day. Plus the fact we’d just got back from WOMMA in Orlando a day or two before.
The presentation was entitled ‘Brand Reputations and the Internet’. There were about 15 PR agencies present al hailing from different corners of Europe. Sorry to all that the Q and A section at the end had to be cut short due to return flight times. Its interesting that the ensuing debate focused almost entirely on blogs and bloggers, with online communities (which received more my attention in the talk) pretty much ignored.
Our take on the WOM space is that online communities, despite being around forever, are still where the most influential sources of consumer WOM are to be found. Brand opinions in these spaces are often hotly contested and debated with opinions receiving a good deal more scrutiny by board members than blog posts. This is great because brand presentation is often a cumulative picture of rich and informed input. PR audiences, in our experience, better understand the consumer generated media space through blogging as bloggers can be seen as guerrilla journalists. Community members are more conceptually without industry context.
But if you still think boards are relics, hit big boards and take a look at some of the contemporary membership figs. http://www.big-boards.com/ Remind me to call the physiotherapist as Alitalia’s seats have nearly paralysed me!
