Ian McKee, CEO of Vocanic, shared at the recent PR Academy Conference about the importance of Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing. Anybody who has spent time on the blogosphere will probably have heard about this term. However, what does it truly mean?
In his presentation, Ian shared some startling findings.
OK folks, for those who are in the know (and even those who aren’t), there are a couple of huge geek fests hitting town this week. One of them is iX Conference 2007 which is happening over the next couple of days at Suntec.
Part of it is the iX-TDM New Media Forum happening at SMU. That is going to rock because it features luminaries like Jeremiah Owyang of Podtech.net, Lynda Brown of New Media BC, Mike Downey from Adobe and Louis Broome from Microsoft. They are going to share about social media and engage you in a panel discussion on what’s happening and what lies ahead in the exciting 2.0 world.
Here are the details:
Blogging singer Genie sharing what tickles her fancy at Blogout
Just came back from Blogout which was a big social media bash at Geek Terminal attended by (who else) 2.0 geeks and celeb bloggers galore! The night was certainly interesting, with a veritable who’s who in the blogging scene making their appearances including Tomorrow.sg’s founder James Seng, STOMP’s editor Jennifer Lewis, Ping.sg’s creator Uzyn, Moblog’s originator Yoke Chin, Global Voices’ Preetam Rai, Kevin Lim of Theory Is The Reason and lots more members of the blogerati.
I certainly had fun moderating the panel discussion which talked about “A New Voice”, though it did go a little chaotic at times. My conclusion was that the crowd seemed to have more fun chatting with each other! Well, I guess that’s the spirit of the whole 2.0 movement, where EVERYBODY participates in the conversation. It’s “All Star Anything Goes” (for those old enough to remember that celebrity slugfest).
A special treat for the evening was having upcoming blogging singer Genie treating us to a music video of hers, hottest mummy contestant eastcoastlife sharing what makes her so special, and also hearing from celebrity STOMP blogger Joe Augustin. Nice to also know that we have upcoming technopreneurs in Singapore making their mark in the web 2.0 universe. Finally, it was great to meet Veron, DK and Dr Leslie Tay of I Eat I Shoot I Post fame, all big-time bloggers in their own right.
Special kudos go to Estee for the fabulous organising and professional emceeing of this event, as well as other digital movers like Ming Yeow, Su Yuen, Swathi, Chern Jie and all the other hardworking folks at The Digital Movement who made this possible.
In my recent series of posts, I have blogged about the increasing prevalence and popularity of outdoor advertising in Singapore. As cited in a recent survey, both taxi and bus advertising are on the increase. The growth in outdoor advertising has in fact led to the creation of its own awards – the Singapore Outdoor Advertising Award. It has also resulted in media behemoth Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) acquiring Media Box Office in 2005, allowing it to provide an integrated media solution to advertisers covering print, radio, online and outdoor channels.
As an advertising space, outdoor media opportunities have their pros and cons. I firmly believe that they do a lot of good for branding and positioning, as well as create greater consumer awareness. After all, most outdoor displays are highly visible, brand-driven, and specially designed to capture your attention. They are what I would call the widest end of the funnel – the first stop if you may to pique customer curiosity and generate interest.
The flip side about outdoor advertising is that it may be less effective in tactical and short-term campaigns. When you have a time-limited offer or promotion, TV, newspapers or flyers still work better. Often, the best integrated marketing communication campaigns employ a mix of outdoor, mass media, and on site marketing to generate the best response.
As I was opening the door to my home recently, out popped this slip of paper which looked like a hastily scribbled personal note.
When I looked closer at the details, I realise that this was actually a printed flyer and not a request from my relative. Yes, it wasn’t blue ink but print! While the language left much room for improvement, the note does catches one’s attention. It appears to be a genuine request for help, with the offer to pay high cash price for a unit in my estate. Pity that I am not in a hurry to sell though.
Compare that flyer to this one.
Apparently, I was (faint) according to the cool folks at the Digital Movement. They apparently liked my 5 parter on Nexus 2007 so much that they have given me a free T-shirt for Best Coverage Award. Wow!
Thanks for the cool accolade folks. I really appreciate it and I think that you guys are doing a swell job too. Keep it up! The future is bright for Singapore 2.0!
Inspirational IT-preneurs sharing war stories
The final session at Nexus 2007 saw three eminent entrepreneurs in the technology field sharing their tales of passion, zeal and fervour in changing the world.
The three occupied very different tech niches. Farzad Naimi’s Litescape looked at integrating business applications, voice and data, allowing greater real-time collaboration on any device. Roberto Mariani’s XiD Technologies, on the other hand, was largely involved in face recognition and other biometric systems. And of course, crowd favourite Cory Ondrejka was one of the guys responsible for the hugely successful Second Life, a virtual world largely owned by its users.
The third session at Nexus 2007, “The Future of the Web”, was led by a fascinating presentation by Andreas Weigend, former Chief Scientist of Amazon.com. He spoke about Chris Anderson’s Long Tail (Wired magazine, Oct 2004) as well as the following futures:
Future of the individual – From e-business to me-business, and from eco-system to ego-system.
Recently tackled as part of Nexus 2007, “Crowdsourcing the Media” looked at how citizen journalism was changing the dynamics of the media landscape. It saw social media provocateur Kevin Lim moderating a session with online media luminaries Kathy Teo of CNET Networks, Jennifer Lewis of SPH‘s STOMP, and James Seng, Editor extraordinaire of tomorrow.sg (Left to right above).
Discussions centred around citizen journalism and its various forms (youtube, wikipedia etc) and included fascinating insights into how CNET and STOMP operated. As Jennifer puts it, there tend to be more “loser-generated” rather than “user-generated” content, and she does get her fair share of junk being MMS-ed and SMS-ed to her via 75557.
Nat Torkington doing his 2.0-ish thang
At the recent Nexus 2007, Nathan Torkington, crowd favourite and Perl guru from O’Reilly Media, spoke about Disruption, Change, and Opportunity. In case you do not know, its founder Tim O’ Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 and have been in the business of technology trendspotting for quite a number of years. Nat cited key developments in the technology landscape over the decades:
1988 – X Windows Documentation