With a couple of days to go the excitement is building for our EMEA event Imagine 07 in Paris on 2nd October - a confirmed delegate list of over 600 senior decision-makers from across EMEA and a fantastic line up of speakers from Microsoft and the advertising and media industry. 

I am honoured to host this event and welcome this big crowd. Also extremely excited to hear from the speakers who all are experts in their fields. Our CEO Steve Ballmer will deliver the Keynote: Microsoft’s vision for leadership in an evolving market. Chris Dobson will open with the MS vision for advertising followed by Brian McAndrews who plans to share his perspective on the aQuantive acquisition and what it means to our customers. Derrick Connell will then share our vision for the future of search.  Ivan Pollard, Partner at Naked Communications then takes the stage to talk about media neutral thinking in an always-on, all-in one world and this will be followed by an interview by Chris Dobson with Tess Alps, CEO of Thinkbox where Tess will be asked to consider what convergence means, what challenges the TV industry is facing; how these changes are affecting consumers and her view on what advertisers want from TV now and in the future. This will be followed by a session with Terri Richardson, Group Marketing Manager from Microsoft TV talking around what MS are doing in the IPTV space and how Mediaroom is powering new types of advertising.

We also welcome Marc-Henri Magdelenat, CMO Screen Tonic, who will cover the rise and rise of the small screen – the quality of mobile marketing communications and how you can best target customers on the move. This is followed by an engaging session on Entertainment: The Evolution of Engagement with Jeff Bell, and a client presentation from Stephen Hunt, Head of Media at Paramount Pictures UK where he will deliver a case study on the hugely successful Transformers launch.  I'll then lead a lively panel and debate on Telling stories in the digital age: the relationship between creativity and technology. Fantastic panelists from leading creative agencies have accepted our invitation: Ajaz Ahmed – AKQA, Jonny Vulkan – Anomaly, Winston Binch – Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

Hamish Pringle, Director of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) plans to look to the future and consider what advertising and agencies will look like in 10 years time. Our last external speaker of the day is Martin Lindstrom – best-selling author and leading online brand strategist. Martin is going to look at what the brand builder needs to do to make meaningful contact with ‘Generation Tomorrow’. Our VP EMEA John Mangelaars will close the day with his vision for EMEA.  All set to go. Have a great weekend in the meantime. 

Consumers should be taught to learn how to become better storytellers if they want to participate in ads creations. Briefly summed up, this is the recommendation Denise Lee Yohn professes on iMedia Connection. Sort of Ok OK what she says but this 'we as pros do better' attitude would make me cringe if not done on purpose. I hope. I hate patronizing. Amongst other things the brand marketer states that common people's creation " ..better be good work" , that 'the brand should dictate the strategy' and that " the objective is not to make people laugh".  I see all that. But wait a minute: laughing is one of the strongest emotions advertisers are trying to trigger. So let's rephrase the previous: "If we're going to be seeing more work from ad directors at all, it better be good work" :-) There have been far too many mediocre ads heralded as great ones and unfortunately 'novelty' is not some excuse we can give them. I'd like to answer with the following recommendation, stolen from the excellent 'I am the media' from FutureLab. Alain is a fair guy and I am sure he appreciates the Allow me to copy some of its material here.

While Denise is still wondering "if the average Joes who enter ad contests are as capable of creating work as great that produced by experienced and trained ad agency creative directors", I suggest you take a look at the recent Deloitte's video contest I mentioned last week. Yes I think they can make an ad. At least something that I care about, that is fun & memorable, that i can easily tell others, that makes my conversations more interesting. They exist.

The last two days I spent in Düsseldorf at the OMD, thé Online Marketing fair for Germany. It's been my fourth year at OMD and I thought it was funny to see how the exhibition & congress have evolved, very much following the same turbulence and growth path as the new digital world itself. The number of participants has grown over 10.500 from 6.500 or so last year. And the quality of presentations & customer connections was nice.

A new term is being coined by John Moore from Brand Autopsy  (It might have been used before but it's the first time I read it labeled as such): EGM is the word and stands obviously for Employee Generated Media. Moore is pointing out to a freshly published new book, written by Gates. Not our Bill but Gill, firstname Mickael. Gates Gill is the author of How Starbucks saved my life, his own story relating how he was offered a $10,50/hr job as a Starbucks Barita after he'd been fired by the ad-agency he'd been working at for many years as a Creative Director and failed to develop his own business consultancy. Starbucks made his mantra 'Less past more future' more than a daily prayer. Without any preconceived strategic communication plan from the brand, this vibrant testimonial will surely add to the already -and well deserved- sacrosanct reputation linked to Starbucks (funnily enough, customers who bought the book on Amazon also bought Mother Theresa: Come Be My Light'. (That one deserves some additional research)  Besides being a clever way to make sure the brand eventually engages with the new social media opportunities (by encouraging employees to lead the way), EGM seems to be the new fad to touch Generation Y.  More and more companies, including the Big Four are leveraging on EGM to recruit new employees. The most common media is video. The reason why? Video enables brands to connect and engage with their audience on an emotional level. Recently Deloitte successfully launched a Festival Film to stimulate employees to actively participate in recruiting new employees. The theme: ' What's your Deloitte?' generated an amazing 370 submissions, posted on the company's intranet - and YouYube for that matter. Take a look at winner number 2 entry, staging what it's like to be a Deloitte client service Superhero.

Unbelievable this is not a professionally edited one. Maybe an idea for Telenet customer service ? I'd vote for Dorien :-)

PS: Was thinking about the HR conference European Employee Engagement Conference - Transforming engagement strategy into action, soon in Amsterdam on 28/29th November. I wonder if EGM will be addressed.

Once in a while it's great to see good initiatives around Social Media. Forrester's most known bloggers, Li and Bernoff, are responsible for this one. Li and Bernoff are the initiators of a new industry awards, the Groundswell Awards, inspired from the name of their excellent blog.
The Awards' specificity? Reward - and spread the word about - Social Media initiatives taken by brands and non-profits. On a worldwide level. Any idea on the number of entries they received? About the number of beers the smallest possible bar in my fantastic home city of Leuven offers on a bad night. That is precisely 78. While 78 is still a a lot of beer to drink, even for an average Belgian (let alone German) beer drinker - it looks pretty gloomy as far as Social Media submissions are concerned. Don't rush to participate though, entries are closed.

The number of participants might not be high enough to collect many valuable insights but the Awards merit will be at least to draw - one of ?- the first Social Media Landscape for 2007. And try and determine the business value companies can benefit from entering the Social (Digital) Age. From the four entry judgements Li and Bernoff chose, business value - over innovation, audacity and authenticity- will be the key indicator of winnership for each category.  For the ROI centrics among us this is surely good news. Speaking about the awards' categories, I'm a bit dubious about the distinction they made. Bernoff explained that the categories  (Listening, Speaking, Energizing, Supporting, Embracing, Managing and Social impact) were defined to help companies approach the new media with the right questions in mind. Being the "why should I use these tools" and then "which and how?". I'm not sure whether his framework help them achieve this goal, nor do I agree when Bernoff assigns the Speaking category only to marketing purpose. In the conversation age of ours, it's the marketing duty to include all of them- except the one responding to internal objectives, the Managing category. Anyway: business value is definitely an asset Li and Bernoff master. Not only does their 'speaking' platform engage with their audience, but their blog also generates insights for their reports, provides content for their book,  and helps them promote their own event in Chicago next month. Kudoos Li and Bernoff, you get the moves :-)

I know what I said about Twitter a few months ago and how sceptic I was about the way it creates connections between people. Or better about the usefulness of the twitter twatter conversations going on. 'having my wax done' was the one I remember, for no particular reason though. Anyway, I still personally don't feel the need to create tweets to add an other means of communication to the ones I use today.  Right, I could probably use it 'privately' to communicate with my team while I'm traveling or to share instant thoughts and real-time comments on presentations I attend. But as far as I'm concerned, I don't feel the urge - nor the obvious added value to me - to do it now. Call it resistance to change if you want. Shit makes me feel old all of a sudden.  However, what I feel is that Twitter is indeed a very good example of the overhype but undervalue concept underlying the social media acceptance by brands.  As for all the new social tools, it takes time for marketers to grasp the meaning and the value they can add to it.  
But from what I've been reading these last weeks, it seems like savvy marketers are acquiring the maturity to provide this value. Not by using the platform as an advertising platform, but as a communication platform.  Twitter is achieving a new status in building relationships through 140 characters conversations. This last quarter, a significant number of large corporations jumped into the band. Jeremiah Owyang has recently mentioned a number of those initiatives, along with a 'to do' approach. Marketing Profs set up an account this month. The main brands' use is still clearly about pushing events and promotionals announcements. MSM companies and entertainment brands have been using it from a couple of months to promote their programs. Amazon delivers deals of the day tweets. Dell launched exclusive Twitter offers. IT providers use it as an extra customer service support.  But the real strength of the tool is to actively engage with the tweets brands' subscribers, the Followers. And this is beginning to happen. As Jeremiah stated 'Twitter is not for everybody'. It is probably the privileged playground of brands who are already committed to entering the conversations - wherever it happens.

Still once in a while stuff makes me smile :-) Read Armano's post on Questions for the Agency Executive. Even if your agency Account executive would give you some positive or genuine answers to these questions, it probably would not turn him or her into the Geek Marketeer in house role I talked about yesterday. Anyway, if your Agency AE is older than 30-somethings, better check it out.  In short, same old story really: people/agencies are developing/integrating services they're not familiar with because they don't relate to it, or think they won't relate to it - until they're required to. I can still remember conversations I had a few years ago with CEO's and marketeers asking why on earth they should have a website. And the moment I asked about Instant Messaging useage not 20% raised their hands - and that was on a symposium on... youth marketing ... barely 2 years ago.

The difference though between the late 90's and today- and the reason why it can't work any longer- is what Armano calls the digital immigrants vs. the digital natives. In 2007, interns in their 20ies are the new R&D opportunity for the agencies. They don't think in terms of media consumption, they breathe connections - be them live, mobile, digital. They can learn them - they are actually- how to walk the talk.

I just read Rubel's post on the Geek Marketeer, cross-trained specialists presented as the Growth Champion mate on the clients' side, or working in agencies to bridge the gap between developers and marketers.I do agree with Rubel that it is extremely difficult for anyone in marketing to keep up with all the twists in the digital space because technology changes at the speed of light. It's like chasing a cheetah. So I obviouysly agree that technology is evolving way quicker than 10 years ago when the Internet was on its way to become a mainstream media, but I don't quite follow him when he states that the Geek Marketeer is an emerging profile - nor more specifically a profile that will last long in the marketing landscape. Funnily enough these profiles have been the privilege of good interactives agencies for many years already, usually embodied by the account managers' team leader - or less frequently by the technical team leader- being able to correctly translate marketing concepts to development teams using requirements understandable both by clients and developers. I assume that while technologies are getting easier to use - blogs being a perfect illustration of how content management systems have been fined down to the point that everybody can customize his/her own platform without any specific technical background being required - the frontier between both competencies will significantly blur. The overwhelming success of mash ups is a very good example. The combination of different data sources enables the creation of new applications without much- if at all- technical skills.The true challenge will probably be about sociology. The new skills to be developed include a high-speed unceasing understanding of how the exponential technical possibilities will change our society and the way we do business. So why don't we bet on the Anthropologist Marketeer.

This month’s Revolution magazine (prepare to register to read the full article) features Global Director of Digital Marcom Planning and Effectiveness Bill Capodanno. Bill is Microsoft Super Growth Champion. Years ago, his tools kit has been forged at one of the leading e-commerce websites, one of the few references that make community participation a historic concept and word of mouth a winning marketing strategy. Amazon.
Bill's mission within MSFT is the CMO's new challenges per se. By 2010, he claims that 50% of MSFT marketing budget will go online. This year, the digital share is 30%. To put that number in perspective let's remind the average online marketing budget today in the UK  - one of the highest digital spend countries along with the USA and the Japan - is 12%. IAB European target for 2010 is to bring it to 10%.
This budget shift shows clearly how willing MSFT is to engage with their consumers, reflecting - and sometimes anticipating- their media consumption. Bill is convinced engagement will come from a better understanding how the consumers behave on the new media platforms. Focus is laid on where, when and how to approach them. Keywords for this approach: insight, testing, measurability. The challenge will be to have an holistic approach accross all platforms. Social collaborative and mobile media are currently being scrutinised in the UK. A precise strategy and key performance metrics are now being defined.
Trials on large-scale global social media products are on the go. Seems like Bill's moving on.

Earlier this week I mentioned to put tweens & teens on customer boards. If you doubt it, please have a look at their weekly social networking activities:

The 12-page report from Grunwald Associates and the National National School Boards Association (and yep, supported by Microsoft along with News Corporation and Verizon) explores their online behaviours within social networks. Couple of truths:

• Teens spend 9 hours on social networking activities (and 10 in front of TV)
• 71% students with online access use social networking tools
• Education (60%) - and specifically schoolwork (50%)- is topic number one in online conversations
• 12% students create and upload THEIR OWN music and podcasts, 9% their own videos, 22% their own photos or artworks
• 30% have their own blog, updated weekly by 17%
• 14% create new characters with nearly a third doing it every day

After reading this report, I would say: get tweens & teens on your customer board and make sure you go for the non-conformist ones - that is 'students stepping outside of online safety and behaviour rules'. They're more adventurous and heavier users. Briefly said they produce and edit more. And they represent 1 in 5 of all students surveyed.

Jammy schools board members should be the first to benefit from these leaders' behaviours.
They should use these non-conformists students with very contemporary skills to help them make the shift from assigning homework that requires Internet use to wholly embrace social media technologies and leverage their educational value.
After all is said and done, providing the same educational tools to anyone is an important part of the school responsibilities. Who said teachers should be the only providers? Educational shift on its way...

You are in the middle of a conference call. They send you a document over mail to review and your wireless connection drops dead. Is it your router, is it Vista, is it is it ? You do the little big routine that you use to do: switch off and on your PC, unplug your router, switch on and off the wireless capability on the laptop - the full monty of all possible things of which I never know which one works and which one not - but you just do it. I can do a flushdns in ipconfig like the best. Anyway nothing happens.

Next step: call Telenet, the cable service provider. A call menu. I push 3 for technical issues, 2 for yes it is Internet, 1 yes it is a technical issue I told you before indeed. Aha ! Automated voice: "there is an issue on your section of the line". Ugh... I know that right. "If that was why you were calling you can hang up as we are on it already, if you want more information press 2". sure, I press 2. Automated voice: "we value customer service so we want to do a little survey etc etc etc ". Pls no...  - I am working, I need my document, I want to know what the issue is and when it is gonna be fixed, I press "pls skip' again. Automated voice: "dear customer, due to the huge success of our products and services our waiting lines for help are much longer than usual." wait a minute, recap, I am missing a point here. should I really hear "we sell more so the more customers the less we can service them correctly?". should it not be '"the more we sell the more money we make the more we can invest in people taking service calls?". I persist. I wait. And I persist even more and then I get Dorien. Dorien from technical service.

I normally don't shoot the pianist, but I admit I have a little -gentle!-  rant anyway. But heee, she listens, she acknowledges and recognizes the issue, tells me that it is a broken power cable in a central modem distribution point, but it will be fixed the same day, although Telenet is dependent on the electricity provider PBE, so 'not their responsibility really'.  I think: she is a good operator, Marc take the occasion to throw your other issues on the table. So I explain that we have bandwidth issues in the street - I have raised that in July - and that literally 3 or my neighbors will switch to ADSL very soon, that Telenet probably prefers everybody to switch to ADSL rather than upgrade the bandwidth in our street. Dorien: "I completely disagree with that sir. As soon as the technical issue is over we'll test proactively the line and if we notice low bandwidth we'll open a request to upgrade that section. What I'll do is I'll call you back around 17.00 to tell you what the status is in your street is" - "and by the way you are still on an old DUO 4MB subscription which is more expensive than the new 12MB sub so I have just upgraded you. You'll notice the difference pretty soon." Blimey. I think 'why the heck haven't they done that proactively for all people with a similar subscription' but I am in sales so I know the answer to that one. But I admit, she is good.  

At 17.00 I am on a conf call but afterwards I hear Dorien on my answering machine with an extensive explanation on 'modem tests and ping test and the like' and of what she has done and checked. And she wishes me success and a nice evening. I am not a believer in training people to get a customer service attitude. You have it or you don't. Listen. Respect the issue. Try to solve. Underpromise and overdeliver. Do what you have told. Dorien is a pro. This morning I talked to my neighbor and told him not to switch to ADSL. He'll give it another month. Telenet, give Dorien a salary raise.

With new marketing engagement rules to embrace, CMOs are slipping into super heroes' suits.  In its Autumn 2007 issue, Strategic+Business calls them the "Growth Champions", " a term (they) use to describe marketing’s engagement in leading companies to expand their reach in the consumer or business-to-business marketplace". According to the last ANA study (the US Association of National Advertisers) the best CMOs' kit includes the six following tools:

· Put the consumer at the heart of marketing

· Make marketing accountable

· Embrace the challenges of new media

· Recognize the new organizational imperative

· Live a new agency paradigm

· Remain adaptable

Sounds familiar? You bet. But there's stuff you know and stuff you do. Like pretending to be customer centric and not including teens & tweens in your marketing lab or your customer board to train any marketeer over 35 year-old. Like knowing that monitoring and measuring are the new key metrics and not setting up a strategic plan to get insights from your customers' online behaviour and conversations (10 years after their first website, very few companies are yet using web analytics efficiently - if at all). Like saying "innovation is important to us" and not understanding (or listening that) your brand's territory is much larger than what you thought it was. Like knowing which last social tools get the eyeballs and not getting how your audience is consuming them and the value you can add to their experience. Our Growth Champions' mandate seems crystal clear: move on or move out. Not ?

I just read the last reflection on FutureLab on marketing accountability that echoed the 'make the world a better place' note in my previous post. Alain Thys emphasised that marketers have to become more accountable if they want to make a difference. Accountable to their business, their consumer, the world we're living in.

In all three aspects, his today's statement looks gloomy:
- Senior marketers spend only 2% of their time on their media strategy
- 46% never define clear objectives for campaigns
- 80% of CEO's believe their brand provides superior customer experience. Only 8% of their customers actually agree
- while green marketing is a hot topic, 25% of bottled water still crosses national borders
How can we can make the difference? The first step is to follow Alain's advice on self accountability: have a look in the mirror, every day. Take off the mask and challenge what has stopped making sense.

Once in a while I do stuff and I forget about it. Getting older I guess. Forgot that I had a talk for a German Mediacast on Social Networking some time ago. I "diskutiert anhand eines Microsoft Berichts über Social Networking und Online Advertising. Dabei erläutert er wie Consumer Social Networking Plattformen nutzen, wie sie gegenüber Werbung eingestellt sind und stellt 6 Leitprinzipien für Werbetreibende vor." I could not have written that myself, I can tell. For those who are interested: listen here (in english :-)).