Noize - Digital PR

Paris is a real revelation.

Its 13 years since I last spent any time here and I frankly loved this trip as much as I was left cold by the last.

Still supremely confident with it's own culture, the city seems like a metaphor for much of the conversation I was privileged to absorb at Marketing 2.0 at the  European School of Management’s Campus in the 11th Arrondissement.

Paris is of course a giant social network. Users gather in the city, sharing common values giving the place it's identity. Cafes and bars the venue for conversation and word of mouth. The new Ve’lib street corner bike hire network gets people connected using long established methods in a forward looking context, facilitating, empowering and valuing the individual.

Unlike my previous trip when Paris felt austere, remote and disconnected, I felt welcomed and involved.  For 48 hours I was part of the city... I felt engaged.              

Engage.

It’s one of the words that became a mantra at the seminar, repeated hypnotically, again and again (and again).  Alongside “listen” and “conversation” they were the touchstones of the session.

Whether speakers waxed lyrical about buzz monitoring, real time social engagement on live web TV, advocacy networks, blogging, viral seeding, PR or the neurological-science of influence, everyone spoke of listening to consumers, creating conversation and how, in turn, it  facilitates their customers engagement.

Sure New Media businesses have a celebrated track record of painting a picture of  change rapidly turning to revolution (was it a coincidence the Bastille was near by?).

There are, after all, burgeoning reputations and huge budgets at stake in this media channel turf war.  I, like many worked through the dotcom bubble on the digital side and some victims and witnesses to that train wreck still view new media with suspicion and scepticism, somehow imagining it isn't relevant to them or their businesses.

What  really felt like a paradigm shift at Marketing 2.0 was the certainty of the presentations and the mounting proof that there is an irrevocable change going on. Whilst nobody stood up claiming cast iron metrics that connect a seeding or a word of mouth campaign, directly and incontrovertibly to sales*, the circumstantial evidence is getting impossible to ignore.

The channels of consumption are changing and changing fast.  This shift facilitates incredible opportunities for brands to engage with their consumers and for the enlightened it is leading to extraordinary results.

What’s more it’s as true for youth brands as it is for less buzz  blessed corporates.

We saw Quicksilver’s “dynamite surfing” viral (3 million plays and counting - here if you haven't already seen it) 

sitting alongside Dell's oft mentioned "Idea Storm"  and the Arcelor Mittal Steel company’s employee video blog.

No offence intended, but Dell and Arcelor Mittal won’t float most people’s boat (or surfboard)  in the sexy product department, but by listening to their customers and their staff respectively, both businesses have reaped genuine benefits from the engagements and  re-positioned themselves as forward looking at a stroke.  

The seemingly endless examples of considered, informed, creative, inventive, highly targeted, digitally led campaigns that engage consumers in their own channels on their own terms all echoed the sentiment - less tell and sell - more listen, engage, converse.

All conversations start with someone listening, which is surely what all reputation sensitive brands (…and I think that's all of them isn't it?) should be doing to their customers online,  right now.

To me personally, Paris felt modern and relevant – a place with a tarnished past but a place refreshed and inspired with a clear vision of the future.

So did Marketing 2.0.

* To contribute to the development of  measurable metrics in Social Media campaigns come along and participate in Measurement Camp  - 14th May 2008.

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