If you work in influencer relations in Silicon Valley, you want to be at the Churchill Club this Monday March 1st for an evening event featuring John Byrne, Richard Edelman, Paul Bergevin, Peter Diamandis and Frank Shaw.
The event comes on the heels of the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer, a global opinion leaders study mentioned in my last post. The Trust Barometer is freely available. Bring your toughest questions or just show up for a great evening of discussion, debate and networking.
I’ll be particularly interested to see how this year’s discussion compares with the 2008 event (my comments).
See you there!
What:
What the Public Believes: New Trends in Corporate Reputation Management
Corporations are in the combat zone, struggling to build back trust among all of their stakeholders in the midst of the global economic crisis. Faced with an overall meltdown in confidence, how is corporate leadership—including marketing, PR, investor relations and public affairs—to respond? How should companies retool their communication strategies and address the right stakeholders with the right issues and strike the right tone? This panel of thought leaders speaks out on the most current trends and strategies for managing corporate reputation and sharpening stakeholder engagement.
Cost
Individual Churchill Club event tickets run $58 - $90, and normally it’s a cash bar. Reg, more info.
Twitter
Hashtag will be #churchillclub.
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I am impressed with the interactive section on the “People Behind The People” published with the 2009 Time 100. It’s an indicator that even a mass consumer audience is interested in learning about “behind the scenes” influencers.
Time did a great job slicing and presenting this content to boot, given their audience.
It’s a reminder for all of us that with a little creativity we can make our work with influencer relations captivating to our own audiences.
Popularity: 1%
Bloggers who are compensated for endorsing products and services could be held liable for any false statements they make, if newly proposed FTC guidelines are adopted. I’m pleased to see some movement beyond voluntary blogger transparency.
I’m a fan of voluntary transparency. It puts peer pressure on bloggers to tell you about sponsorships and other compensation. It has uncovered several unethical promotional campaigns. However, I see shortcomings as well. Voluntary transparency does not hold bloggers’ feet to the fire with regards to the honesty of their statements.
Consumers and brands suffering unfairly due to false statements have little recourse. This situation favors the powerful and wealthy — who can afford to pay for endorsements and posts — and undermines the value of word of mouth (WOM) influence.
Excerpting from coverage at AdAge:
As part of its review of its advertising guidelines, the FTC is proposing that word-of-mouth marketers and bloggers, as well as people on social-media sites such as Facebook, be held liable for any false statements they make about a product they’re promoting, along with the product’s marketer. This could present a significant issue for marketers, including the likes of Microsoft, Ford and Pepsi, who spend billions on word-of-mouth and social media. PQ Media projects that marketers will spend $3.7 billion on word-of-mouth marketing in 2011.
The current FTC guideline on endorsements and testimonials in advertising was issued in 1980.
Hat tip to Andy Beal, Markeing Pilgrim, for raising the topic.
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Tom Smith’s guest post at Mashable makes the point that we now trust the opinions of strangers as much as we trust our close friends, thanks to social media. He’s highlighting findings from the Universal McCann study, “When did we start trusting strangers”. Don’t let yourself get lulled into thinking this phenomenon is taking place only in consumer markets. Social media is also changing the way that businesses source trusted opinions on products and services.
Social media is transforming B2B decision-maker ecosystems in two fundamental ways. The most notable, according to Influencer50 research, is that more categories of advisors are exerting more influence during B2B purchase decisions. Social media is helping make many types of “hidden” advisors more visible, more accessible, more informed.
Another change is the appearance of new types of influencers. Examples include niche consultants, procurement groups, and expert communities.
The bottomline is that social media is changing the way we slice the B2B influence pie, just as it is changing influence in consumer markets.
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