“[Brands] need to realize that the conversation will extend beyond their control, so they should have a strong point of view and good, engaging content.” –Russ Lidstone, CEO of Euro RSCG London, in an article on UTalkMarketing
All the changes social media is bringing about now are accelerating, creating new ways for consumers and brands to interact with each other, based on these key characteristics: trust, transparency and humility.

“How Consumers Interact with Brands on Social Networks” on eMarketer
“Fickle [...]

These past few weeks I’ve focused on Twitter’s and Facebook’s new features and the importance of promoted tweets and open graph in the process of creating, expanding and managing online communities. This week, let’s think on a larger scale about what’s been happening so far and consider the current and future implications.

“Will Payovich Interview—Social Media for Business” on Facebook Advertising/Social Media Marketing
“The Social Media Effect” on Infographic World
“Q&A: Social Media Continues to Rewrite the New Rules of Advertising and Marketing” on [...]

My first three links this week are about the new way to communicate, and how we can be creative and relevant as marketers. These days we are focused on being respectful of the customer and what he has to say. Yesterday we were asking people to buy something; today, we’re telling them what the product is and why it’s good, and they tell us if they agree or not. If they don’t, we’ve got improvements to make. If they do: [...]

Remember when “housewife” was an actual demographic? When women who worked were in the minority, and those that did wore power suits and had to come up with inventive ways of getting promoted? When the bacon was most definitely brought home by the man and the equal salary debate didn’t even exist, because of course men earned more?
I remember it; it was when I started in PR. I remember at the time feeling vaguely disconcerted by it. Surely “housewife” was [...]

I just read a brilliant interview with music visionary Brian Eno in The Guardian. The last section, “On the end of an era,” made me think about the advertising business.
“I think records were just a little bubble through time, and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew [...]

This is the first installment of a weekly list by Baptiste Limb, interactive art director at Euro RSCG 360 in Lyon, France, of social media links he finds interesting and relevant. “My vision is mostly that advertising strategy has to be more creative than ever,” he says. “Creative people can’t be just TV/print or Web, but on all current and future media.”

“Ideas Are Core to Enterprise 2.0” on Blogging Innovation

“The Top 5 Reasons Brands Fear Social Media” on Socialmedia.biz

“54% of [...]

You can have all the bandwidth in the world, a site loaded with bells and whistles, apps that run on every new platform—but that’s no guarantee of social media success. This point was brought home to me at the Internet Marketing Summit in London last week, during a presentation given by Andrew Gerrard, a social and digital media strategist at d-marketing.
The No. 1 social media tool companies should invest in is their people.
By now, we all know the buzzwords of [...]

In the PR business, we’re all constantly thinking about social marketing, social networks, the social Web and social media. But we don’t think as often as we should about what those terms actually mean. Where does one end and another begin?
As Trebor Scholz, assistant professor in the Department of Media Study at the New School, lays out in an info-packed online slide show, the roots of our collective digital society are long and tangled: from an e-mail progenitor in 1965, [...]