On March 15-16, London’s Olympia hosted one of the largest conferences on social media in Europe - Social Media World Forum 2010. Over four thousand registered participants and over two hundred speakers delved into the future of social media. 

Amongst the speakers were Kevin Eyres, Managing Director Europe, LinkedIn, Trevor Johnson, Head of Strategy and Planning, Facebook, Mark Watts-Jones, Head of Development and Innovation, Orange UK and representatives of many other global brands.

The scene involved two days of wearing a compulsory LinkedIn lanyard on the neck, surrounded by marketers and agency heads constantly clinching their iPhones and Blackberries. Imagine two days in halls and vestibules, which resounded with the buzzwords of the day - Foursquare, Gowalla, , Facebook Location Based API, and social games. (less dramatic players included MySpace and Google Buzz). Two fantastic days.

So what can we expect in social media from the viewpoint of chiefly London-based agencies and marketers? Staunchly certain, a little unclear and perhaps even for that reason, rather exciting. All this despite the fact that the term “social media” won’t last another year most probably to the chagrin of the conference organizers. That’s at least what was uttered from the ranks of the lecturers. “Everything will be social. We will stop saying social media, it’ll just be web”, concluded speaker Alex Miller, the head of the London-based agency Jam specializing in social media.

They spoke of the waste and dark side of the strength of social media – about agencies that try to blaze trails by paying bloggers in exchange for writing up positive reviews on products. About social media spam. About tweets devoid of souls. Parallel workshops featured a series of important case studies, and lobbies held dozens of company stands demonstrating their tools for working with social media.

Besides other visitors saw tools for monitoring conversations about brands in social media, semi-finished white-label community platforms, and instruments enabling agencies management of conversations in social media for dozens of brands at once.

So what can we expect and hope not to miss? 

Organizations that have been social media maidens up till now will begin to unavoidably begin searching for external specialized agencies, and in parallel, to form their own social media position and later entire specialized teams…all this in order to soon disperse them like Orange UK a year ago, and added work with social media into the basic job description to much wider layers of their employees, including their customer care department.

Quick-thinking work contractors realize that authentic engagement of a brand in social media requires responsibility, will, and capability to constantly listen, discuss and create interest. That is, professional and valuable participation (for the brand and consumers) in social media is a 365/7/24 commitment that cannot be taken lightly. It's really a long-term strategic decision.

Smart work contractors gradually lose their fear of unavoidable negative consumer comments. They realize that when they enable open venting of such comments within the framework of social media and enter the debate with its authors, instead of buttering them up(!), most will have all to gain and nothing to lose. 1. Venting a problem would happen anyway and anyhow, without any chance to react. 2. There isn’t a better opportunity to improve the relationship with the brand than an upset customer and a fast, responsible reaction to the brand. This applies of course if the brand has resources available and the aforementioned unwavering responsibility, will and capacity to listen and become involved in discussions.

Social media will become an entire natural part of client briefs and will be more and more neutral in terms of the platform. From today’s “and one more page or Facebook application”, things will lead to submittals containing on and off-line, mobile and broadband, Facebook and a number of other existing and so-far non-existent platforms. From pendants, tails and accesories of above-line campaigns to truly integrated communications that engage the consumer in ways they like. Platforms will be created, develop, compete and fall on their sword…but consumers, users of social media and the capacity of brands to capture their attention is all that matters at the end of the day.

Professional monitoring of conversations in social media and tools that enable immediate engagement of a brand in reported discussions will soon be a similarly natural budget line item for most marketing managers as fokuska. The question remains whether existing research corporations will be successful on the market…those introducing monitoring of classic media or local or global monitoring start-ups specializing exclusively in social media. A myriad of these companies were presented in London.

The mobilization of social media, which is already an undeniable reality, will offer many opportunities for non-offensive, welcomed engagement of the brand into the life of consumers and outside their sesle and notebooks. Marketers will certainly begin to develop a taste for the rich opportunities of engagement in stores and operations centers. Proof is found for instance in the aforementioned Foursquare, which even in the CR is slowly gaining in popularity amongst users of social media and even handfuls of job-contractor pioneers. Briefly from Mars: 40 % of on-line retail in Japan is realized via mobile phones.

Social media does not concern ones and zeros or bits and bytes. It mainly concerns people, human relationships and interpersonal interaction. It’s about universal human needs. Brands using social media that teach behavior as a welcome participant of these interpersonal interactions gain significant advantages. 

Such is the near future of social media in the opinions of the speakers at the Social Media World Forum 2010. I look forward to this future, as well as to next year’s SMWF. 

The American Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) has once again awarded the most effective Word of Mouth campaign from around the world within the framework of the fourth annual competition, the WOMMY Awards 2009. OUTBREAK took away the bronze from the category with the most participants, the Engagement Award, in which 50% of all entered works competed.

Winning works were selected on the basis of the following criteria: clearly defined business aim; insight; creative solutions; results, by which the campaign contributed to solving the business aim. The winners were announced at the WOMMA summit in Las Vegas on November 20th. 

We won the award for the project of customer co-creation of the football beer Ostravar Bazal, which took place from October 2008 to February 2009 in the Moravian-Silesian Region. Over several rounds, fans had the chance to vote how the beer would taste, its name, how the logo design and packaging would look, and they could even appear on the beer bottle label. The project registered major interest of the target group and media alike, the latter of which wrote over 100 articles about it. The attribute of the brand Ostravar as “favorite brand” grew over 30% over the previous year, and other built-in attributes registered a 25% growth. The product itself went on sale in a limited number of authorized pubs and recorded sales of up to 250% of the brewery’s original plan. The cherry on top was found in that pub owners not capable of selling Ostravar Bazal actually began buying quantities of it from selected pubs, so that they could offer the beer to their own customers, though not in one of the selected pubs.

Such campaigns can’t exist without above-the-board support of clients. We’d like to thank the marketing department of the Staropramen Breweries, namely Petr Dvořák, Jana Dubová and Pavel Barvík, who through courage and providence entrusted a major part of their budget for the brand into our hands, and bet on this Word of Mouth project. This effort achieved success amongst the people of Ostrava, the regional and national media, and now, in sunny Las Vegas.

Our paths are unpredictable, so aside from one pro bono activity the creation of a Word of Mouth Marketing strategy by means of VŠE (Economics University Prague) students for the contemporary arts center DOX, we’ve recently engaged another non-profit – and this time rather unusual for us – target group,  churchgoers.

The non-profit organization Informační středisko Mikuláš, o. p. s. [Information Center Mikuláš, o.p.s.], needed help with preparing activities leading to increased consciousness about the organization itself, as well as the crux of their efforts, which is placing children into foster families, instead of leaving them in children’s homes. Since the most promising group in terms of realistic effect are practicing Christians, our first steps led us to the nearby Church of Our Lady of the Snows at the square Jungmanno náměstí to see the priest Antonín Klaret Dabrowski. Our search together for the most effective method of influencing the network of  parishes within the Czech Republic proved to be quite a breath of fresh air after years of commercial communications. Next follows production of materials designed for distribution through Christian parishes, articles in Christian magazines, and a documentary film may even be shot.  The Lord helps those who help themselves...