SNCR Research Symposium

I attended the 2nd Annual Research Symposium of the Society for Communications Research(SNCR) this past week in Boston. Founded and run by Jen McClure, she does a nice job pulling together an interesting group of PR folks, researchers, vendors, academics and company workers who are working on new communications work. That means its mostly about what is usually called Web 2.0 and in the past has been primarily about blogging. I noted that this year there was much twittering going on at the meeting, there was not too much talk about what could make that useful. Also some sessions about virtual worlds, which I can see as 'new communications', but still immature in what it can deliver. Several expansive worlds were mentioned, but not the fact that they usually empty. I am glad that they are paying attention to virtual world communications. The way I understand it many of the presentations will be available on the SNCR site.

The panels were useful. Most of my work is facing inwardly in a large company, so its useful to see what others are doing. There was less about what PR companies specifically are doing this year, and I thought that aspect was refreshing.

Dr. Nora Baines of UMass Dartmouth gave an overview of what companies are doing with blogs. More here. Worth taking a look at that study which she completed last year, which looks broad at the why and how of companies blogging.

Joseph Carrabis of NextStage Evolution gave a talk on the Blogging Power Continuum. Had never thought about blogging power and what it means to understand it when attempting to use blogs to influence people. His company uses cognition based approaches to do predictive analytics. That work is not just about blogging, but about connecting people and messages, Some fascinating, novel work, with top level clients that is well worth a look. Much of my recent work has been connected with cognitive research influenced solutions, so this was particularly interesting.

One of the panels had a Coke marketer talking about the Mentos fountain phenomenon, which now seems so long ago. The insider details were interesting. I was amazed that Coke was able to act so quickly after seeing the video. It would be hard seeing other companies I am familiar with moving that quickly. An interesting historical tid-bit, Coke was also invovled with a much earlier consumer-generated-media event. in 1960 Andy Warhol painted a series of brand images. Best known are the Campbell Soup images, but Coke was also among them. Coke sent him a cease-and-desist order rather then thanking him for the great publicity. That would not happen today.

During the meetings I heard about the formation of the Blog Council. This is a group formed by some large companies to address the particular issues of large companies blogging. When I read the press release I noted that P&G was not included. Later I heard they were members, and in fact co-founders of the effort. In a coy decision they opted not to be included in the press release. Not really helpful to re-inforce the impression of a large company as secretive. I like the idea of the council. Large companies are often seen with ill-will in the blogosphere. It will be useful to figure out what that is and how to address it.

SAP is working will SNCR fellow Shel Israel, co-author of the Naked Conversation, to study social media world-wide. It is surprising that SAP is involved with this, does not appear like it's their style. He interviewed dozens of folks people world-wide who use social media of many types and presented these as stories. That's OK, but I would have preferred a more objective view of this world. What works, what does not? SAP would have been better serviced by that view.

Sun Microsystems also spoke about their continuing work with blogging. Their CEO has been blogging for some time. Now they have been getting their lawyers and financial people to start blogging about corporate results. Based on my limited experience, that is an amazing thing. I will find out more about that effort and post about it later.

I reconnected with Paul Gillin, blogger-journalist whose book: The New Influencers I reviewed and I now use internally to introduce people to the topic.

Thats my top-line, will blog again about this meeting as I review some of their material on-line. Check out their site. They would be useful to contact to do some research. Join up, hope to see you there next year.