adtech London 07: interview with Craig Hepburn, Global Webmaster at STA Travel

I met Craig Hepburn after his panel session at the ad:tech conference. Craig is on the speaker circuit, being regularly invited to share his hands-on experience in digital/social media, web 2.0 and virtual worlds. I catched up with Craig last week in London.

In the last three years, Craig has done a tremendous job at STA Travel: Craig is the in-house web 2.0 evangelist, and he successfully helped his company launch many web 2.0 initiatives.

I invite you to check some of STA Travel innovative projects:
* Blogging: www.statravelblogs.com
* Social networking: www.mapmyadventure.com
* Virtual worlds: www.virtualstatravel.com

Craig is also a fellow blogger, please check his blog http://forwebsake.blogspot.com. In his blog, Craig shares his passion for innovation and his thoughts on topics such as Web TV, Virtual Worlds or location based technology.
 
Interview with Craig Hepburn

During the interview, Craig and I talked about:
* social media & web 2.0, key challenges and opportunities
* virtual worlds, the real value
* blogging, key challenges for a corporate
* blogging, your own expert/industry blog

adtech London 07: interviews & photos

adtech London 07 was an excellent event. Congratulations to the adtech team.

I managed to shoot 5 video interviews:
* Catherine Ossemerct, Head of Media-Channels at Fortis Merchant and Private Banking
* Erik Hauser, Creative Director at Swivel Media
* Mark Rogers, CEO of Market Sentinel
* Fergus Hampton, CEO of Millward Brown Precis
* John-Paul Bernbach, Content Manager at Join2Grow

Photos from the conference and the exhibition

adtech London 07: interview with Mark Rogers, CEO of Market Sentinel

I met Mark Rogers after the session about Monitoring Consumer Conversations Online. Market Sentinel helped Avis, the leading car rental company in the UK, to launch their blog WeTryHarder in January 2007. 

Avi's main goal for the blog is to engage with its customers and provide the best customer service.

There is a similarity with the heavily regulated banking industry, and the risk of brand damage. Indeed, the car rental industry has been subject to bad press in the last couple of years. Xavier Vallee, Head of Marketing at Avis UK, proudly admitted that Avis put themselves in the line of fire.

Avis wanted to give their customers the chance to express themselves, they wanted to create a dialog. Xavier and his team make sure they respond to every comment, positive and negative.
Being sincere, honest and showing that you listen can help you not only win back an angry customer but turn to a brand ambassador.
 
Avis approach, with the help of Market Sentinel, is excellent: not only they make sure to respond to every comment on their blog (they have over 300 comments to date) but they also engage with influential industry bloggers, and they proactively browse forums. They surely got inspired by Dell or Sony.

Avis even won an award with their blog: SOCAP Award for innovation in Customer Service.

Mark's advice on how to implement a successful blogging strategy
A blog is an excellent medium to engage with your customers, as long as you make sure you respond to your customer comments.
But how do you show you understand your customers? How can you respond? How can you measure success?

adtech London 07: interview with Erik Hauser, Creative Director at Swivel Media

A couple of hours after posting my first article on the adtech event in London, one of Erik Hauser's colleagues contacted me to arrange a meeting during the conference.
 
And what a pleasure to meet Erik and shoot a video interview with him. Erik is one of the top experts on the topic of virtual worlds. He helped Wells Fargo to launch its Stagecoach Island project, initially on Second Life, back in 2004/2005. And Erik is the founder of the Experiential Marketing Forum which counts over 4,000 active members.

Erik's presentation was extremely dynamic and it made a big impact on the audience.
   
Erik's advice to the banks who are thinking of building a presence on a metaverse
As a bank, you may want a presence on a virtual world to educate youth, change the perception of the bank or hire people.

The most important is to know what your objectives are, and make intelligent decision on which platform you want to use. By the way, Second Life is not the only virtual world out there, there are many other metaverses...

adtech London 07: interview with John-Paul Bernbach, Content Manager at Join2Grow

I met John-Paul at the adtech event in London. JP is the Content Manager of Join2Grow, the social network for European entrepreneurs launched by Fortis earlier this year. JP works for Catherine Ossemerct.

In that inverview, we focus on the content of the site and JP explains how Fortis manage to engage its members. JP shoot video interviews, and since phase 2 they organize online events with a "live chat" feature.

If you are an entrepreneur, or if you know an entrepreneur who would be a good candidate for a video interview, please do not hesitate to register on Join2Grow.biz and get in touch with John-Paul.

adtech London 07: interview with Catherine Ossemerct, Head of Media-Channels at Fortis Merchant & Private Banking

I got in touch with Catherine back in July. We have exchanged our thoughts on social networking and the innovative platform Fortis launched back in February 2007, Join2Grow.biz.

Join2Grow is a social network for European Entrepreneurs. I invite you to check my first post on Join2Grow and my post on phase 2.

By the way, on Tuesday 26th September, they released the phase 3: the platform now offers a forum feature to its members.

Presentation of Join2Grow
During our conversation, Catherine explains Fortis strategy and goals for Join2Grow and she gives a few statistics about the website which counts now over 2,000 members.

Please remember that they target a very specific audience: the number of members is limited and so is the risk of brand damage due to bad comments and User Generated Content.

adtech London 07: a day full of excellent meetings

Excellent networking opportunity
One of the key benefits of attending adtech was the opportunity to meet with my peers and renowned experts. On the second day, I managed to talk (one-to-one) to over 20 people again.

I even managed to shoot three video interviews:
* Erik Hauser, Creative Director of Swivel Media and Founder of the Experiential Marketing Forum
* Catherine Ossemerct, Head of Media-Channels at Fortis Merchant and Private Banking
* John-Paul Bernbach, Content Manager at Join2Grow

I met some delegates from the following companies: Revolution, ebuddy, oddcast, otolabs, hitwise, intel, CapitalOne, eMarketer, Fortis, Yahoo!, ElmarReizen, tripadvisor, foviance, C2C, STA Travel, Swivel media, IBM.

The conference
I attended the following sessions:
* Brand Building in the Digital Age
* Online Branding: strategy and measurement
* Exploiting Emerging Online Segments
* Virtual Worlds - what value can they bring beyond PR & market research

adtech London 07: interview with Fergus Hampton, CEO of Millward Brown Precis

Before executing a Web 2.0 project, it is important to clarify your objectives. What is your goal? Does it really make sens to launch a blog, a social network, or an island in Second Life?

adtech London 07: FirstChoice's 2wentysworld.co.uk

The first session I attented was entitled Online Communities as a Marketing Tool.
It was about FirstChoice and its social networking platform, 2wentysworld.co.uk.

At the end of the session, I had a good chat with Paul Clark, Product Manager at FirstChoice, and Jack Fairhall, CEO of Kwiqq.com, who I plan to interview soon.

I always welcome initiatives in the social networking space, and I would like to see more banks follow Fortis steps with their Network for European Entrepreneurs, Join2Grow (Catherine will be sharing her experience in Web 2.0 and User Generated Content tomorrow afternoon)

A few advice and remarks
* Before launching a new social network, make sure it is the right thing to do for your bank.
What do you want to achieve? Would a blog be more relevant? Are the people you are targeting already using other social networks such as Facebook or MySpace? If so, why would they spend time on another platform?

* No need to reinvent the wheel, if possible leverage an existing platform.
People are used to comprehensive and intuitite interfaces with the likes of Facebook or MySpace. It could be risky to offer them a far inferior service. Try to identify companies which provide a white label offer based on their robust platform.

* With the help of your web agency, identify and prioritize the list of key features you want to offer.
Distringuish the nice to have from the must have. For instance, it is critical to provide an advanced member search feature.

* Launching a new platform is not difficult, the real challenges are first to grow your member base and then to engage your members.
You want your members to use your platform as often as possible, post some User Generater Content, and recommend the service to their contacts. Think about useful content and value added service, think about ways to reward your most active members, your brand ambassadors...

adtech London 07: a productive first day

Today, I attended my first adtech event as a member of the Press. What a busy and productive day: I pretty much didn't stop meeting people from 9:00am to 6:00pm.

Excellent networking opportunity
One of the key benefits of spending the day at adtech was the opportunity to meet with my peers and renowned experts. I managed to talk (one-to-one) to over 20 people among the extensive list of speakers and delegates.

I even managed to shoot two video interviews of Fergus Hampton, CEO of Millward Brown Precis, and Mark Rogers, CEO of Market Sentinel.

Today, I met some delegates from the following companies: commission junction, MySpace, Grupo Planeta, ad pepper, Jeeran, bebo, Mediacom, Kwiqq, fortune cookie, Canales Alternativos, 1000 heads, vanksengroup, OgilvyOne, market sentinel, Idelix Software, arena, Millward Brown Precis, Cellity, First Choice, Spotify.

Keynote Address: Alan Rutherford, CEO of Digitas Global
As a kick off, most delegates attended the keynote session. Alan is a good speaker, and after starting his speech with his Philippines story, Alan talked about his vision of Marketing 2.0 and he reminded us about several successful online marketing campaigns such as Dove's "Campaign for real beauty", Amex's "The Members Project", Lloyds TSB's "For the journey", Vauxhall and Pontiac's viral marketing campaigns.
 
Alan showed us a couple of popular videos on the web such as the cadbury video (monkey & Phil Collins) or the Advertiser vs Consumer video (a couple having dinner). Marketeers love that video: Tim Collins, SVP Experiential Marketing at Wells Fargo, showed us the same video at the financial services club event in London in June.

Gorilla Cadbury Advert

Advertiser vs Consumer

I attended the following sessions on Web 2.0:
* Online Communities as a Marketing Tool
* Monitoring Consumer Conversation Online
* Researching and Creating Web 2.0 Experiences
* Blogging French Style
* Social Networking & Community Sites