CIC recently hosted our first CIC IWOM Classroom events at Shanghai International Studies University (SISU). As I mentioned before, the purpose of the CIC IWOM Classroom Series is to educate students on the power of IWOM and how they can leverage their understanding and experience with IWOM to work with brands and agencies in the future. Of course most of the students already have experienced the power of IWOM…almost everyone raised their hands when I asked if they had blogs, written on BBS or use SNS. But what they may not realize is the interest brands and agencies have in IWOM and how some of the skills they have learned could be assets for their future employers.

It was great to see more than 80 students in the audience and we look forward to organizing future events at SISU and other universities in the Shanghai area this coming fall.

Below is a picture of my speech on IWOM and its impact on marketing communications.

I was also joined by Robin, Project Manager at CIC, who gave a great talk on Sports IWOM with compelling case studies from our recent white paper Tuning into Sports IWOM Q4 2007. Denis, our Technical Director, followed Robin with an introduction to CIC Tech using accessible examples of our data collection and keyword and sentiment segmentation.

The event closed with an active Q&A session led by Violet, our Client Service Director, with over 10 students asking some pretty good and challenging questions.

We are excited by the success of our first IWOM Classroom event. I also recently gave a lecture at Fudan on new media in China. I am looking forward to continuing down the path to building a healthy industry and spreading positive WOM about IWOM.