IWOM Roundtable 6 July 2010

Social media is hot, and the middle of the hot summer in Shanghai, there will be a conference dedicated to the topic.
Details can be found here. I will be speaking along with many distinguished speakers. Hope you can make it!

 IWOM Roundtable 14 May 2010

At the risk of cliché, I am starting to use the term Social Media 2.0 to represent the mindset that social media, and more specifically, considerations of social media should move from tactics to strategy & should move from being siloed under a single communications discipline (i.e. PR or Digital or Media etc.) to being housed as a strategic element of corporate planning.

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 IWOM Roundtable 16 April 2010

In March, I had the absolute pleasure to speak on a panel at SXSW called “Social Media and China: Different than You Think”
The panel was moderated by Jacqui Zhou from Dell and the other panelist was Benjamin Joffe, Principle of Plus8Star.
Basically, I don’t have to summarize it here, because it has been summarized in so many other places, and with much better quality and depth than I could ever write myself.

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 IWOM Roundtable 25 January 2010

Since 2008, I have been interviewing China marketing thought leaders about social media since early 2008 for my regular show Interactive China for ITV-Asia. I am fortunate to have a network of such smart, informed people. This article serves as an archive of these interviews and will be updated as we have new ones.

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 IWOM Roundtable 23 December 2009

Recently we held our 5th anniversary event at Kathleen’s 5 here in Shanghai. For the event, we hosted an IWOM panel and invited our agency partners and brands to hear the latest ideas around IWOM shared not only by CIC, but also by our clients Pepsi and Lancôme. You may remember we held our first IWOM panel in 2007. The IWOM panel is a part of our overall IWOM roundtable format where we do our best to provide thought leadership regarding everything IWOM.

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 IWOM Roundtable 7 December 2009

CIC has now been working in the Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) space for 5 years. To celebrate we are hosting our 2009 IWOM Panel and IWOM Gathering on December 11th. 
The IWOM Panel will bring together leading IWOM though leaders from both the client and agency side to discuss current and future IWOM market trends and to share case studies of their experiences. 

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 IWOM Roundtable 9 November 2009

In the next few weeks CIC’s Founder and Chairman, Sam Flemming will be attending and speaking at four different events in both Beijing and Shanghai.
We have a discount code for all the events so if you’re interested in attending but still haven’t purchased a ticket, please feel free to email us and we will send you the codes.

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 IWOM Roundtable 15 October 2009

Likemind Shanghai is back tomorrow from 8.30am – 10.30am at Amokka. For those who didn’t make it to the last one Likemind is a monthly global coffee date held in cities like Mumbai, Sao Paulo, New York, Melbourne and now Shanghai, and is a place where you can treat yourself to an Amokka breakfast, drink coffee and chat about the future of advertising, marketing and design in China with likeminded friends.

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 IWOM Roundtable 18 August 2009

CIC is proud to announce that we will be sponsoring this Friday’s Likemind Shanghai from 8.30am-10.30am at Amokka.

Likemind is a monthly global coffee date held in cities like Mumbai, Sao Paulo, New York, Melbourne and now Shanghai that caters to young professionals in advertising, marketing and design.

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 IWOM Roundtable 23 June 2009

I recently interviewed Magdalena Wszelaki, Regional Vice President for Agenda for my Interactive China series on iTV Asia. I’ve known Mag since 2005 when she first arrived in China to work on what came to be award winning campaigns for Pepsi Creative Challenge. She’s been the driver of many a cool campaign/platform since then, including great stuff with Johnson Baby. In the interview, I pick her brain on the development of IWOM in China since that time as well as ideas for the future.

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 IWOM Roundtable 14 May 2009

I will be doing a live chat with the China Speaker’s Bureau today/tonight China time at 5PM and 11PM. Info is below. Hope you will join.
More info is here: http://www.chinaherald.net/2009/05/global-china-chat-on-social-networks.html

 IWOM Roundtable 25 January 2009

The working days sandwiched between the Western and Chinese New Years are not typically considered particularly productive China, so there’s not so much to reflect on this month. However, we did get some things done…
2nd Annual IWOM summit Wrap Up
We finally wrapped up our IWOM summit where I met face to face with 17 marketing communications directors, managers, and CxOs from some of the most important and innovative companies in China. The takeaways are here. The one takeaway that keeps me thinking is the need for different types of brands, for example luxury brands, to find the voice in the Internet Community that has a tenor and tone that reflects the brand and resonates with netizens in the “right” way for that brand. A luxury brand like LV will ‘join the conversation’ in a different way than, say, Dell.

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 IWOM Roundtable,Industry Watch 15 January 2009

For our second annual IWOM summit I recently met with 17 marketing communications directors, managers and CxO’s from some of the most important and innovative companies in China, many of whom are from the Fortune 500 and are our clients and partners. The purposes of the meetings were to:
* Preview findings from our own study on efluencers and other internal research regarding their perspectives of IWOM and brands

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 IWOM Roundtable 10 January 2009

Last month, we launched white papers on the Internet is the Community here and here which included a Chinese conversation prism inspired by JESS3 and Brian Solis.

Brian Solis now reports that the prism has gone even more international with iterations in Japanese and French.

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 IWOM Roundtable 11 December 2008

As follow up to our release of Topics One and Two, we are releasing parts 3 and 4 of our “the Internet is THE Community” IWOM white paper series today. In Topic Three we talk about net language (lots and lots of good examples) and for those of you who speak Chinese, I recommend you check out our net language “test” here. In Topic Four we provide some case studies of how Internet Community is reshaping the relationship between brands and consumers. Below is a screenshot from Topic Three: The Diversity of Chinese Net Language.

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 IWOM Roundtable 2 December 2008

Throughout the past couple of months, CIC has been hosting its 2nd Annual IWOM summit series. The IWOM summit is part of our IWOM roundtable series of PR and marketing events that CIC holds several times each year, which include IWOM gathering, IWOM roundtable and IWOM classroom. For the IWOM summit, we have been meeting with high level executives from CIC’s key clients and agency partners to discuss recent developments in the IWOM industry and our strategic thoughts for CIC and the industry in 2009. While we are still in the process of meeting with clients, we’d like to share some preliminary highlights from the IWOM summit conversations we have had so far.

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 IWOM Roundtable 24 November 2008

The day after I come back from 2 weeks in the US where I attended WOMMA and where I had some R&R (kind of) at home in Alabama, I will be moderating a panel on IWOM at this year’s ad:tech in Shanghai. I will be jet lagged, but I am sure the panel will keep it lively. I hope to see a lot of people there.

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 IWOM Roundtable 17 November 2008

I had the pleasure of meeting Robert Scoble last week. For those of you who aren’t familiar with his work, Robert Scoble is a tech and social media evangelist and uber-content creater who previously worked for Microsoft and is now best known for his blog Scobleizer. He also co-authored the book Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers with Shel Israel.

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 IWOM Roundtable 29 October 2008

I will be in Las Vegas from November 12-14 for the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s (WOMMA) annual conference. In addition to learning what’s happening in the US market, I am looking forward to meeting other “international” IWOM/social media analysis practitioners. After attending OpenWebAsia in mid October, I am very primed for more discussions about IWOM in international contexts.

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 IWOM Roundtable 8 October 2008

Guest post from Alex Geertz, who attended the Fifth China Branding Roundtable in Beijing on September 18 and 19.

As a final wrap-up to our coverage of the Economist Fifth Branding Roundtable, here is a short video clip put together by Cohn & Wolfe and Landor Associates featuring Sam. Sam discusses the impact of IWOM on branding strategies in China and how Dell is a good example of a brand that has been able to find it’s “voice” online and effectively communicate with consumers through multiple online channels. Landor Associates and Cohn & Wolfe put together 8 short videos with interviews from attendees talking about different “rules” marketers should pay attention to when developing a branding strategy for China.

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 IWOM Roundtable 23 September 2008

Guest post from Alex Geertz, who attended the Fifth China Branding Roundtable in Beijing on September 18 and 19.

Friday’s conference closed with a panel on new media and addressed the question of whether or not brands can “afford to stay out.” CIC’s Sam Flemming presented alongside McKinsey and Nokia, exploring the question of what new media really means for brands in China. Vinay Dixit, Senior Director Asia Consumer Centres, McKinsey & Company presented findings from a recent consumer study from McKinsey’s Insights China, which found that from 2007 to 2008 Word of Mouth (WOM) remained the highest quality media source based on credibility and level of engagement. Interestingly, consumer perception of IWOM including blogs and BBS jumped 94% from 2007 to 2008, making it the second most trusted media channel. This rise shows the growing influence of IWOM as a “new” and important media.

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 IWOM Roundtable 22 September 2008

Guest post from Alex Geertz, who attended the Fifth China Branding Roundtable in Beijing on September 18 and 19.

While many Olympic sponsors chose to invest in the high profile sporting event with the primary intention of driving sales, UPS had an additional motive. Joseph Guerrisi, VP of Marketing for UPS Asia-Pacific Region mentioned one of the main motives for sponsoring the Olympics and improving brand image and awareness in China was for recruitment. In 2005, UPS set out to grow from 200 to 2000 employees in just 9 months. With low brand awareness and with little understanding of what UPS service offering among Chinese consumers, UPS found it difficult to differentiate itself as a competitive employer in the market.

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 IWOM Roundtable 19 September 2008

Guest post from Alex Geertz, who is attending the Fifth China Branding Roundtable in Beijing on September 18 and 19.

Going “green” has become a growing trend in the US and European markets, and is increasingly influencing consumers and their purchase decisions. But is the “green revolution” reaching China? Russ Meyer, Chief Strategy Officer for Landor Associates presented a recent study conducted jointly by WPP agencies Landor Associates, Cohn & Wolfe and Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates on Green Brands in China. The study found that Chinese consumers are indeed concerned with the state of the environment in China and many are willing to pay a premium for Green products.

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 IWOM Roundtable 18 September 2008

Guest post from Alex Geertz, who is attending the Fifth China Branding Roundtable in Beijing on September 18 and 19.

A common theme throughout today’s branding conference was sports marketing in China’s changing environment, driven, of course, by the recent Olympic Games in Beijing. Olympic sponsors, including Adidas, Samsung, and UPS shared what drove their campaigns and why these brands chose certain branding and marketing strategies.

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 IWOM Roundtable 18 September 2008

Guest post from Alex Geertz, who is attending the Fifth China Branding Roundtable in Beijing on September 18 and 19.
As Sam mentioned yesterday, we will be covering key highlights from “The Economist’s Fifth China Branding Roundtable: A New Brandscape: The shape of things to come” over the next two days. Today’s sessions opened with presentations from the co-chairs of the conference — Xu Sitao: Director of Advisory Services, China at Economist Intelligence Unit and Chief Rep of China Economist Group and Professor Sun Baohong: Associate Professor of Marketing, Carnegie Mellon University and Visiting Prof of Marketing, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business.

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 IWOM Roundtable 17 September 2008

As I mentioned previously, I will be speaking on a panel Friday at The Economist’s Fifth China Branding Roundtable: A new brandscape: the shape of things to come in Beijing. The two-day event which starts tomorrow will focus on the rapid development of consumer markets in China, and the major issues faced by marketers today. In addition to speaking on a panel, I will be blogging throughout the conference to highlight key issues and topics discussed on the panels. Stay tuned for more updates throughout.

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 IWOM Roundtable 29 August 2008

I guess it’s conference season again as I find myself speaking at a number of events in the region.
Intel Digital IQ Training, August 25th: I recently had the pleasure of teaching a class on Chinese Social Media for Intel’s employees globally through their Digital IQ platform.
Youth Marketing Forum, September 1st-3rd: Next week, I will be both hosting a workshop and giving a presentation on how to successfully integrate IWOM into marketing communications programs for targeted youth at the annual Youth Marketing Forum 2008 in Singapore. I will also be co-hosting the workshop with Ian McKee from Vocanic.

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 IWOM Roundtable 22 August 2008

Below is my latest article for iMedia Connection Asia on ” IWOM centered marketing in China.”

In a previous iMedia Connection article, I discussed the concept of a “connected agency” in China and looked at how agencies can connect with consumer communities. Then I followed up with 6 reasons brands in China should listen to IWOM. In this article I take it one step further and give real successful case studies of IWOM marketing in China. Although its now very fashionable to add “social media” elements to standard digital campaigns, its important for brands to understand the strategic implications of doing so and that effective IWOM and social media campaigns are not about pushing messages, but rather about making connections and providing value to your consumers.

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 IWOM Roundtable 20 August 2008

While the environment has not typically been a hot topic of conversation among netizens, the recent law enacted this past June requiring all stores to charge for plastic bags has inspired not only online buzz but creativity among particular communities. For example, the popular Shanghai community KDS (which we discussed in a previous IWOM Watch here), initiated a “green bag” campaign and encouraged its members to design their own bags and then vote for the best design. The winning bags were then sold on the site.

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 IWOM Roundtable 19 August 2008

Recently I was interviewed along with Adam Schokora (Edelman China Digital Manager) and David Wolf (CEO of Wolf Media Asia; read his blog for some of the most erudite, balanced and intelligent writing on Chinese media and marketing) on the issue of astroturfing in China.

I think it’s a good read for a more balanced understanding of this situation.

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 IWOM Roundtable 19 August 2008

The China Business Network is hosting a dinner event this Thursday, August 21st in San Francisco to bring together visionary business, technology and media leaders who recognize the growing changes in China, and are looking to understand these changes and/or to factor China into future business or media plans. CIC is offering a complimentary white paper to all attendees, which include the Managing Director of Ogilvy’s Global Technology Practice, OpenSocial Evangelist at Google and VP of Edelman among others.

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 IWOM Roundtable 11 August 2008

In preparing our research for CIC’s recently released white paper Tuning into Sports IWOM Q4 2007, CIC’s analysts also took a look at the buzz surrounding the Olympic Games to experiment using some of our new analytical tools. One tool we used is the KAM (Keyword Association Mapping) which we applied to the Olympic related data that we collected in the fourth quarter of 2007 with the purpose of analyzing the relationship between Olympic related IWOM and a selected list of brands and attributes. Below is a brief overview and explanation of our results.

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 IWOM Roundtable 8 August 2008

Very cool… for the second year in a row I was awarded a Danwei “Model Worker” blog award. Danwei is an excellent blog that covers both on and offline media in China and has some great short documentaries at Danwei TV. It’s a real honor to be recognized by Danwei and to be in the company of such cool blogs as Imagethief and Digital Watch in the “Advertising, Media and PR” category.

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 IWOM Roundtable 6 August 2008

I recently interviewed T.R. Harrington, Co-Founder and CEO, Darwin Marketing, for my Interactive China series on iTV Asia. Darwin has been doing search in China longer than just about anyone, and TR has unmatched experience and perspective on the topic. TR and I cover a number of topics related to search, IWOM and where the two overlap in China.

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 IWOM Roundtable 4 August 2008

We have written many a time about the power of net language as a symbol of net culture and as a way to connect to netizens (see here for one example). The fact that there is a unique net language underscores the power of online community.
In this issue, we see examples of well intentioned marketers who use net language in their communications, but end up hurting themselves by misusing it. They end up looking like the kids in school who are trying too hard to be cool, but end up proving they are not really cool at all.

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 IWOM Roundtable 29 July 2008

China Economic Review (CER) has invited me to speak at a conference this Thursday, July 31st titled “Branding in China: Creating passionate brands for 1 billion people.” The event will be hosted at the JW Marriott Hotel Shanghai at Tomorrow Square. I will be giving a talk on (surprise) “Internet Word of Mouth and Branding in China” as well as joining a panel discussion on “E-branding challenges in China.” Tencent, Kel Hook from Wieden+Kennedy, and Ogilvy One will also be speaking at the event.

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 IWOM Roundtable 25 July 2008

I was recently interviewed by Christine Lu for The China Business Show. Christine Lu is Chairman of The China Business Network, an open platform for organizations and individuals to share their profiles, locate partners and customers, contribute to conversations, and reach a targeted community of international business professionals active in China. Christine is also Executive Producer and Host of The China Business Show and has interviewed a wide range of professionals such as Kaiser Kuo, Group Director of Digital Strategy for Ogilvy China, David Wolf, President and CEO of Wolf Group Asia, Guy Kawasaki, Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures & Co-Founder, Alltop.com, and many more.

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 IWOM Roundtable 18 July 2008

ITV Asia is an Internet television network which invites “thought leaders” from different industries to have chats with other thought leaders. I am flattered that they have chosen me to host a show on China’s digital marketing market. You can find the show here. Below are my interviews with Jan Van den Bergh, Chairman, i-merge China and Yann Lombard-Platet, Managing Director, Nurun China.

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 IWOM Roundtable 11 July 2008

I have been in Shanghai for over 12 years now. In addition to the proliferation of tall buildings, subway lines, highways and overall incredible improvements in infrastructure, there has come a proliferation of media, especially in places where, to be frank, I would rather not see media. As the marketing 2.0 pundits would put it, there ARE lots of ‘interruptions’ in the daily life of Shanghai citizens. Below are just a few I have collected in recent months. Some come from my own camera; others come from pic searches on google.

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 IWOM Roundtable 3 July 2008

A few weeks ago, I flew to Amsterdam to talk about IWOM for a China new media event hosted for Dutch entrepreneurs and professionals involved in new media, the Internet and traditional media. About 150+ people came. Amsterdam is a great city and I definitely want to make it back there.
Above is a video of a part of my presentation covering 6 or so case studies demonstrating why brands should be listening to IWOM (beyond just reputation management). Some of these include crowd sourcing customer service, crowd sourcing product design, campaign inspiration and many more.

 IWOM Roundtable 26 June 2008

Below are just a few of the recent articles on Seeisee Chinese blog.
Strategic steps for online marketing: Show,Communicate and Interact (May 16th)
（在线营销的展示、沟通和互动）
Although for many, online marketing is not new, some companies are just beginning to explore ways to integrate online marketing into their overall campaigns. In James’ new post, he lists 3 steps to help brands engage in online marketing:

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 IWOM Roundtable 19 June 2008

Last week I was honored to join an “all star” panel on Chinese social media for Edelman’s annual leadership meeting held in Shanghai. The panel included Raymond Zhou, Isaac Mao, Steven Lin, Tangos Chan, and Adam Schokora (twitter handles: Isaac Mao, Steven Lin, Tangos Chan, Sam Flemming and Adam Schokora).

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 IWOM Roundtable 16 June 2008

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.

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 IWOM Roundtable 9 June 2008

I am pleased to announce the recent launch of our CIC Tech blog, which is initiated and maintained by our CIC Tech team.
CIC Tech builds and supports the proprietary and patent pending technology supporting everything we do here. CIC Tech uses massive data storage, distributed computing, natural language analysis, data warehousing, business intelligence, and many other technologies to store, analyze and process the information to facilitate understanding and make IWOM data accessible for quantitative and qualitative analysis.

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 IWOM Roundtable 30 May 2008

CIC will be hosting its first IWOM Classroom this coming Tuesday, June 3rd at 6pm at Shanghai International Studies University. In the past we have held events such as the CIC IWOM Panel and CIC IWOM Summit, which brought together senior managers and executives from different brands and agencies, to discuss and educate others on IWOM and its impact on marketing communications. The purpose of the CIC IWOM Classroom 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. As IWOM is a new and growing industry, we feel it is important to build a healthy industry, and therefore have made educating both professionals and students alike a high priority. This event is the first in a series of CIC IWOM Classroom events CIC will be hosting at Universities across Shanghai.

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 IWOM Roundtable 19 May 2008

Today, Monday, May 19, begins a three day period of mourning in China for the Sichuan earthquake victims. There is so much sadness in the air about this terrible tragedy. At the same time, we are witnessing the unprecedented use in China of the Internet and IWOM to share information, share grief and come together.

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 IWOM Roundtable,Industry Watch 16 May 2008

The IWOM related to issues around France and the torch demonstrated the power of IWOM to impact opinion and action in China.
With the horrible tragedy of the earth quake in Sichuan earlier this week, we are now seeing some equally powerful demonstrations of the impact of IWOM, many of which are both impressive and moving.

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 IWOM Roundtable,Industry Watch 30 April 2008

Next week we are planning to launch our white paper on Sports IWOM. This paper will follow in the footsteps of our previous white papers on auto, mobile phone, health topics, and notebook computers all of which can be found here.
Netizens are extremely passionate about sports, sports teams, players and sports apparel. As we have seen in other aspects of Internet culture, netizens are proactive in creating original content around these topics and interests. For example, China has a rich DIY sneaker head culture. (see below, taken from the upcoming paper)

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 IWOM Roundtable 30 April 2008

Net Language VS National Matriculation Test (April 3rd）
（网络语言 VS 中国高考）
High school students in China are entering tense times with the upcoming college entrance exams. Most of the students scheduled to take the exam this year were born in the early 90s and are essentially the first generation of “net natives” in China. Interestingly, the authority behind the National Matriculation Test has ruled that Net language cannot be used on the test. This post discusses people’s arguments as to whether or not Net language should be used on the National Matriculation Test. The fact that there is a sort of national debate regarding net language shows the impact of digital culture on Chinese culture.

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 IWOM Roundtable 25 April 2008

I’ve been busy trying to create buzz for IWOM in the last week. Here’s a quick recap.

Wednesday, April 23 2008:
“Marketing strategies in China: In cooperation with Louvain School of Management”

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 IWOM Roundtable 22 April 2008

For those like myself who grew up before the Internet went mainstream, it is natural to dichotomize our lives into “online” and “offline.” For the “80’s eggs” in China, however, these “worlds” are more like extensions of each other. Meeting and making real friends online and then organizing offline “meetups” in China is an integral part of strong BBS communities as we can see in the practice of Fubai (see here).

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 IWOM Roundtable 10 April 2008

I was interviewed recently by Canadian public radio, CBC, about Tuangou or “Team Buying” in China. They found me through the post I wrote on the topic a couple of years ago here.
You can find the podcast here. The site is a bit slow loading from China, so you can also download from our servers here..

 IWOM Roundtable 7 April 2008

I am not sure I have true “geek” creds (and trust me, I do aspire to be a geek), but I will do my best in presenting our latest IWOM watch Half Year Review – An Overview of Chinese IWOM trends from July-December, 2007 at the next Shanghai Geek Dinner. The event, hosted by the The China Business Network, will take place tomorrow, April 8th at 7pm at the Moon River Diner (Jing An). For more information on the event see the event listing here.

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 IWOM Roundtable 6 April 2008

When the Edison Chen sex photo scandal broke a while back, we quickly received calls from brands who used Edison or the other involved stars as spokespersons. Not surprisingly, they were worried about their reputation for being so explicitly associated with stars. Interestingly, in this issue of IWOM watch, we see that some netizens were more interested in the brands in the background of the photos than the people themselves. Is that a Gucci bag on the floor? Is that Cetaphil skin cream on the shelf?

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 IWOM Roundtable 25 March 2008

Last week, we had a company trip to ZhangJiaJie, Hunan, which is a 3rd tier city (it was an awesome trip, by the way). We stopped at a Carrefour type of department store (but NOT Carrefour) to do a bit of shopping before leaving to go back to Shanghai. First, I saw this outside the department store:

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 IWOM Roundtable 21 December 2007

On December 11th, CIC celebrated its 3rd birthday with an IWOM gathering that included all team members as well as our friends and family members. It’s hard to believe that we have been doing IWOM research and consulting now since 2004.
Lucy, our marketing manager, planned the evening with great input from the team. In all my years 10 years of attending “corporate” parties in China (and 2 years in Japan), I must say that this was the most exciting, well thought out, and best executed event I have ever attended.

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 IWOM Roundtable,Industry Watch 15 December 2007

As part of our recent IWOM summit activity, over the course of about 4 weeks in October and November, I had the opportunity to meet with 15 marketing communications directors, managers and CxO’s from some of the most important and innovative companies in China, many of whom are from the Fortune 500 and are our clients and partners. The purpose of the meetings was to provide an update on our experience and understanding of IWOM in China as well as to receive ideas and feedback from our clients and partners on their experiences. The IWOM summit is part of our IWOM roundtable series of events we hold several times a year (see our IWOM expert panel event from April this year here).

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 IWOM Roundtable 21 October 2007

American Public Radio’s Marketplace did a short but pretty cool story on the NBA in China. I am quoted, even if ever so briefly. My observation comes from our analysis of talk around sports and the NBA on BBS and blogs.
The transcript can be found here.
You can find the download of the whole show on the page. The NBA story starts around minute 23.

 IWOM Roundtable 18 October 2007

On Tuesday, October 23rd, I will be giving our perspective on blogging in China for a Shanghai Amcham panel session called: “21st Century PR: Executives and their Blogs.”
Once again, I will be sharing panel duties with Will Moss. Will and I were also slated to talk at Beijing Amcham in September on a similar topic (unfortunately, I had to pull out because of illness).

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 IWOM Roundtable 15 October 2007

I will be heading to Beijing on Tuesday afternoon for Adtech and will be in Beijing until Wednesday night.
I will be moderating a panel on Wednesday afternoon 1:10-2:10 PM on “Viral Marketing and Word-of-Mouth Strategies and Best Practices”. It will be more about Word of Mouth strategy than viral marketing (you need the strategy first, in our opinion).

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 IWOM Roundtable 10 October 2007

On October 9th, I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Bloomberg TV in their Shanghai studio on the subject of company blogging. Bernard Lo, the anchor of the Bloomberg Live Asia, actually interviewed me remotely from Hong Kong.
It was my first time to be interviewed live like this on TV. To be frank, it was a bit strange listening to the questions in my ear piece and responding to a camera (there was no video feed of the Hong Kong desk).

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 IWOM Roundtable 28 April 2007

We finally got around to putting up a few of the quick interviews we did with the panelists after we finished the roundtable. Click on the pics below to see the videos on Tudou. To see on Youtube (if you are outside of China), please click here.
I think it is interesting to see the different perspectives of IWOM from both brands and the different agencies.

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 IWOM Roundtable 18 April 2007

I am putting the two case studies we discussed at the roundtable below. Feel free to put your ideas on the case studies in comments. We would love to discuss ideas with you. (comments are moderated, but we will post on topic comments quickly).
Case Study 1:
A mobile phone manufacturer has a model that, while not the most popular phone on the market, does enjoy a rabid following among a core group of mobile phone users. The fans love the phone, but the problem, according to the fans, is that although the phone’s operating system is based on the open source Linux operating system, the manufacturer has refused to release key parts of the source code. What this means is that unlike other operating systems, developers, including some of these fans, have a difficult time developing new applications for the phone, especially in comparison to competitor phones. With the arrival of Consumer Day fast approaching, a group of fans decide to organize an online protest of sorts with the objective of having fans call and email the manufacturer’s customer service for 3 days continuously from March 15 to March 17. This movement includes:

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 IWOM Roundtable 17 April 2007

Last Thursday, the 12th, we hosted our IWOM Roundtable. I started it out with an overview of IWOM in China. Since it was the first time to present our new slides, it wasn’t as smooth as I had hoped, but overall, I think I communicated our understanding, if not our excitement of IWOM. Next up, I presented a couple of case studies to our distinguished panel for debate and discussion. The discussion, as I had hoped, proved to be quite interesting and informative, with each agency, brand and platform well represented. Check out Luyi Chen’s analysis of the event here at the China Web 2.0 Review blog. Here are some photos from the event and more information will be coming soon.

 IWOM Roundtable 29 March 2007

At CIC, we believe that Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) on blogs, BBS, video and other channels is changing the nature of relationships and communication between brands and consumers and, as a result, every marketing discipline. Senior managers and executives from different brands and agencies, who are also experienced, knowledgeable and interested in IWOM, will join in on China’s first IWOM roundtable.

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