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PAM TALBOT: In fact, as we look at it, we really see that there's a democratization of information. So people have been talking about that for a while. But now, there’s also a democratization of communication, of trust and of persuasion. So that's something pretty different that's happening out there. And you can practically hear this buzz going on online. While we sit in this room, over 42 million people are sharing their voice in the online communities. Fifty-three million Americans -- and this number is going up -- are using instant messaging. So they're in communication with each other all the time: just constantly buzzing back and forth. More than 50 percent of all Americans already know what a blog is. And here's a dramatic example of how quickly this is changing. Just four months ago, in November, PEW did a study of how many people were blogging. They said, "There are about eight million people who are blogging." Well, four months later, 12 million people are members of a single community, Myspace.com. Chris DeWolfe is here with us from there. Twelve million people are blogging on that one site alone. And they're generating 150 million page views per day. That's a pretty big shift. So, to us, these numbers mean one thing. We're truly in a transformational moment. And I think that all of us in this room have to figure out how we're going to respond to that. And so, that's what we want to share with you today and to discuss with you today. Because we hope that you're going to be giving us some examples of the things that you're doing and the things you're worried about and wondering about, how you're handling all of this. So we've pulled together what we think is a pretty terrific panel of people. They represent a broad range of experiences and perspectives. So, let me introduce them to you and tell you what they can share with us. As long as there's been a web, Judith Meskill over here has been one of the leading visionaries on the interception of technology, communications and marketing -- how all those things fit together. We think she's uniquely positioned to give us the big picture overview of the forces at work right now. So she's going to lead off and set the stage for all of us. Then, we’ll have Chris DeWolfe, who leads the most popular social network in the country, the one that I just mentioned, Myspace.com. Not only does Myspace have 12 million bloggers. But, in just a year and a half, it's become the seventh most visited site on the Internet. That's a pretty big deal. He's going to talk to us about the dynamics of online communities. How they form, where they form, why they form, what's going on there. But, of course, we also want to look at the social phenomenon of all of this, to talk about what we can do in this changing environment. So, we asked David Adelman and David said to me yesterday, "I'm going to be the harsh voice of reality at this conference. I'm going to be talking about where all this really comes together in the corporation and how we've made it work. “ David is in charge of emerging media at Johnson & Johnson. And he's taking this one massive, global company and helping them integrate what they've been doing into the emerging media and into communication planning. And as David said, he's brought a real discipline to it -- marketing accountability, measurement-- that secret sauce that helps people understand not only what they've done, but why it matters, how it's working, where it's not working, and he tells people how to go forward with it. And then, finally, David Dunne from Edelman. He leads our interactive practice and is going to answer the question that I think a lot of us have. I know I have it at this point. What do I do with all of this? How do I take advantage of all this change that's going on? So, before these guys get up and share all their experience with you, let me start by sharing some of the key insights that Edelman has learned from some studies that we've been doing over the past year. The first thing I want to share with you is that to us, a fifth estate is emerging. And we call this fifth estate the citizen marketer. So, we've talked about citizen journalists. But we see the citizen marketer as being more forceful right now. We did a study. It's called catalysts in conversations and we conducted this with Buzz Metrics. We surveyed the online landscape and those millions of conversations that are going on from consumer products to consumer tech to healthcare. And here are some of the things we concluded from this study. First of all, people are empowered to share their thoughts, their ideas, their advice and to pass a lot of judgments online. And, boy, they're doing it. They've actually almost created a new media that we call the conversation channel. Conversations in communities are the fastest growing, most powerful word of mouth tools today. And so we want to talk a little bit to you about how those conversations are forming, what’s being talked about, and how some of us can participate in those conversations. Second big finding here: Privacy and anonymity foster openness and sharing. And in fact, if you listen to some of these conversations, they're very confessional. They allow for frank opinions without fear of reprisal. And one of the things that's so interesting to us is not only that people are offering their opinions, but also that they're sharing things about themselves online that they probably wouldn't share with their closest friends over a beer. They're talking about things that sometimes are embarrassing, things that are really private. And they're being quite open about this. And people are responding with a lot of compassion and a lot of help. So people are coming together in a different way. And I think we all know right now that the Internet is the first place that people from consumers to lawyers to regulators to journalists are going for information. So all of these conversations offer unlimited potential. Unlimited potential for information, misinformation, for brand building and for brand destruction. And it can happen pretty quickly. We're going to give you some examples of that too. One thing that we thought was quite fascinating in a study we did just a couple of months ago is that over half of all consumers most believe and most trust information from people like them. Now, I want to differentiate that from something I think we've known for a long time, that people trust information from families and friends. Okay, so that's a given. But now there's a new definition of people like me. That definition used to be your friends. They were people in your community, in your neighborhood. That's not what people mean anymore when they say that. They're also including in their communities like-minded, like interested consumers who are living online. So,now, there are millions of people like me. Many people who are out there sharing their passions, their fascinations, and those are the people that most consumers trust, believe and turn to. This gives them enormous powers of persuasion. We’ve got to pay some attention to that. So, the Internet and these new technologies have leveled the playing field. Opinionated, passionate individuals can now get their messages out with just amazing velocity. Far faster than most billion dollar corporations. Another area I just want to touch on before we go to our panel. Blogging and bloggers have created a new wave of online energy. Blogging has really given voice and a great big amplifier to millions and millions of people. It's opened a secret window into corporations too. I think we all know that journalists now, when they want to find out something about a company, they look for people who are blogging on that company. Employees of the company are blogging. It's also opened up windows to all kinds of people to find out lots of different things. So, it's really formed this potent, living web of information. And not only of information, but of opinion. Because this is a new medium and there are just so many questions about it, we created something with Intelliseek. We created a directory of the top bloggers because out of all those people out there, not all of them necessarily matter absolutely equally. Some have more influence than others. Some are followed more closely than others. So, we put together a directory of the 100 most highly read bloggers and the bloggers who are influencing them so that we began to understand this web of influence out there. We looked at where blog activity is concentrated across different industry sectors. We looked at the rules of engagement. We looked at how companies can approach the blogosphere to build their brands and to gain critical market insight. And we put this together in a white paper. And as you leave, we're going to share with you that white paper. So, it's out there for you to pick up. It's got a lot of very helpful dos and don'ts. So, finally, as we move into our conversation, I think there's a really big question. In this new world, how do companies manage their brands and their brand image, build loyalty, establish a bond with consumers that is authentic and that's lasting? So, that's a key question for us. And one of the things that we found in our early work in this area is that it requires not just a new attitude, not just some new knowledge. But it almost requires a new infrastructure in a company. And that's not surprising when you think that what we're really trying to do is manage or interact with millions of consumers one at a time, tracking their changing needs, hearing their opinions, responding to the opportunities. The platform that we've developed is called one to one. And David's going to be talking to you a little bit about that. And you're going to hear a lot more about that in the months to come. But, why don't I turn it over to the panel and let Judith get us started by talking a little bit about what's happening out there. Okay, Judith?
JUDITH MESKILL: I'm just a sponge. I have learned to listen on the Internet. And I am connected to a lot of those bloggers that Pam talked about as being the very influential people. And sometimes if I hang out with them too much, I get a very distorted view of the world. And, so I'd like to ask a few questions before I start here. Everybody here is aware of blogs. Yes? How about Wikis? Pod casting? Flickr. Del.icio.us. When Pam was talking about instant messaging, suddenly my desktop in my virtual office showed up in front of me. I'm a Macofile. And I have a 23-inch cinema display where I have everything going on. In my office, I have 75 bloggers that I interact with on almost a daily basis. My office is my IM chat windows. At the end of the day (a busy day), I can have 45 windows tabbed open of people that I've spoken to in instant message. While I'm also Skyping people. Skype. Voiceover IP. The Internet is becoming the new front porch. It's the new backyard fence where virtual neighbors gather to recommend or trash your products and services. I'm sure you're not surprised by these figures: $99 billion is being spent across all media to influence customers. I mean, this is daunting. We're spending not just a lot of time, but a lot of money on influencing this base of customers. This figure, though -- this $165 on communications. Who would have thought? This is how much we're spending now not just to talk to each other on the phone, but to talk to each other on the Internet. A large part of that is that chunk of Internet that people are finding indispensable now in their daily lives to make decisions. The Internet is becoming an increasingly powerful influencer. I'm sure it's well over 100 million customers or potential customers who are doing all of their research online right now. They know more about you then sometimes you know about you. I worked recently with CEOs of large Fortune Ten corporations who thought that nobody in their organization was blogging or using Wikis. And I'm in this beautiful, full wood, boardroom and there's this computer that comes up out of the middle of the table. And I said, "Can I -- is that on your Internet?" And they said, "Yeah." I said, "Can I get on that for a second?" And I started keying. I found that they had 500,000 accesses a day to blogs that were going on in their corporation on their Internet. And surprising to me, there were 500,000 Wikis being used in their organization to design some products that all of us use regularly. And they were astounded. I was happy. And I continue to consult with them until this day about how it's being used, how this type of technology is being used within their organization. This bottom up social media that people are using to communicate with each other and with their communities, whether they are within the work force or without the work force. Customers use these tools to make more informed product and service decisions. I started asking you all questions about whether you were familiar with these terms. All of these terms are things that you should be more familiar with because your customers and probably people in your organizations are using all of these different types of services. Weblogs, we know, are places where you can just pour your heart out or pour your knowledge out. But, you can also use them in a very focused manner. You can use a weblog to discuss a topic. You can stay very safe in a weblog. And a number of my client organizations are fearful to use weblogs because they have so much proprietary information that they feel they cannot change or take a position on. And, yet, you can call this very niche. You can narrow cast your weblog and you can talk to a group of people who are just interested in a very specific area. You can use product forums. And your customers are definitely using product forums. You should find out what product forums have been developed about your products. Wikis are more esoteric, more geeky right now. There are companies like Social Techs that are making Wikis more accessible and more utilizable in large corporations. Social networking services like Chris DeWolfe's Myspace are viral. Some of them have dropped dead. I happen to be the person who keeps a list of all of the social networking services that have spawned on the Internet. And I have more than 380 of them. It's really funny because The New York Times wrote an article, The Wall Street Journal wrote an article, and they were saying there were ten social networking services out there. And I was like, (KNOCKING) sorry, there's closer to 400 on my one list. And on my dating list, there's more than 2,000. Two thousand social networking services that are geared towards dating. And I update that and I have a conversation going in the posts that I continue to refresh on all of those different social networking services that are in existence. Podcasts have become very viral. Podcasts and working knowledge of podcasts. iPods. Everybody knows about iPods. Well, podcasts are conversations that happen on the radio between you and your friends that you can offer to people as MP3s that they can download onto their iPods and they can listen to as they move around in their lives when they're not online. We're doing a lot of podcasts. We do podcasts about scuba diving. We do podcasts about automobile shows. We have a blog called the auto blog that is like fabulously popular. We have a number of different blogs. People go, "Judith, I didn't know that was your blog. Whoa, I read that everyday. That's in your network?" It’s so amazing, people don't look at the sidelines. You find out what people aren't looking at. You make all these fancy websites and everything. People aren't looking at a lot of the stuff that's on your fancy websites. They have very narrow views just seeking what they're looking for. Their tags and their key words. Which brings me to flickr, del.icio.us and technorati. And I'm going to skip Craig for a moment. Because flickr allows you to search for photos based on key words that you're interested in. Del.icio.us is a way of sharing your links with the world. You can tag things and you can submit them to Del.icio.us and people can go to a most popular page and you find out what people are really talking about. Not what Google tells you that people are talking about, or CNN or USA Today. But, you find out what people are really talking about right now on the web in a very real time manner. Technorati grew up around bloggers who like to find out who's talking about them. So, it grew up as kind of a narcissistic tool and then it grew up beyond that. Craig's List -- everybody familiar with Craig's List? Craig is a friend of mine. Craig Newmark. And he's just this little hobbit of a guy. Craig has a PDA that he looks at constantly. He's having a conversation with you, but his eyes go from the PDA to you. And you're having this conversation. And Craig is interacting with the world of Craig's List. He is like the tech support guy. So, he's talking to you and he's also monitoring. He's, "Oh, wait a second, Judith. Russia just got really out of control. Hold on." You know, he's madly into this thing. He's like, "Okay, it's done." And we have a whole new world of interacting with these different services. Customers are tagging their worlds with viral speed. Blog posts, photos, music, links, books, and sharing it. Are people familiar with Book Crossings? Anybody? It's a really cool thing where people are leaving books around with special stickers on them. You pick up the book (in a public place) and you read it and you can post on the website what you thought about it. And you just lay it down somewhere on a subway or wherever and somebody else picks it up and reads that book, which can go from Istanbul to San Francisco . It’s an incredible thing. I’m going to give you some examples of searches that I've done about pod casting in the news. There were 519 stories in the news yesterday about pod casting. This is just a picture of some sushi that was up on flickr yesterday. There are some amazing things that are being done on flickr. You have to go check out flickr. You have to see what people are doing there. Craig's List. Ugly as hell, huh? But, people love this. They love to be able to go here and just find what they need, where they need it, quickly. No fluff. Nothing fancy. This is Del.icio.us. This is what was popular yesterday. This is just a look at technorati's front sheet. Experience your customers. Right now, your customers are reading and writing blogs. They're Googling their fact finding missions. They're sharing their love for you, their hate for you real time, interactively on the net. I am astounded at how many people aren't out there tracking these conversations that are going on about them, and actually becoming a part of these conversations. Because you need to become a part. How many people are familiar with Engadget? Yeah. Engadget is an absolutely viral blog. If you have never gone to Engadget, you need to look up engadget.com. Because if you're ever looking for a cell phone, an MP3 device, a new home theater system, a plasma TV, and you want to know what's hot now, this is the place to go. Our Engadget blog has a phenomenal readership and is actually, I think, one, if not the most popular web blog right now. And they just turned one. And they had a birthday party and they saved up a bunch of stuff. We don't. At Weblogs, Inc., we don't keep any of the things that people send us to evaluate and review, etc. We give them all away and so they give them away constantly. But, they saved up a few of them so that they could give them away for the birthday. And within 48 hours, there were over 2,100 comments on that one blog post from readers saying, "Happy Birthday Engadget. This was my favorite post." Wow, what I wouldn't do to get that. So, how are you listening to your customers? How are you tracking your products from field to fork? I love that field to fork. I love alliteration. I'm a poet and I write haiku and I write English sonnets in very traditional form and I write them about a number of things that we're talking about here. Now, I recently did a post when Google was in their quiet period and I knew they were just itching to find out what everybody was talking about and they couldn't ask and they couldn't publish anything on their own blog. And so, I did a “Google would be perfect if…” Now, I didn't give away a Treo. And so I only got 70 comments on my post. But, by the same token, I gave away g-mail accounts and I got some pretty awesome answers to this. One of my favorite answers to this, and Chris will talk more about millennials, is this one by Michele, who I know is a millennial. "Google would be perfect if it could read and write to my mind. I wouldn't have to type in searches or click through to links. No need to worry about flash java, display issues or compatibility because it would be automatically downloaded into my brain. Of course, there is a concern about the effects of viruses and browser highjacking with this neurological feat. I guess brain function and connection speed access would also be an issue." Now, wow. Not one typo. I have some fabulous commenters on my blogs. People are in conversations that are truly amazing. And you need to be in these conversations. So, again, who really is in charge? The customer's in charge. The consumer's in charge. I particularly don't like the term consumer. Users are in charge. What are your customer communities searching for? Google has this really great tool. Has anybody used Suggest? All you have to do is go to their labs page -- the “more” page on Google's front page, and go to Suggest. And you just start typing about something that you're interested in and it will finish typing for you. Or it will recommend. It'll put a drop down of things that are being searched for on those terms. This is powerful marketing material to find out what people are searching for dynamically right now. You should all check out Google Suggest. Because what Google Suggest said is that people are searching on customers and focus. And there are a lot of people talking about customers and focus. And I like this a lot better than customer relationship management where we talk about managing customers. We need to be talking about focusing on customers, about customers finding their focus. Jim Stangle from Proctor & Gamble says that the customer is in control and that over the past 20 years, they have wanted to control everything. And I think you all need to acknowledge customer control and participate from conversation to relationship marketing. This is my favorite slide. Truth gets a lot of air on the Internet. I'm sure you're all familiar with this. Good stuff outs itself, as David says. Especially on blogs, forums and social networking services. But, “gotcha” has become exceedingly combustible. You all are familiar with the term flaming, right? Well, if you have a “gotcha” -- if you haven't stepped out and you're not blogging about something that is right or wrong with your service and other people do it, that's a “gotcha.” You know, you no longer have to lie to be incriminated on the Internet. You have to just be quiet. Silence is consent to not telling your truth. You really need to get out and tell the truth about your products and services because people will love you a lot more. Especially in the blogosphere. People will respect you for it. It's an important thing. Customers don't just buy brands. They bond with them. And it's not just their Nikes or the things they wear on their body. It's the devices that they're crazy about. We're doing a really unique thing over on Weblogs, Inc. We have this amazing guy, Shawn Gold, who Chris DeWolfe also knows. Shawn said, "You know what? I think we should create conversations between our advertisers and our readers. So, we came up with this thing called focus ads where when our readers see an ad displayed on one of our weblogs, they can click on it and they can leave a comment about that advertiser. Now, I'm sure you've all probably seen this -- light scribe -- where the image for your CD is actually scribed by your computer onto the CD. So, it's really cool. You can put a picture, a playlist or whatever. And they've been running ads and we've had a preponderance of customers say more than a little bit about what they think about those ads. I mean, look at this Engadget Reader. This guy went on. This was only half of what he posted. It went on and on and on. This is invaluable to our advertisers to be able to have our customers say, "You know, that ad really sucked or that ad was really good." Or, "I think this ad could be made better." The focus group that is being created in blog commenting sections is unprecedented. Challenging your customers to help you improve your products and services in a clear, unvarnished, truthful way using an appropriate blend of these social media power tools is something you all should be doing. Because it has phenomenal rewards and it creates phenomenal conversations. And it creates the most loyal customers and you meet lots of people, you make good friends, you understand these things, you get to walk around and say, "Hey, I know that. I'm cool." If you Googled my name, you'll get about 250,000 hits. But, if you Googled Myspace, I'll come up in the top ten or 20 hits for Myspace, which is huge. And what's happening is that Chris's users are coming to my blog and they're saying, "Hey, wow. Myspace really rocks. But, they're not letting me use it in my school, Judith. How can I use it in my school. They're blockin' this crap." And they use other words. But, I write to them and say, "Well, you know, so and so said you can do this." But I don't write in the comments because I don't want to seem that controversial in telling people how to circumvent their schools. I don't want to get on the bad side of the school. But, then they come back and say, "Hey, this really rocks. I heard…” And they don't out me. They don't say they heard it from me. And then they share it and the conversation goes on and on. And these comment conversations. I have a post, for example, from December of 2003 that is still… Anybody familiar with Plaxo? Anybody use Plaxo to update your contact database? If you search on Plaxo, I'll probably be the third hit because I wrote an article back in December of 2003 that said, "Plaxo. Evil?" And the new CEO of Plaxo wants to talk to me about, you know, writing a new Plaxo. Good? Although, we aren't as interested in good as we are in evil. You know, evil has a certain ring to it. So I'm done. I don't know if you enjoyed. I hope you got something out of it. And I'll talk to you more later. (APPLAUSE)
CHRIS DEWOLFE: And where a lot of this growth is actually coming from is from what I'm going to call the Internet generation. Judith called them the Millennial generation. And it's essentially the 16 to 34 year olds that are driving unbelievable growth. So, first of all, I'm going to cover the Internet generation online communities, talk about some examples of what they are, how people are using them. Secondly, the characteristics of the Internet generation. The actual changing behavior of that generation and how that's driven the growth and how that affects marketers. Thirdly, why online communities are relevant to marketers and then I'm going to end off with a case study where Proctor & Gamble actually launched one of their new products on Myspace, which is an online community. So, what are community sites? Well, essentially, they're websites that allow users to connect around shared interest. Whether those interests are music, movies, TV, religion, politics. So, if I'm an Iowan and I want to find someone in California that is into Kabala, the Rolling Stones, swimming naked in the ocean and trans-music nightlife, I can actually find that person. I'm not sure that I want to. But I could really find them. And that's something that would be very daunting to do in the offline world. So, when I'm talking about these connections, I can sort of loosely categorize them in two different buckets. The blogging bucket, which would be sites like Live Journals and Blogger. Again, you know, primarily younger audiences where they're just sharing their thoughts and feelings and deepest secrets and, you know, sharing goofy stories online with all their friends. And then, the second category would be social networking, which is sites like Myspace, Friendster, High Five and Tribe.net. Where people actually upload their pictures, write everything they're interested in and then invite other friends to join their network of friends. So, again, when we're talking about these two groups, we're talking about the Internet generation. And it becomes very important to understand the characteristics of this generation and their changing behavior in terms of how that's driving the growth and how marketers need to react to that. Essentially, what they're doing is putting their lives online. They’re uploading their pictures, talking about everything they're interested in, writing their blog, making all these cool HTML designs. What they're really doing is creating an extension of their offline world. And this is very interesting because it follows a lot of macro trends where young people really feel a need to express themselves creatively. They want to be individuals. So, they'll spend hours and hours to put these profiles up and express themselves creatively. Next, it's no longer geeky to meet people online. I'm sure some of you would probably disagree with that. And I feel kind of geeky sometimes doing it. But the Internet generation is doing it every day. They're finding these connections. They're meeting, they're talking. And it's just really normal everyday life for them. So, there was this social stigma, you know, six or seven years ago. And you probably all remember people that joined Match.com or some of the other dating sites and you thought, these guys have really hit rock bottom, you know? What a bunch of losers. But, you know, that's obviously not the case anymore. Again, it's sort of standard operating procedure for the new generation. So the Internet generation, especially the younger portion of it has really grown up sharing their lives with strangers. Privacy as it relates to their personal lives is not as important. And what I mean by this isn't that their personally identifiable information used for nefarious purposes isn't important. I mean, that's definitely a big concern to all these users. But what I'm talking about is kind of what Pam alluded to earlier. You know, putting your whole life out there and telling the world things that you wouldn't tell your closest friends. So, what does all this mean to marketers? Why is this important? Well, first of all, it's where 16 to 34 year olds are spending the majority of their free time. We talked about earlier, how in just a year and a half Myspace is the seventh ranked website on the Internet in terms of page use in a very, very short period of time. It's because people are making these connections and it's where they're spending their free time. Additionally, community sites have become the fabric of their daily lives, where people are actually planning their social lives. What they do on the weekend, making product decisions, discovering new music, deciding what movie they're going to go to this weekend, finding dates, finding jobs. They're doing all these activities online and it's part of their daily lives. So, what that does is open up a lot of interesting opportunities for marketers to target based on these activities, to target based on demographics. And it offers a lot of opportunities to reach this elusive 16 to 34 year old demographic in a very non-intrusive, authentic way. And, again, it provides advertisers the ability to catch consumers in their stride. So when I'm talking about “in their stride,” I'm talking about when they're planning their lives and putting their lives online. So, I think the best way to do this is to share a quick case study with you. Proctor & Gamble recently launched a new product called Secret Sparkle. Secret Sparkle has some great brand extensions. You know, you got One Secret and you can create ten other brands from that. So, they put some sparkles in the deodorant and, you know, that became a whole new brand that they're selling to young women in the 16 to 24 year old category. So, what they wanted to do is connect the Secret Sparkle brand to the Myspace audience in a very cool, non-obtrusive way. So, as part of Myspace, there's a whole music area where bands can upload their pictures, upload their songs and create these mini fan sites. And so we went on there and found three different musical artists that shared similar brand values to Secret Sparkle. And we picked Hilary Duff, Bonnie McKee, and The Donnas. Three very popular artists. And we branded their profile pages with Secret Sparkle branding. It was interesting to see that our users were really interacting with the Secret Sparkle brand in the same way that they would normally interact with the Hilary Duff profile. So, they're going in there, they're listening to music, they're writing comments to Hilary. But, at the same time, they are presented with the Secret Sparkle branding along with a call to action to join the sweepstakes. So, if you look at this next page, it sort of illustrates the example on the left side. It's a picture of our home page, where we have an area that has the feature artist. That week it was Hilary Duff, and you can see in the left hand side, there's some nice sparkles. People will click over from the homepage into Hilary's profile. And then, again, you'll see the call action to join the sweepstakes. And then, the subtle branding over there on your left side. It’s an extremely, extremely successful campaign. Brand awareness was increased by 39 percent in surveys that were done before and after the campaign. There were over 80,000 click throughs from the homepage alone. That doesn't include the banner support that we did around this whole campaign in a targeted fashion. So that's just one example. I could share really quickly with you another example that may be relevant to some of you. You guys have maybe heard about the new TV show that NBC is launching called, The Office. And The Office is actually a remake of a very popular BBC show that's been a huge hit in England for the last several years. NBC wanted to build a lot of pre-buzz around this show before it officially launched because, as you guys all know, if a TV show's not getting ratings after the second or third week, it's done. So, they actually launched the show on Myspace and they showed a whole episode before it was on any other website or before it even premiered on the network. And the idea is that there's this huge vibrant network of people that are talking to each other and passing along information about what's cool, what's next. You know, what content is great. And, so, within these connected communities, word spreads very virally around the site. That was the objective of the campaign, and so far I think there's been over 100,000 streams in just several days of The Office. It’s been really an unbelievable success from NBC's standpoint. We'll see what the ratings say. If they're good, we'll take credit. If not, obviously, it's a bad show. In conclusion, I wanted to leave you guys with a few takeaways. First of all, online communities are not only here to stay, but they're growing unbelievably quickly and, you know, everyone wants connections. Online communities just provide a vehicle to make those connections happen. They're also creating in a bigger fashion a whole new paradigm for socializing and gathering content and information. Also, as community sites get larger and more sophisticated, additional targeting opportunities will present themselves. You can see the vast amount of information that users provide about themselves. And as technology on the marketing side and the advertising side gets better and better, we’ll be able to do some very, very sophisticated marketing around this data. And fourth, creative executions like we talked about with NBC or Proctor & Gamble on community sites will lead to authentic dialogue with the consumer. The whole key, or one of the keys, at the end of the day, is to get the consumers talking about your product because they're really the best evangelizers of any product. And as long as you do it in an authentic and transparent way, you can make that happen. Finally, you guys should all set up a profile. It seems like a crazy thing to do. But, the only way to really get it is to get in there and do it yourself. So, I recommend that you guys all do that today. Thanks. (APPLAUSE)
DAVID ADELMAN: Where does it end? Am I going to have to chase after each one of these opportunities individually? Or is there a smarter way to go about prioritizing the opportunities that these platforms represent as communication channels for a big company such as mine? We've been working on this for a while. And we've learned a few things. I think the first thing is that you need to admit, as a company, that you have a problem. And that's not just you in the room. I have a feeling that because you're here, you're already interested in this and you get it. But, what we really need is a level of senior management concern that something is very, very wrong with the way we're communicating with our consumers and our customers. And I differentiate consumers from customers. A consumer is an individual. And, to me, a customer is a big retailer or a hospital chain or a doctor. One of the things we did to generate that mandate was to host a meeting at MIT's media lab in November. We called it the Global Media Summit. And the purpose of it was really very similar to the content of today, which is to make people understand that the consumer’s in charge. And what we did is bring in a tremendous array of speakers. We had Faith Popcorn, we had John Maeda from the MIT media lab. We had Bob Greenberg, probably one of the most creative people on the Internet today. All demonstrating in very tangible and quantitative ways that our core audience of female teens, moms, disease sufferers and caregivers has fundamentally changed the way they consume media. In terms of generating this mandate, The Wall Street Journal articles alone aren't enough, nor are the bar charts. We showed an audience of senior marketers that represented all of our divisions and all of our regions worldwide great examples -- visualizations of terrific, creative work living on these platforms. Work that works, and importantly, work that was done by the competitors that scare the crap out of us. And you know what? The event was a watershed for us and it's led to a company wide commitment to figure this stuff out, which makes my job fun because I was doing it all alone for the last three years. And now everyone's demanding to know what I'm doing in Europe . If your company is like mine, I think that you’re getting a preponderance of articles in the media, The Wall Street Journal, etc., thrown at you. What are we doing about pod casting? Right? And you know what? They're engaged and that's wonderful because, you know, for three years I've been trying to get everyone energized. I was saying, “C'mon, c'mon, come with me. You have to look at this stuff.” And now it's, “what are you doing in Europe ?” And “this is a really good thing.” And “we want to take advantage of that.” But, what we don't want to do is repeat the mistakes that we made last time everyone got so excited about the Internet. This is a big point because it's different this time. The industry has matured. Publishers know how to generate value and report that value back to advertisers. We have a way to understand the value of these communications and these transactions that transcend just clicks. And furthermore, I think that, as Chris and I were talking about, the sales teams that are out there repping these companies are top notch. They've been battle-tested through the lean years. And they're able to ask marketers questions about what's important to them and creatively help you assemble packages to drive business. So, where do you start with all this stuff? I mean, there are 10,000 things that we just labeled. There's going to be some new thing in The Wall Street Journal tomorrow that's going to get circled and handed to you. What we've done is work with our agencies to develop a map of the emerging communications landscape as it impacts our brands. As we see it, this is the map of everything that scares us. And what we need to do is filter all of that noise down to a few things that we have the time and the money to deal with. Because if money was scarce, time is even more scarce. And when we're working in a new platform, we have to spend extra time to really figure it out. And we have to spend extra time with our publishers and technology partners to make sure that we're coming up with a package that really serves our needs. So, how do we do that? Well, first of all, let's start with some good 'ole fashion marketing. Hey, is this channel relevant to my target audience? Okay, if so, how many? And how do I know? Okay? Good. Let’s start with the consumer. We're supposed to do that. Let's talk about us now. From a creative or a message standpoint, is there an aperture that I can use within this channel to deliver a message that I need to deliver? Is the pallet broad enough if I need to communicate visually? Okay. Maybe I shouldn't be doing SMS. Take the Secret Sparkle case that Chris just gave. I love that case because it's not just running ads on a site. It was leveraging a couple of things that are really interesting about this behavioral phenomenon that we're discussing today. And the first thing is this notion of adding people to a friend list and capitalizing on teens’ interest in celebrities. And humanizing that celebrity by allowing users to participate in the space just like Hilary Duff. And then the other thing that I really loved is that the space itself is so viral that the community is actually doing the work of circulating news about the offer and the content. And that's what's brilliant and that's why it's so much better than just running a spot. And like I said, we use a lot of visualization of great creative work that P & G is doing to generate that level of mandate for our senior marketers. It's like, oh no, P & G's doing this thing. Once you pass the universe of new media through this filter, you're going to find that you're down to a manageable number, and that's good, because we still need to prioritize. And now let's talk a little bit more about us again. What's the risk profile? I’m from J&J. We're known as the baby band-aid company. Don’t tell anyone, but we're also a big pharmaceutical company. That means that a ton of the content, the messages we create, go through this hellacious process of development involving Medreg, legal and the FDA, trademark and our copyright team. So while I might like to take a bunch of information about clinical trial or patient information about a new brand of pharmaceutical product and put that into a RRS feed to facilitate the bloggers’ ability to use, reuse and pass that content out, I've just lost total control of this message, and what if someone changes it? What if this message ends up in a space that's adjacent to discussions about disease states for which my drug is not approved by the FDA to be associated with? I've just created a whole mess of new risks for myself that I need to understand. And that's not an excuse to say, "Oh, good thing I don't have to do this blog stuff anymore." What that means is that we have to be very creative. We have to think this through and we have to be creative about finding solutions to this problem. We can also find ways and places within our organization where the risks are a little less and we can get started and we have a small and measurable success. Similarly, can a site satisfy my regulatory requirements? We do need to submit a lot of our communications. We need to figure that one out. And then, finally, there's risk and there's reward. But this isn't easy either. What's the expected business benefit that I'm going to get out of this? And how are we going to measure it? And, you know, you came here because you thought this new media stuff was going to be fun. But it has to be measurable. How are you going to demonstrate that developing an innovative program to communicate, connect to and listen to your consumers is going to drive shareholder value? Because that's what we're all in the business of doing. So how do we do that at Johnson & Johnson? It’s all about measurement for us. And measurement is good. But more important than measurement is what you do with it. We have a culture around this notion called action standards. An action standard is a critical component in every media test that we do. An action standard starts with an operational definition of what success looks like. That means I'm going to get a bunch of marketers in a room and figure out something that we can measure that's going to translate into something that a senior marketer is going to value and accept as a valid driver of their business. That isn’t a click through. Maybe it's a download of a “Talk to Your Doctor” PDF about your treatment options during chemotherapy. Maybe it's a controlled experiment linking Internet ad exposure to offline sales via scanner panel data. We just did this with Neutrogena and released those results publicly at the MSN Strategic Account Summit last week. Maybe it's X number of qualified leads at a cost per. It beats a benchmark that we've established for DRTV. But as a group we need to agree what's going to be measured and what success looks like. The next step is to agree as a group what we’re going to do when we achieve success. And it’s really important to solicit that buy-in up front. What does success look like? And what are you going to do, how many dollars are we going to pony up? How are we going to scale this program if we achieve our operational definition of success? If you haven't noticed, this is my specialty. I'm all about marketing accountability. My job is about innovation, but I work in a metrics driven company. So I've learned to leverage marketing accountability as a means to drive innovation in our organization. It has been a very, very important and persuasive tool because I can prove to you that this stuff works. I can show you how it drives your business value. And I can show you how much money you're going to make if you do it. But there's another fun part of my job, and that's the creative side of it. Because my geeky left-brain mission is to prove that marketing works through all sorts of varieties of quantitative measurement and testing, I've arrived, backhandedly, at the profound importance of great creative. And great creative is uniquely suited to these platforms that communicate intimately with the person. That’s what really drives all of this business value, which is what makes your matrix work. And the thing about this stuff is, we don't know what the rules are yet. Judith was talking about how we could get flamed. We could do something that was not transparent, or that was transparently lame and self-promoting in a way that violates the unwritten rules of the blogosphere or social networking. Or whatever the social conventions are around the thing that we're going to be talking about next month. So what we need to do, and what we've learned the hard way, is, number one, don't just repurpose something that you already did. That's not going to work. You're not going to get the measurable results that you need to justify the expansion of the program. You need to partner with experts that get it, who understand the space and what people are looking for. And if you have to go outside your comfortable network of traditional agencies to do it, then so be it. You know what? When it's time to scale the program, I guarantee you they'll have a capability in place. Here's the thing, if you get that creative messaging right and you're delivering something of value to your target audience in a way that says, "Hey, they get me," you're going to get those measurable results that we were talking about before. And when you achieve the level of success that you've solicited through your organization, you get to go back and say, "Hey, remember those consequences that we had for achieving success? Well, here's your success. Show me the consequences. Pony up the money and let's scale this puppy now. And, by the way, I'm taking this learning, and I’m going to shepherd it across the rest of the organization so that we can drive change on more than just your business.” And that's how we do it at Johnson and Johnson. Thanks.
DAVID DUNNE: And so we're here for the part of the presentation where we're actually going to try and help you to think about ways in which you might apply some of the enormous amount of information you've heard today in an actionable way. A key point for us here is that this is about creating, sustaining and learning. And when you've done that, you need to do it again so that you can actually begin and sustain a dialogue that has an enduring value for your brand. Relationships are not a new concept. It’s been more than a decade since the first one to one book was written. And I don't know how many iterations of it have appeared since. But, you know, Peppers and Rogers understood then what the possibility was. And what's very fascinating today, as I listen to the speakers and think about some of the key takeaways, is that when the dot com mania occurred a number of years ago, people just thought it was all going to evaporate. I had people asking me questions like, "Is the Internet still important?" That was not a long time ago. And when we were talking last night, one of the things that came out of our conversation was, gee, all these things that we thought were so cool just a few years ago have actually happened. And that's tantalizing. If we think about that, what are the possibilities ahead? One of the principles that probably has the most frustrating business, certainly from an investment point of view, as well as from a return investment point of view, is CRM. Let’s be honest, it's easier said than done. And this particular initiative has really not paid the dues. Companies, nonetheless, are very committed to it. So we find ourselves at a crossroads. How can CRM play a bigger role in the future as we seek to create these types of dialogues and communications? How many of you here have what you would call a relationship with Amazon? Anybody here use Amazon? Most the room uses Amazon. And does anybody receive messages from Amazon? Half of you. I get messages from Amazon and they’re pretty much the same every time. They're still trying to sell me a discount Pink Floyd album. I love Pink Floyd and I bought an album there three years ago. It's one of many that I have. I didn't buy most of them on Amazon. In fact, I probably bought most of them at Virgin or somewhere. But Amazon is still trying to sell me Pink Floyd. You know, I like a lot of other music too. I'm not one-dimensional. And the thing is, Amazon never actually took the time to get to know me. They met me at a moment in time, and they made a lot of assumptions about who I am, what I'm interested in, and what I'm actually going to do next based on that one touch point. That's not a relationship. Now, many people think they're the best in the business, online at least, in keeping relationships. I'd argue that their relationship is just at a very foundational level. And there's so much more that they could do. I'll try to help you understand how you can go beyond Amazon. We want to take a look at what brands and companies are doing today and try to identify some areas where we fall down. We tend to ask a lot of questions in search of answers that we naturally want to hear. We produce creative. We produce messages. We send them out at the marketplace. And then we ask people what they thought about them. Remember, we decide what the messages are, and then we ask people what they think about them. So we’re narrowing down the kind of feedback we’re going to get. Judith talked to us today about the kind of feedback she gets. It's very different. It's very real time. It's very actionable. It's measurable. To David's point, if you can't measure it, it's not going to have any value to senior management. So we want to look at how we take all these conversations and start to rein them in and provide value back into the mix so that we're looking at more than just our traditional insights. One of the things that we've come to understand is that the marketing model that's been evolving constantly, and pretty much the one that we've relied on for about 50 years, is undergoing a sea of change. Because it wasn't designed to really harness conversations, and to understand what the value is to an organization in those conversations. One of the great car manufacturers, Dr. Bernd Pischetsrieder, has been much quoted as saying that his marketing department simply can't tell him what people want in their next car. They can tell him why people bought the last one. What they liked and didn't like. And there it ends. And that's a huge problem if you're a car marketer. And this guy's probably one of the most successful in the business. He ran BMW. The reason BMW is so successful today is because he was the head of it. And now he's trying to do the same thing for VW. And we think it's a tantalizing thing for giant companies to think about --- how can they move beyond the information that they've always had? We think it begins with a very organic and much more vibrant approach: one where you really have your finger on the marketplace and can touch and respond and feel. This concept of listening and then really, really learning -- how do you do it well? You go out there and participate in the things that Judith was talking about, that Chris is doing. You test concept on Myspace. You have to push new frontiers. You measure the heck out of them so you make sure that if they work, you can do more of them. So we bring all that back in, and we rethink it in the context of overall marketing initiatives. And then we integrate and push back and keep trying and trying and trying. I want to share with you two examples of how we do this. Has anybody ever downloaded an MP3 file? You know, it's been a big problem for the record industry for a number of years. In fact, the record industry was scratching its head and running in the opposite direction. And saying, "We'll sue you." A parallel to what Apple is doing to some people -- slightly different, but nonetheless, kind of interesting. But for the Recording Academy , they just came to a moment in time and said, "We can’t just keep swimming in the opposite direction. We've got to find a way to join people." So we created a program for them that was called “What's the Download.” And this program was geared towards fostering communication and a dialogue with the very people who were actually downloading music, who thought it was their God- given right to have free music without any consequences or thought to the artists, or the producers, or the recording studios, and all these other people who actually depend on the revenue that comes from the music. “What's the Download” was about creating an open and honest dialogue representing both sides, and providing an outlet for consumers to speak their minds on the issues that are important to them. This is the kind of foundation for how you begin a communication. This is not the end point. This is the beginning of a great dialogue. And it's been very, very successful in helping to educate the youth market about the value of buying music. For those of you who are from New York , or have lived in it a long time, you know that Columbia University is a great Ivy League school. Interestingly, its 325,000 living alumni did not have a true relationship with the school. Any of you here from Columbia? Graduate from Columbia? I don't know if you participated in the 250th celebrations last year. If you went to any of the onsite events, you probably registered for them online. This was, for the university, a hugely important initiative. And the anchor of their 250th celebration revolved around their online presence, how they were actually reaching out, connecting with and creating a platform for communication. Simple truths. The medical student from '75 was not interested in the same thing that the journalism grad from '95 was interested in. It's just that simple. So, as an organization, we went out and we actually talked to the students. The alumni. And we actually found out what they were interested in. What was it that they wish they had? And then we went and talked to grads of other great colleges and found out what they had. We found some very interesting things that were missing, and we started to fill those gaps and create a relationship around them so that as Columbia moves forward, it's setting the foundation for a long and enduring relationship. I'm sure that if you're in the alumni office, you're probably salivating at the opportunity of having a much better relationship. But so too are the alumni. The opportunity to be engaged in a meaningful way is really powerful for them too. These are great examples that I've just given you of real life, real work. But we also understand that we can't rest on what we've done in the past. So while we think that way naturally, we also understand that with the marketplace, we've got to continuously evolve. And part of that evolution is, of course, working very closely with our client’s people, like Johnson and Johnson and Pfizer and others who help us to understand what they're trying to accomplish. Looking at best practices. Not just our own, but like David mentioned, what are the best in the business doing? And we then conducted a significant amount of custom research with partners like Buzz Metrics and Intelliseek and others to begin to understand what it is that we can actually do to provide insights that the market simply doesn't have. And then taking these insights and applying them to our client's needs so that we get clear strategies for what we can do in the future. We've got some takeaway thoughts. You've definitely got to master this environment. It's not going to be enough to simply go out and look at it and take a step back and say, "Well, let somebody else cut that turf." You've got to get involved. You've got to provide the infrastructure, the mechanism of action, the things that are going to make it stable and important to the organization. You've got to provide the metrics. Otherwise, long-term things can't be sustained. And you've got to find a way to allow interaction with your products, and then listen to what people are actually doing with them. You've got to draw from the customer -- their viewpoints, their knowledge. If you bring that in, it's a very powerful proposition for the brand. You got to integrate. And you've got to make sure that you're maximizing the efficiencies. It's very hard to manage all those conversations that are going on out there. But there are ways to do it and to bring that back into the organization. You've got to cultivate an authenticity in your messages. It's not about the brand lecturing the consumer on what they should have. But rather, it's about understanding where the consumer is, customer is, whichever it might be, where they are, what's important to them, and where the brand fits into their life moment. And then, most importantly, you need to realize that this is not going to go away. This is a long-term commitment that we're trying to make. Edelman has spent, as I mentioned, a lot of time thinking about what we could do to help clients harness the possibility. And we came down to three things. First, activating influencers: There are a great deal of opportunities to go out there and connect with influencers. We recognized, from our studies, that information is currency in this medium. You know, people like Judith want nothing more than to get great information that they can share. And you know, if you look at any category, any industry, there are people sharing information. Good information is better than bad information. Good information from a good source is better than questionable information from a questionable source. So activating influencers, making a connection with them, is terribly important. Second, personalized conversations: This ability to go down to the very base level and conduct a conversation and dialogue where the brand is listening and communicating, listening and communicating. This is a whole new place for us to go. Some brands are charting very interesting areas. Pod casting is something that's come about as kind of an accident. But if you’re iPod, if you're Steve Jobs, you're very, very happy about it because pod casting has become synonymous with the iPod. But, nonetheless, it's a much bigger concept than just the iPod. But this idea that we can bring personalized communications down to that level is very important to us. And then blogs. Obviously, blogs are a tide that’s raising a lot of interest. If you're trying to make the case in your organization for why it's important, blogs alone are not the whole story. But they sure help us to communicate the rise in relevance and importance and interest in the category. And so, for the Internet, blogs are a great thing. I just wanted to take a quick dive into this personalized communication. We look at this from the end user's point of view. We want to try and segment and understand the audiences in a way that people haven't done before. This is life moments and interest points. We understand that we're going to reach out to them in many, many different ways. Judith was talking about Craig using his PDA in a Starbucks. And, you know, we need to assume that we have to communicate that way, and start with that principle, as opposed to saying, "My God, now how are we going to do that?" It's a great way to think about it. Providing the content on people's needs begins with collecting information from people. You can't just assume you know what they want. You have to begin with a clear understanding of what customers are interested in, and then you have to go out to them and continuously ask for their input so that you can refine and tune. And as I mentioned already, content is the currency. So in one to one, content is the thing that connects us with their interests. Obviously, CRM is a concept that has been around for a decade in a big way. But the great thing about CRM is that it's now commoditized. We can take advantage of platforms that already exist and fill in the piece that was missing. CRM without a dialogue is not CRM. It's customer relationship marketing, but it isn't customer relationships. We want to look at the relationship and see what we can do to really bring that to life. As with any organization, the touch points for this kind of information could come back to decisions about creative for a brand. They could influence the messages you put out about a product in the marketplace through your public relations. Ultimately, we believe that one to one is an opportunity to connect with individuals that will help your brand go from just a branding exercise to creating a meaningful bond with the consumer that cements the relationship. It's not all about you. It's about them and you. And this new kind of relationship gives you opportunity for all kinds of insights for the future of your company. Thank you very much. (APPLAUSE) PAM TALBOT: QUESTION 1: PAM TALBOT: Judith? JUDITH MESKILL: We have these silent agreements to garden this environment that we have planted on the Internet. There are some very serious conversations going on. Some of them can be very damaging. But for as many people as will come out and attack, if they do not have a substantiated attack, if there's not truth, truth will out you. And it is outing you in the blogosphere. For example, someone came in and left a comment in one of my blog posts one day and said, "Judith, you're fulla…” you know, an expletive. There were ten people who came in within minutes. I didn't even realize people were reading. They were like, "You're full of it! Get out of here! Let's delete this comment. This doesn't belong here. This isn't what this woman's about. Who are you? You just came in and sat down and took a dump in our community. Leave now." It's amazing. To me, that showed a conversation that was going on behind the conversation. People had a silent agreement about my social software weblog, and what could be talked about there, and what people could comment on. And I found out over and over again that if people came in and lied or tried to start a thread (this happens a lot on the gadget forum, where people try to start rumors), they get ousted. They get divorced. And for a company like Pfizer? I mean, that's a wonderfully powerful thing. Because now you have an entire community saying, "Wait a second. Yeah, we know their flaws. We know what they do wrong. But we also know what they do right. And this is unsubstantiated. So, out." PAM TALBOT: JUDITH MESKILL: You can still skirt details. You can still have your attorneys look at what you're saying. You can do that in your real time. I am in conversation with clients who have attorneys who watch comments as they come in and say, "Yeah, respond. No, don't. Leave that alone. Sure, go for it." As we put comments up, they can be vetted in seconds. And they can go out very quickly once they've been looked at. It changes the rules of the game, though. It changes how you use your resources in your organizations, how you mobilize them, how you re-orient them to address this type of environment. Because you cannot wait days. We all know that. You can't sit and wait for the attorneys to get on it, to have a conversation about it, to look at it. Those rules don't apply. I recently talked to an entire room of attorneys. That was fun. Because they were ready to jump all over me and tell me that I needed to pack up my bags and go home, that I was a pie in the sky sunshine girl. And at the end, they were like, "Oh my God. How do I start a blog?" And I have them now. They want to get a whole network of attorneys to come on Weblogs, Inc. and write. And I thought, "Wow, I've really started something here." You need to watch what you wish for. You might get it. But the rules have changed. They really have. They're actually simpler. They're actually more honest. There's less veneer. If you have a lot of veneer, you'd better drop it because it's not going to work. But by the same token, you have more protection than you ever thought you had. And that's the phenomenal part of it. QUESTION 2: PAM TALBOT: DAVID ADELMAN: One of the nice things about working at Johnson & Johnson is that we have pharmaceuticals, we have medical devices, and we have consumer packaged goods -– all with very different target audiences. We’re able to leverage our consumer businesses as sources of innovation. Brands like Neutrogena and Acuvue are targeting female teens, and we're dealing with a much lower risk profile with regards to communications about the brand than we are when we're talking about Procrit, Remicade, or Ortho Tricyclin Lo. So that's one of the ways that we deal with this. But one of the issues that we're struggling with internally is how to monitor web-based communications, how to gather information about what people are saying. And one of the challenges within pharmaceuticals is that if we become aware of an adverse incident, we have a responsibility to report it back to the regulatory bodies. We have to investigate the thing. Where did it come from? Who is RS332@aol.com? And is this a substantiated claim? Judith was talking about something a moment ago, about a meeting that she did in Atlanta where the marketers brought their lawyers. I think we really need to get them up to the front lines of marketing communications in order for us to be in a position where we can produce responsive communications in real time. Because we're very far away from that currently. It’s this process to create content and get it vetted and get it approved. And it doesn't fit today's model. So, no answers. But I commiserate with your problem. QUESTION 3: GUEST: GUEST: DAVID ADELMAN: You know how the DTC ad is about 30 seconds of, "You can't live without this," and then another 30 seconds of, "This stuff can kill you?" Well, while they're talking about that, there are pictures of people swinging on swings and riding bikes. I think that's part of the reason why we as an industry have been subject to criticism. But what the new ads for Ortho Women's Health do is actually focus the nexus of the ad as the conversation between a physician and a patient. It’s a straightforward discussion of the risks of the product. It’s not a "I'm going to tell you about how great it is. You know, look over here and I'm going to distract you while we talk about the risks." It admits risks, and it’s a straightforward discussion with the emphasis on, "Talk to your doctor." This is something that we feel drives a lot of patient value, and it also drives a lot of positive responses from the FDA and the medical community. Johnson & Johnson is fortunate to be among the most highly esteemed corporations in the country. From a corporate image and equity standpoint, we’ve also done a series of programs to emphasize the mother/infant bond. That’s the national advertising campaign called "Having a baby changes everything," which has these beautiful black and white ads that focus on that core insight of how everything in your life changes the moment you have a child. How the center of your universe moves from you outward. The other thing that we do is a nationwide campaign to address the nationwide nursing shortage through an eight figure annual advertising budget with ads showcasing nurses as heroes, local events where we raise money for scholarships in conjunction with hospital partners and other regional health care companies, and other PR related events and affiliations with over 200 nursing organizations. That effort has been perceived very well within the medical community, within Washington and with consumers. QUESTION 4: CHRIS DEWOLFE: JUDITH MESKILL: GUEST: I deal with communications, but I understand what it's like when marketers show up with lawyers. I think we're still behind the curve in terms of what our real strategy is toward framing "How are we going to respond to what goes on on the Internet?" Which is why we're here today. So you raise a very interesting point, and it certainly requires a lot more scrutiny. JUDITH MESKILL: PAM TALBOT: How do we share our brands with people? How do we really let people in and give them permission to market our brands? I think that's a pretty challenging thing for us to do. But as we move from this notion of branding to bonding with consumers, we move into this new paradigm, this power play, where the consumer and the marketer really begin to merge. So again, we hope you found this interesting. And thanks very much for coming today. (APPLAUSE) |
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