Now that I’ve recovered from the “mother of all head colds”
that I caught in
- Social
Media vs Social Network Analysis
While a session led by Yang-Ma Ooi and Marc Wright encouraged participants to embrace the organizational application of social media with alacrity, a number of questions were raised about doing so without a sufficient emphasis on social network research to understand the environment into which those tools are being injected, and to examine how social media impacts effective organizational conversation. The dichotomy between social media and social network analysis thus emerges as a major dilemma to a field that has been loath to engage in serious, in-depth research so far.
- Branding
2.0 Emerges in
A morning keynote by Spanish marketing dynamo Ramon Olie, Jr. raised exciting and heartening prospects for the future of branding, based on developments in Spain, where new, successful brands are thriving as a result of grass-roots, local, image and community-building campaigns rather than logo and advertising led crusades. With internal communications poised to integrate particularly with the community and image-building work, the picture painted by Olie left many enthused.
- Conventional
Wisdom On Segmentation Challenged
Fellow-twin-passported American-Irishman Kevin Keohane led the charge against conventional wisdom around audience segmentation in a late addition to the EuroComm agenda, raising the question ‘do audiences exist at all?’ While the consensus was clear that acknowledgement of their ‘existence’ warranted their continued consideration, Keohane’s challenge nonetheless held water in terms of challenging the facile, org-chart-tracing exercise that constitutes ‘segmentation’ or ‘stakeholder analysis’ in many organizations.
- Making
the Case for IABC in
Finally, and perhaps most compellingly, EuroComm demonstrated the value of a European professional association for communicators that operates in English and has an International and Global focus. While most of its “competitors” are either national organizations whose large memberships are matched only by the narrowness of their aspirations and focus, or proprietary entities determined to increase the distance between consultants and clients, IABC Europe-Middle East convincingly demonstrated through Eurocomm the value it brings as an integrator of people, ideas and perspectives in yet another stimulating conference.
