Lexy Klain’s blog

Check out the news aggregator that Ogilvy PR has created: http://flu.ogilvy.com.hk/latest_news. It houses the latest up-to-the-minute information and news on Swine Flu.

It also includes information on business continuity - so managing through the flu - as well as the latest news alerts and relevant links.

I hope you find it useful! 

Adam Ferrier, Managing Partner of Naked Communications, discusses the widely talked about Witchery Man campaign, how it was brought to life, the challenges and key learnings.

Last night marked Sydney's first official Social Media Club meet-up at the Oxford Hotel in Darlinghurst. Despite having our Anzac Day public holiday stripped from us this year, the party vibe last night made me question whether all the other agency folk were still out celebrating from a long bender of a weekend.

Based on last night's huge turn out (close to 300 people turned up), I am assuming that Social Media Club Sydney will continue to run these monthly meetings. The intended forum is to use these sessions to present social media case studies and examples of what has and what has not worked.

There is one rule and one rule only (it's kind of like Fight Club :) ) - "no pitch/ no sell"! What does this mean? Those presenters who are clearly trying to flog a product or a service will have to face the consequences.

Last night's session was about two recent social media events in this country: the success of the Fake Stephen Conroy Twitter account and the Naked Communications Witchery Man campaign. These cases were presented by Adam Ferrier (Managing Partner of Naked Communications) and Leslie Nassar (Telstra employee and the 'fake' Stephen Conroy).

I enjoyed last night's meet-up, particularly Adam's account of the Witchery Man campaign and the seed behind developing the woman with the jacket love story.

A lot of people have been and are still carrying on about the importance of ethics and moral accountability in client service in general and when developing social media campaigns such as these. I have to agree to an extent but Adam made a fair point last night. We are all in a creative game whether it be advertising, public relations or marketing. Our job, for the large part, consists of creating myths and storytelling in a way that makes consumers want to connect with a brand. This is exactly what the Witchery Man campaign did.

Was it successful? Well, yes it was. The campaign objective was to drive talkability and that's exactly what it did. People are still talking (look at me - case and point)! If the client is happy and the agency involved isn't losing business as a result of the campaign, than I think it's fair game.

I'm sure others out there are just wishing they had done it first!

Heading off to the Social Media Club Sydney Inaugural Event in the next 10 minutes. The tickets were snapped up very quickly and people have been encouraged to give the organisers a heads-up if they can't make it so they can open the availability up to other interested parties.

I am heading there tonight with my own posse - Graham White (Managing Director, Howorth), Brian Giesen (our digital guru at Ogilvy PR in Australia) and my colleague, Jonathan Nguyen.

See you all there! I'll make sure to update my blog tomorrow for those of you that can't make it tonight.

Cheers!

Co-founder and CEO of MySpace, Chris DeWolfe, will soon be stepping down from his executive role at the company.

There is little information on the reasons behind Chris's departure other than the following internal email that was leaked on the web.

This email was sent to Fox Interactive employees by Jonathan Miller, News Corp CEO Digital Media.

To FIM Employees:

I am writing to share the news that MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe will be stepping down from his executive role in the near future. He has agreed to serve as a strategic advisor to the Company and will remain on the board of MySpace China.

In addition, I am currently in discussions with MySpace President Tom Anderson regarding his role within the organization.

I want to take this opportunity to thank them both for their incredible contributions to the Company, and for pioneering one of the greatest social media revolutions of our time. I wish Chris nothing but the best in any new endeavors and, like many in this industry, am eager to witness his next innovations.

I understand the importance of having a dynamic, inspiring and innovative management team, and am dedicated to ensuring that MySpace continues to benefit from the highest levels of passion and enthusiasm.

I also want to thank everyone across FIM for giving me the opportunity to work with all of you. With MySpace, IGN, Photobucket, Fox Audience Network and our Digital Publishing Group, this is an exciting collective of properties and I’m enthusiastic about the opportunities that lie ahead.

I hope to meet and work closely with many of you over the weeks and months to come.

Best regards,
Jonathan Miller

If anyone has any other details to share, please spill.

Love is no longer an emotional, irrational and, at times, spontaneous feeling. It now appears to be methodic and rational and there appears to be a formula behind it, as an Oxford University professor and his team have recently unearthed.

A mathematical test has been developed that calculates the probability of whether a relationship will be prosperous. 700 couples participated in the study which was conducted by a maths expert. The subject matter expert predicted the divorce rate with 94 per cent accuracy.

Couples were asked to face each other and have a 15 minute conversation on a somewhat contentious issue such as sex, finance or in-law relationships. The scores were then plotted against a graph that determined, with accuracy, the outcome and success of a marriage and whether it would lead to divorce.

I find it really interesting that we can now rationalise feelings that are sometimes so irrational. Who would have thought that love could be so scientific and so formulaic?

I am going to take this test for my own relationship just for the fun of it. I'm confident that the results will be glowing :) 

A penny for your thoughts on the science of love.

Finally the identity of the Fake Stephen Conroy Twitter personality has been revealed as a Telstra employee, Leslie Nassar. I think we're all sad to lose the entertaining posts but never fear, I'm sure the next Fake is just around the corner :)

Does anyone know if the actual Leslie Nassar is on Twitter? I clicked on the person I thought was him and unfortunately received a 'this page does not exist' message.

Anyway, I'm loving these Fakes. Can anyone share any other good ones that are good entertainment value and worth the follow?

Happy birthday to the World Wide Web (WWW)! Todays marks a twenty year milestone for the Internet.

The Web has come a long way since its creation and inception by Tim Berners-Lee, British computer software guru and other scientists at the European particle physics laboratory (CERN) twenty years ago. [Read more here].

The Internet was originally developed to facilitate a more passive type of information sharing between thousands of scientistics around the world - sharing their research and key findings and enabling others to view and comment, on a basic platform, despite geographical borders that separated them.

Today, the Internet is a pervasive and essential part of everyday life. It is no longer just a passive tool for basic computing tasks that we engage in for work and personal use such as email, web surfing and research and is now an all-immersive and interactive version 2.0 and 3.0 of the Internet we once knew.

We have since seen the emergence of a collaborative and interactive Internet with the rise of Web 2.0 tools and social media such as social networking sites, video sharing sites, blogs and micro-blogging tools. This is changing the very nature of the Web.

Happy birthday WWW and I look forward to seeing what you look like in another 20 years. If anyone has an future vision they would like to share, please feel free.

I came across some really interesting information this morning on B2B buyers in the online space that I wanted to share on with you all.

The information firstly appeared in Groundswell - a book by Forrester Research - and was also recently referenced by Marketing Pilgrim in an articled titled 'B2B Buyers Dig Social Media'.

The latest Forrester report is titled 'The Social Technolographics of Business Buyers' and it suggests that B2B buyers have a very high participation in social media such as blogs, social networks and forums.

The main points that Marketing Pilgrim refer to include:

It's truly phenomenal to see B2B increasingly integrate more closely in the social media space! Now it would be great to see more case studies on the succesful use of social media in the B2B sector! Feel free to share any you may know of.

I'm keen to understand how the global recession is impacting social media and particularly the North American powerhouse, Silicon Valley. I'm interested in the develpments occurring at Silicon Valley mostly because today we can consider it the backbone behind a lot of the big Web 2.0 companies.

Belts seem to be tightening in all industries across the board - banking, automotive, retail and so on - yet we're still seeing big injections of capital in many of the Web 2.0 companies.

Take micro-blogging service Twitter for example. It was announced this week that Twitter has managed to raise $35 million in venture capital in spite of the challenging economic climate. This capital has come from Institutional Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital.

Are venture capitalists finally seeing the real value of Web 2.0 in helping deal with challenging times ahead?

I think that social media will come out on top in these tough times as people start using it as a means of cost-saving on entertainment. This is especially important at a time when people are becoming increasingly budget-conscious and are rather choosing to bunker indoors and save their pennies.

I'm a good example of this. I seem to find myself on fewer outings to the movies and instead I keep my cinema experience to my lounge room with my LCD TV, entertainment system and complete surround sound system. In fact, I can't remember the last movie I saw at the cinemas but I could rattle off at least five DVDs that I have watched at home. I also spend less time travelling and more time talking to my friends overseas via Facebook and Twitter.

There are a plethora of online technologies and digital devices out there that provide consumers with their own portal to entertainment. Aside from big screen TVs that bring you a cinema at home, there are also notebook PCs to consider.

Notebooks are another means of cost-effective entertainment to online services such as online gaming, online video, video conferencing and instant connection to friends and family via IM, social networking sites, email or Skype with those embedded with broadband solutions.

Interestingly enough, consumer experts are also already tipping that many Australians will use the planned $950 Rudd Government cash handouts to splurge on games and gadgets, following record spending on electronics last year (as reported by the Courier Mail).

I'll be watching these developments closely but please feel free to share any information specifically around how you think social media will fare in light of the global recession.