Actually this subject about relationships between brands and bloggers has been making some buzz lately. These relationships can be both exciting and ambiguous and sometimes difficult. But the main issue here is that brands (and therefore their agencies) are not getting the fact that a blogger is a person who writes about a specific subject by passion and deep interest. Therefore, they should respect their privacy and their opinions by acknowledging the fact that bloggers can do whatever they want whenever they want. Also, their level of influence (and of course their visibility) is not always linked to their blog stats and doesn’t depend on the number of actual readers they have on regular posts.

I’ve been reading so much nonsense about bloggers waiting for brands to offer them gifts and money in order to write about their brands on their blogs, but no, it doesn’t always work like this. So I think this deserves some clarification.

How brands must manage relationships with bloggers?
As a blogger, I am often approached by companies, agencies or brands that want me to talk about their product or service.
In most cases, this first approach is materialized in the form of an email, usually non-personalized, which contains a press release or an invitation. Some of them, very clumsy, might also send an email by copying several bloggers, or they might also put the wrong name or wrong address of the blog. No Comment!

So… Here are some recommendations if you guys (companies, brands and agencies) hope to have a chance with bloggers.

- Practice the direct approach: Avoid mail for initial contact. Instead, send a short tweet with a link… The blogger will then remember who you are more easily

- Then follow up on the mail, once the initial contact is established, send the blogger an email with the most personal information. Do not copy and paste the press release (again!!) but explain succinctly and clearly your service (or the things you want to talk about) in your own words.

- Stay within the themes and topics; target bloggers that match your theme: If you want to announce something related to what’s new in your restaurant, do not waste your time trying to convince a tech blogger to write about your news, because even if he is a client, he won’t talk about it on his blog.

- Do not force hand: bloggers feeling compelled to write an article will never do it or worse, they might be “evil” and tell their bloggers friends about their experience with you, and then BAM : bad buzz. So try to establish a real relationship with them, without expecting something in return. Ask them for their opinions, offer them your test, invite them to meet you. Be cool, frank, honest and transparent. Do not over-play, do not try too seduce or mislead about anything you are talking about.

- Let go: if you see that the feeling is not there, it’s not worth insisting. Check back regularly to them when you have an update or a news you want to share with them but do nothing more.

- Actually, the real thing, and what brands should start doing ABOVE ALL is to propose an experience, a real project in which the bloggers will be proud to participate. This way you can be practically be sure that they will be talking about their experience with your brand, sharing with their readers something they actually liked doing. This way you are sure you would have created the best brand’s ambassadors.

While social networks are proving suitable tools to test new promotions or original ideas, this is not their primary mission. In fact, social networks offer the opportunity to bring something useful to your customers. Most of your communication actions should be planned around this idea.

OK now everything you’ve heard about social networking has come to convince you and you’re ready start this amazing “adventure”? Good idea. But you need to know how to do it and most importantly, what to say. Dear restaurants’ communication and marketing managers, here are some tips and examples to guide your communications on these networks and expand your virtual community.

1- Talk about the new features: new dishes, new recipes, new prices, new ingredients, new employees, new design…

2- Create exclusive content and be visual! Share your photos of mouthwatering dishes, videos of what happens in the kitchen, pictures of special events. In fact, images other than those on your website.

3- Encourage your customers to comment on the menu’s new items and give their opinion and recommendation

4- Tweet the sources that mention your restaurant

5- Talk about the celebrities who came to your restaurant, what they said, iwhat they ate and what they did

6- Tell funny stories that happened in your restaurant

7- Talk to your followers, ask the what they want to improve in your restaurant

8- Maintain a dialogue with your customers and potential customers and answer the questions they ask

9- Talk about future projects and plans for your restaurant

10- Push some special operations: Present the “Customer of the month” or ask your fans on Facebook to propose new recipes or dishes that can be considered as “Recipe of the month”

11- Turn your employees into trendy brand ambassadors

12- Increase your traffic by creating unique contests, distributing free stuff and promotions and by retweeting any positive feedback

13- Communication regularly and during peak hours (come on you know what are the peak hours for every social network… :p)

14- Messages such as “buy this or that” are not effective. Social media tend to focus on interactivity and there must be room for criticism. Express yourself on topics of interest to your community

15- Learn from the experts. Follow restaurants and private experts in your field to see how they build a community and agree that you have much to learn

Now restaurants like Crepaway and Roadster do it pretty well on their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, but maybe it’s time for them to take a step forward and start challenging the use of social media for their businesses?
The one rapidly growing technology everyone in the industry has an eye on is the mobile phone, as it isincreasingly becoming the portal through which consumers interact with the digital world. Gaining access to consumers as they go about their daily lives and being able to reach consumers at that crucial moment when craving strikes is the key to success. Who will be the first one replacing their call center for delivery by developing a mobile app ?

The number of Facebook users in the Arab world reached 27.7 million by the end of Q1 2011, an increase of 30 per cent since the beginning of the year, according to the second Arab Social Media Report (ASMR).

This edition monitored the growth of Facebook and Twitter in the region, propelled by the uprisings sweeping the Arab world. It revealed a substantial shift in the use of social media from social purposes towards civic and political action.

The number of active Twitter users in the Arab world during the same period, according to the report, was over 1.1 million users who tweeted at least once every two weeks. These ‘active users’ generated over 22.7 million tweets during Q1 2011. Regional Twitter trends during this period focused primarily on events unfolding during the Arab uprisings. The words ‘Egypt’, ‘Jan25’, ‘Libya’, ‘Bahrain’ and ‘protest’ were the top ‘hashtags’ used by Twitter users in the Arab region.

The report noted that though the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Lebanon are the leading five countries in the region according to the percentage of Facebook and Twitter users, social media growth was the fastest in those countries experiencing social unrest. While Turkey continues to lead the region in terms of number of users, Egypt saw the highest increase in the number of users during the first quarter of 2011 among the Arab countries, adding close to two million Facebook users.

A major impact on brands and advertising
Not so long ago, the relationship that brands had with their clients was the equivalent of one-way street. Clients were told what they should love and how to love it. The only thing the customer could control was their own decision to purchase. But this is no longer the case today with the emerging power of social networks and the impact they have on our daily lives. Consumers now have the ability to speak publicly thanks to the features of the Web 2.0 tools which makes marketing teams extremely nervous.
With Internet users increasingly influential and platforms that are multiplying, social networks have become essential for brands. These spaces can now allow them to reinvent the relationship with the consumer.

In search for a real added-value
Brands should provide real value in order to foster affinity with Internet users and get them eventually to become the brand ambassadors. Social networks are primarily focused on the individual, so brands must place this individual at the heart of their strategy even if sometimes they can be considerd as intrusive.
Between Facebook and Twitter, user profiles and expectations are very different. The first is rather considered as a medium of belonging. Its members display their affinity with certain groups and certain interests.
On Twitter, however, the content is designed to power a community of opinion leaders, prescribers, etc.. So many brands have chosen to use it as a platform for customer relations.

Companies are increasingly likely to launch “Like pages” on Facebook. But what is the real benefit of these pages for the company, particularly in terms of customer loyalty vis-à-vis the brand?
Brands are seeking to promote themselves on social networks, but are still struggling to get results. Some brands do not know how to approach this young medium.

What is the real problem? Interaction.
A simple photo or video are not enough to interact with users of social networks and other social websites. To ensure the success of a campaign (to get a good return on investment, to start a positive buzz around a product, service, initiative), it is necessary to involve the user, to capture his attention, arouse their curiosity. So what should brands actually do? They should create specific web pages and original multimedia content, including videos and contests – even if the theme is not directly related to the core business of brand. The main objective is to create co;;unities around the brand or product. When people find it of value, if the brand pages are relevant to their interests and if they can act on such content (comments, play, create …), they can be ready to accept the fact that they are liking a page that is promoting a brand. In this case, users of social networks do not consider the branded pages as advertisements meaning that they do not want to switch to another page as the case may be faced with banners and pop-ups.

In order to reach their target and drive traffic through social networks, advertisers must encourage interaction with users and rely on advertising. It would be a mistake to limit to the word of mouth or viral marketing. All of us, Internet users, websites, brands, agencies and advertisers must learn to move forward and live together worthy experiences, let them be digitally or in real life. What are your thoughts on the subject? Any Lebanese brand you feel is doing the work properly?

Following on the great success of Social Media Week February 2011, the next iteration of Social Media Week will again span the globe this September 19-23, 2011, with simultaneous events in cities from all over the world. Confirmed locations include returning cities like Milan, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Bogota, and São Paulo, plus new entrants from Rio de Janeiro, Moscow and now happy to announce BEIRUT and I am thrilled to be part of the organizers.

With each successive iteration, Social Media Week has grown exponentially, leading up to the February 2011 edition, which hosted simultaneous events in nine cities with over 600 events, 30,000 attendees worldwide, and generating more than 300M impressions online, made it the largest distributed conference in the world.

Far more than just a conference, Social Media Week is one of the world’s most unique organized events, providing through a series of interconnected activities across the world a global and local perspective on emerging trends in social & mobile media across all major industries.

Social Media Week Beirut (SMW Beirut) will be organized for the first time in Beirut, brought to you and produced by 90:10 Group Middle East. SMW Beirut is aimed to be a unique and innovative social media week, happening over 5 days, with more than 30 events in different venues in the city, giving access to as large audience as possible, connecting people & content around diverse and rich themes, with speakers and participants from different horizons, bringing to all the learning experiences for a better understanding of social media in each of industry sectors.

SMW Beirut will be as well fun

Your thoughts, advices, tips and all are more than welcome.
You can follow Social Media Week Beirut on Twitter or on Facebook

Go Beirut!

More and more companies jump on the trend towards environmentally friendly. Going green is not just a trend of the future. It ‘s just the only option that we survive on our planet.

Environmentally friendly actions don’t have to be large to have an impact. Consistently reducing the amount of energy, water, and paper our businesses use can make a huge difference, both to the environment and to our pocketbooks. There are simple, easy things you can do to go green. How much paper would you save over the course of a year, for instance, if you always ran doublesided copies? A small easy way to go green – but a big result! This is what BankMed is trying to tell us with this campaign.

But are they really going green? It’s a good thing they started to raise awareness for a healthy and clean planet by introducing environmental friendly initiatives Are they offering eco-friendly credit card? Are they launching a complete online-banking service? Or is it greenwashing and the only thing they are trying to do is to promote some sort of nice green corporate image?

What do you think they could do in order to become an eco-friendly bank?

Check out the video. They are part of the “Happy Planet” global campaign made by Impact BBDO Beirut in 2010!

The 62nd edition of Cosmopolitan, is set to launch in the Middle East in March 2011. Looking forward to see what it’s going to be like…

ITP, the Middle East’s leading consumer and business magazine publisher, today announced the launch of Cosmopolitan Middle East. The magazine will join ITP’s growing portfolio of market-leading women’s titles which include Harper’s Bazaar, VIVA, L’Officiel, Ahlan!, Grazia and Shape. The best-selling magazine in its category, Cosmopolitan has 61 international editions, most recently launching in Mongolia. The magazine is published in 32 languages and is distributed in over 100 countries, making it one of the most dynamic brands worldwide according to the press release.

Cosmopolitan Middle East will be aimed at a young, female audience offering its readers information on every aspect of their lives from fashion and beauty, to relationships and romance, the latest on women’s health and well-being as well as what’s happening in pop culture and entertainment. The magazine’s engaging, upbeat and informative tone will resonate with the young women of the region. “The Middle East has one of the youngest populations in the world so introducing a local edition of the world’s best-selling magazines for young women seems an obvious decision. Cosmopolitan is a colossal brand and we are looking forward to launching and developing it in this region” said Walid Akawi, CEO of ITP.

Cosmopolitan Middle East will be published in English-language with an initial print run of 15,000 copies and will be circulated across the GCC and Lebanon, available at all major retail outlets. The Middle East will be the 62nd edition of Cosmopolitan and the 3rd Hearst title that ITP has brought to the region.

Have you seen the latest Johnnie Walker campaign in Lebanon? I am sure you all did, at least on Facebook. A great example of how a brand can produce content and go completely viral. Lets have a quick review at the campaign created by Leo Burnett who once again marvels us with their great work.

Today, (almost) all marketers (and therefore advertisers) are seeking to leverage and intensify the reach of their communications by creating ads that become viral even though the viral potential of a campaign is fairly rare.

In fact 4 ingredients are necessary for an ad to become viral:

- The awareness index which is a measure of the engagement potential of a campaign and its connection to the brand, used for a long time y advertisers to predict the success of the TV campaigns

- The buzz which identifies wether an advertisement or a communication campaign is likely to naturally spread or not

- The potential of the featured celebrity and his profile when used in advertising

- The distinction of the campaign and the measure of its originality

Actually, the thing that is great about this campaign is that it generates a great deal of emotions (the music is really great) and raises interest by touching a large audience. Architect Bernard Khoury clearly gives scope and carries the brand message.

The campaign is integrated into many media a part from traditional TV/and press. The website is actually very well conceived since it delivers branded content from one part (videos telling the great stories of Bernard Khoury) and “social” functionalities from another (integration to Twitter and Facebook) to disseminate this content.  The campaign also calls upon user’s imagination in the creation of small sentences in order to “Keep Lebanon Walking”.

The small films are also easy to find on the Youtube dedicated Keep Walking channel which makes it easy to predict the viral success (only it’s just too bad the channel is not branded Johnny Walker)

The last (but not least) thing I would like to point out, is the fact that the concept, as amazing as it is, reminds me of the Journeys campaign launched by Louis Vuitton with ad agency Ogilvy Paris in 2007, one of the greatest campaigns in terms of branded content that simply tells the story and reveals the wonderful journeys of celebrities (such as Catherine Deneuve, André Agassi, Keith Richards and many others…) who made it out there with great achievements.

“Adapt locally and keep Lebanon walking…”

OK advertising is still growing, even if it is growing slowly. But the thing that hit me the most is the fact that there is absolutely no spending for advertising on the web or that it is really really insignificant. Check out this repartition:

As I was wondering about the average time that lebanese people spent watching TV, I guess I have the answer to my deep concern. Television takes it all and it is still the number 1 mass media. Will the web ever kill the TV stars?

Throughout the world, the strong growth of the Internet, and the development of its uses, confirms the mass media crisis (for the press and TV in the first place).
More profoundly, the belief in the mainstream media is dramatically affected by a movement that sees the legitimacy of traditional media organizations disintegrated by a permanent suspicion particularly related to a certain political affiliation.

Considering that a mass media (according to Marshall MacLuhan) is characterized by a communication of one-to many and by a one-side message (the public does not interfere with the message vehicle) we can of course question the belonging of the web to the “mass media” category. The web in its core, and thanks to the massive user generated contents created by the audience via blogs, wikis, social networks etc… creates a new situation: the communication pattern which used to be from one to many (vertical) has completely evolved to many-to-many (horizontal).

My main point here is that these new models of direct production of information are drawing an innovative media landscape, and advertising investments should definitely be following this trend.

8 years ago, Ghandour, the leading producer of Cocoa based products, Bakery, Confectionery, as well as Food and Beverage items, launched a school contest in Lebanon asking students to propose a new name and a new design for one of their best selling products, the famous “Rass el abed” (“Nigger’s Head” for the English translation). The main challenge was to erase the “racist” overtone of the “abed” part, so people had to propose something significant, catchy and new. And that’s what I did. Actually, me and 5 other random people had the great idea to propose the name “Tarboush”.

Why? First, because of the “approximate” resemblance there is between the tarboush and “Ras el bed” shapes. And second, because of the strong relationship between the word tarboush and what Ras El Abed represents as part of the “Lebanese heritage”. Crunchy on the outside, soft and creamy on the inside, everyone who grew up in Lebanon has tasted this local “delicacy”, or is just addicted to it (yeah I know some people who are and actually, 38,903 people like this on Facebook).

Let’s go back to my story: 2 years after sending my proposition, I received a phone call from someone at Ghandour telling me that my project was selected. They had organized a small gathering, in order to give away the rewards, during which they made it clear that the new product identity will not be adopted directly, but that it would take some time to completely change the identity and that this refurbishment will occur step by step. Fair enough. They didn’t want their customers to get confused with a brand new product, and they didn’t want them to think that Ghandour had abandoned the famous Ras El Abed.

The changes first appeared on the packaging on which they started adding a tarboush, and then, only five years later, they launched a big (?) communication campaign around the new name.

Too slow?   I think that indeed, they could have established a communication plan on a shorter period of time, because I personally can’t wait for the new packaging to be launched.

How much time will it take you to start calling it Tarboush?

Communication strategies are usually required to follow the development of new technologies that impact the consumers’ behavior. All around the world, it has even become common to use the Internet or mobile phone for banking transactions.

However, in Lebanon, we are still at, lets say, stage 1 (or you can call it web 1), where banks’ certainly do have websites (at least…) but where these websites are definitely in need of some renewal or should I say revitalization. Let’s take a quick look on what is out there:

Remarquable Design on « Microsoft Paint » for SGBL

Moderate-purple static inkblot for Byblos Bank

Rather kitsch animation and pixelized logo for Crédit Libanais

Strictness and severity for Bank Audi

Kind of appealing and dynamic home-page for FNB

(but don’t bother clicking to see what’s behind the images)

A bit of interactivity but lots of ambition for BLF

(these guys are great: they have even created a Facebook Page, a channel on Youtube and a group on Linkedin and everything is actually linked to their website!! :p )

So even if all the major Lebanese banks have created web portals, they are far (faaaaaaaar) from being present in all territories that new technologies have created. These territories include new audiences generated by social networks that are growing surprisingly.

The challenge for the banking sector lies in the conquest of these new spaces and the seduction of their audiences.

In this context, banks should be wondering about new ways to attract and develop customer’s loyalty. Communication campaigns based on a general message and distributed exclusively through television and advertising are no longer covering the entire customer base and have stopped responding to the changing selection criteria. The « revival », (which is starting to emerge with BLF’s campaign around « Ambitions »), should be structured around 2 main axes:

First, banks should start positioning themselves on the new audiences crossroads that are distinct and separate from traditional media’s audience. Social networks are new contact points banks need to exploit. These channels should be progressively integrated to communication strategies because they allow banks to be visible among a population of Young adults, which is a particularly attractive target for banks. But beyond visibility, these new means of communication offer the opportunity to interact directly with customers.

Secondly, banks should really be thinking about developing real branding strategies, stop acting like companies only and start acting like real « brands ». While they have almost all a very strong reputation, only a few banks have managed to build a strong identity around specific and distinctive attributes easily identifiable by the client. The promotion of a brand is only possible if it is linked with a promise and values that are in line with customer expectations. In this framework, communication actions taken by banks should above all, relay and make the brand promise more credible.

In this era, consumer’s behavior and clients fields of expression have radically changed. So why not use the web to set the tone for a new more collaborative customer relationship?