Edgework… What is it? It’s Brian Oberkirch’s approach to product marketing: A “process of interpreting, responding to and integrating the vast and varied feedback modern brands generate.” It seems like a great way to intelligently incorporate the conversation that social media seems to generate. And it touches all aspects of marketing and communications, forcing an honest , intelligent approach to brand/product development.

This week, Brian highlights Satisfaction on Like it Matters. Satisfaction takes a very community centric approach to its effort, and is bent on creating an intelligent, meaningful and real dialogue with interested parties. Brian’s Satisfaction post is a great way to dive into his Edgework concept.

Neville Hobson writes about the potential for newly appointed British foreign secretary David Miliband as a blogger. He’s already Britain’s highest ranked public official blogging, but this would take it to a new level. Fascinating potential for transparency in government. BTW, Neville’s blog is currently ranked in the top 500 in the world.

Todd And highlighted a hilarious Second Life video. This video ridicules exactly why I don’t play in Second Life. It’s just not real enough for me, and strikes me as a little too out there… at this point in time.

Buzz Canuck discusses the need to facilitate more dialogue and collaboration between marketers and online new media types. How do we straddle the fence? This will be a long road to hoe over the next couple of years, a topic of much discussion as businesses begrudgingly move towards social media.

Locally, this week’s feature is a great post from Global Chameleon breaking down metro ads. My fav is the discussion of bad style in the government insurance ad. Link source: DCBlogs.

Jeremy Pepper’s one of the strongest voices in the public relations blogosphere. Strong blogging vis a vis Pop! PR Jots, great commentary, and leadership backed by actions are just a few of Jeremy’s assets. Further, he gets the community thing, but won’t compromise with idle chat. In a land of spinners, he throws straight. Read on for some of Jeremy’s views and insights.

BB: It seems like “participation is marketing” as a concept is picking up steam within online PR and marketing circles. Does this mean we are done with the debate?

JP: The “participation is marketing” is a nice meme for the time being, just like PR is dead and the press release is dead were nice memes for traffic. Other, smarter people have been saying that for a while, but it has come to that point where it hit more mainstream bloggers.

We will never be done with the debate, because how are we supposed to work in these communities, work into the conversations - what IS the communications and participation? There’s a reason that the Cluetrain is still seen as the bible - the participation is not really there. It’s time to move on beyond theory into practice, but that is going to take a long, long time.

BB: Who are the voices you really trust on the Internet?

JP: I trust no one. How 60’s is that of me? It actually has to do with a blog post I have been kicking around that there is no such thing as transparency, bc we all have our own personal agendas (realized or not). I know that sounds bad, but there are people I *read* and like, but that does not mean I trust them. I know we all have our own reasons for doing what we do, and that does color the things we write.

BB: When you started Pop! PR Jots you owned your own shop. Now that you are with Weber Shandwick, how has your blogging changed?

JP: And with that coloring, my blogging has changed, albeit very little. It is *very* hard to find a reference to the agency on my blog, and my disclosure and policy makes it very clear that that blog is mine.

I do have my blog URL on outgoing emails, but that is mainly during outreach to other social media peeps, to let them know that I am not pitching them shit, but that I am walking the walk while talking the talk. I look at it as street cred. Have I self-censored? Fuck yes - ha! I still swear a lot, I still say what I’m thinking, but I have looked to make sure that I do not write on clients. That has not lead to any blog posts being changed, but even at POP! PR, I did not write about clients.

BB: What are the pros and cons of going from independent to a larger agency?

JP: Running your own agency is not easy. You have to balance accounting with new business with account work, and throw in blogging (to keep your cred) and it’s time intensive and leaves you no life. On that front, the transition has been great. At your own firm, though, you also make the calls and not worry about the stuff you do at a large agency (bill-ability) and have more access and ability to explain social media ideas. Overall, though, the changes are going to occur at large firms, and I made the right decision.

BB: I read about the Cisco case study on Pop! PR Jots. Why has Cisco seen such an up-tick in its social media initiatives?

JP: Full disclosure - Cisco is a former client, and I worked with them on social media initiatives. What differentiates Cisco from other companies is that they have a person and teams internally that concentrate on social media, and integrate it into PR activities. That helps the adoption of social media tactics and strategies, and helps push forward the company.

BB: How was Supernova?

JP: As I noted in the first question, it’s time to move beyond theory and into practice and case studies. I was only at Supernova for the first day, the Challenger Day, and I found it to be the same discussion that have been going on for the past few years. Nothing new, nothing interesting, nothing substantive.

And, there were a few PR colleagues that were there, and they just asked me if it is the same thing over and over again - and, well, it is. There needs to be new voices, there needs to be real examples, instead of the same party over and over again - damn, it’s almost Gatsby-esque.

BB: Any take aways for PR/marketing pros from the event?

JP: The takeaway is less talk, more action. More walking the walk, and more actual results that show why social media and conversations do matter. Right now, the examples out there for PR and marketing and advertising suck, and only showcase what bad has been done. We need the good examples, the silver anvils of social media, that showcase how to it right. For the two events I went to this week, the Virtual Goods Summit has more PR, marketing and advertising implications (I’ll write that up soon also :)).

One week later, and another strange, but delightful air travel experience. This time my neighbor on this evening’s jetBlue 9 p.m. flight to Oakland was Agent Zero, Gilbert Arenas. Very cool, especially since he was referenced in a recent blog post!

A couple of interesting notes. Gilbert writes his own blog. He mentioned he had written a post on Tuesday that was supposed to be posted today. Talk about an approval cycle. But it’s very cool to see he actually writes the Agent Zero posts. Other random notes, he’s not buying an iPhone and his current mobile phone works at 20,000 feet, a windows mobile device. He’s a pretty nice guy, who seems genuine.

Working in PR you do end up meeting famous people from time to time. It’s important to remember these guys put their pants on one leg at a time, just like us, so I do everything I can to treat them like normal folks. No autographs, no what’s it like Qs, no photos. Just idle chat. It was a surprise to see him on row 6, jetBlue with the rest of us, but hey, I am not complaining.

One way to stand out from the crowd is to do the complete opposite. Remember 7-UP and their success as the “uncola”?

Branding yourself as “all the big guys are doing this and you hate it - so we’re doing this and you’ll love it” is a great way to build buzz and more often than not stronger brand loyalty.

So when I hear about an “unconference” on social media - I’m intrigued.

First of all, the unconference is totally free. Really? OK, what’s the catch? Turns out only the first day is free - then they “hope you stick around” for the $795 conference that follows the next two days. Guess there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Next, the audience helps prepare the agenda. Two weeks before the event registrants will receive a survey to help shape the agenda and choose topics. Does this really work?

Finally, it’s promoted as an idea exchange and brainstorming session. No boring lectures. Instead, a question will be posed and the “wisdom of the crowd” will answer it based on their collective knowledge. Sounds utopian. Wouldn’t chaos ensue if “everyone’s a speaker”?

Like open source technology or social media, unconferences are beginning as a grassroots movement, but the quality of the conferences and ideas that are generated are helping to propel their popularity.

Andy Sernovitz, founder of the Word Of Mouth Marketing Association posts on his experiences at an unconference put on by BarCamp saying, “Really interesting things happen. Ideas are shared, code is written, interesting mashups of people and concepts pop out in a spontaneous burst of creativity.”

Jake McKee, The Community Guy, raves about his experience at an Online Community Conference saying, “the vibe is much more relaxed than a traditional conference. Participation was the word of the day. The event was a fantastic mix of people eager to learn and willing to ask newbie questions with old-school experts who loved helping people learn.”

One downfall, posted by blogger Kaliya Hamlin, is the gender bias she experienced. “I ‘the woman’ doing the more feminine role of facilitation - a key part of what actually makes an unconference run was made invisible in the [BusinessWeek] article.”

**Update: As pointed out by Jake, in this particular situation, the gender bias had more to do with the editorial team at Business Week than the event. However, if media sees this role as invisible, do participants as well? **

As for me, I haven’t been to an unconference as of this posting and I’m curious to hear your thoughts. Are they really as great as people say? Or is it just hype because it’s something new?

More New Media Nouveax news. Keynote speaker Toby Bloomberg will host a blogger-meet-up vis a vis Success in the City the night before the conference. Toby’s the author of the nationally recognized Diva Marketing Blog (currently ranked 1,678th blog in the world by Technorati). The blogger meet-up will be at the Brio Tuscan Grille at Tysons Corner Center in McLean, VA on July 12 at 6:00 p.m… spread the word!

Interested in a New Media Nouveaux preview? Check out this podcast of Cynthia de Lorenzi, Jim Ishikawa, myself and Andrea Morris discussing new media. It was originally broadcasted on Saturday vis a vis WTNT-570 a.m.

The Digital Media Conference last week at AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring, an interesting locale for a conference, was run amok with thirty-something and early forty-something men and women (and a few old timers) wanting to learn more about new media.

If the average blogging age is 26, not so surprisingly, there weren’t very many twenty-somethings in the crowd. They already know it all. But there were 300 registered attendees who showed up to learn more.

A blog scan revealed a lot of coverage for the conference prior to the event, but only a few comments since (thus the ? after success, one would think there’d be more coverage). Tech Daily Dose of National Journals Technology Daily talks about the must-see sites from State of the ‘Digital Union’ panelists, including, Jim Brady, president and executive editor of Washingtonpost.com and Betsy Scolnik, president National Geographic Digital Media. Digital Media Wire has a small summary of the morning’s events here.

Content
My favorite panel was ‘Beyond the Buzz: Is there a Business Model for Social Media and User Generated Content?’ Panelist Haroon Mokhartzada, CEO of Freewebs, part social network and part Web site publisher, presented some excellent thoughts, including ‘would you take audience over growth as a social media company.’

Haroon asks if it’s possible to do both at the same time. He says as long as your not going to go bankrupt, the choice is easy. As for the demographics that are using social media, panelists said it’s broken down 13-20 year olds, and 26+. It’s hard to determine which one is more valuable. The youth group is more viral, less content. They’re using it as next generation email. The older demographic has more meaningful content.

Interesting observations continued to be discussed during keynote Robert Greenwald, filmmaker, director and producer, and panel What’s Next in Web 2.0. There was a lot of talk about widgets and virtual worlds, as well as an introduction to Second Life.

I’m glad I went. Besides having never been to Silver Spring before, I actually felt like I could hold my own. For the most part, I knew what everyone was talking about. New Media Nouveaux is next on July 13^th.

The Washington Post’s Kim Hart had a superior write-up of the impending iPhone launch this weekend. Less than a week away from the iPhone hitting the market, and people are just going ga ga (including my Twitter friend Ike)! At the time I drafted this, Technorati had

171,136

different posts referring to the iPhone. Wow!

I remember when Cingular first announced the iPhone in January, many industry pundits said it would not work well. Verizon did a good job of discreetly leaking that it had rejected the iPhone (whoops).

One has to give AT&T credit for their use of the iPhone’s launch. Once they saw the groundswell surrounding the debut of this exciting unit, they reacted… quickly. Not an easy thing to do for a Goliath of this size. Here are some of the intelligent moves AT&T made, and the corresponding results:

• Accelerating the Cingular rebrand to the “new” AT&T in time for the iPhone launch. Prior to 1 million units getting booked, AT&T wasn’t going to role the name over until 2008
• The excitement has successfully buried the black-eye of the former AT&T Wireless. Specifically, the same AT&T wireless company existed three years ago, which was absorbed by the Cingular brand, and now has reverted back to being AT&T wireless. Confused yet?
• A very popular brand — Cingular — has gone into the night without a whimper. Why? The iPhone.
• AT&T has successfully leveraged the Steve Jobs iWhatever hype factor to instill a sense of excitement about the AT&T brand. Yeah, that’s right. Excitement and AT&T in the same sentence.
• Compliments of iPhone exclusivity, AT&T’s managed to make Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile look slow and unable to compete.

Game Changer?

AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson told the telecom industry last week that AT&T was now a wireless company, and that the iPhone was a game changer that was going to lead the company into the new wireless broadband world. Stephenson rightly pointed out that devices like the iPhone allow users to determine the content they want (yes, YouTube included), and that AT&T’s job was to enable the user-generated content era.

This was a really intelligent move that helped position AT&T ahead of Verizon and the cable cos as the leading telecom company serving the new media community. Similarly, Kim’s article this Saturday highlighted how it’s no longer about the network, now it’s about the device and the functionality. It seems that the new era of portable social media is upon us, and Steve Jobs/AT&T is ushering it in.

Of course Kim also points out that if the phone doesn’t work well, the negative outcry will also be very, very strong. But somehow, I think it won’t hurt AT&T that badly. I mean were used to these failures: AT&T cable, AT&T Wireless version 1, AT&T credit cards, AT&T PCs, AT&T registers (NCR), and AT&T credit cards. What’s one more failure?

The hype is already reaching a frenzied state. [H]Enthusiast notes that the hype will only get louder as the phone launches. Just more proof that Apple and AT&T have pulled a major marketing coup. I get the feeling that this product launch will be one for the books.

Last week Andrea Morris posted a negative story about AT&T. I realize today’s story may seem contrary. Each author on the Bin has their own opinion. In the spirit of transparency and blogging, we let authors post what they want even if views differ. It always comes back to offering a meaningful discussion.

This week Michele Capots will publish on Tuesday instead of Friday. Our weekly interview will run on Thursday and Blogs of Fire will run on Friday. If you have any questions or suggestions about the Buzz Bin, please feel free to contact me at geoff [at] livingstonbuzz [dot] com.

Some great stories in the Post today, including Mike Wise’s great write up on sports blogs. Wise discusses the successful efforts of Curt Schilling’s 38 Pitches, Kobe Bryant’s KB24, and Gilbert Arenas’ Agent Zero. The tongue-in-cheek conclusion:

The battle is over. They now have the pen. We’re flat-out dispensable.

Though Wise makes fun of these diaries and their often self-bolstering spin, the underlying fear and concern is clear: “The flacks and hacks have been edited out.” Yes, we’re all required to be more accountable these days, aren’t we? Though Mike says bloggers are so self-important, it’s interesting to see why the media’s found the battle to be so tough. Is it because they have become so myopic and pointed that they’ve lost objectivity?

The extra voices are good. Even better, the new found media forces accountability for all parties (See Steve Rubel post) - including journalists. Journalists that have an objective point of view are needed. Great publications and journalists have the ability to separate the wheat from the chaffe. The ones who can’t be objective or offer some valuable insights will likely fade to black. And rightly so.

Steve Rubel wrote an excellent post this morning on participation is marketing. However, as much as Steve’s the gold standard for mainstream concepts and thought leadership, this is not a new idea.

As you know, I am a big proponent of the “Participation is Marketing” approach to PR. I’ve been pushing it, and I can tell you exactly where it originates: This is Chris Heuer’s idea — not Steve’s — as evidenced by this March 12 post.

Participation is marketing has been bantered about by Chris Heuer, Brian Solis, Todd Defren and others for months now. These folks should get credit for forging the “Participation is Marketing” concept, not Steve. Though I suspect Steve will get a lot of credit for this post. And in the words of Brian Oberkirch, not giving people credit for their work makes you a chucker.

Chucking or not, it’s great to see more people buying into the Participation mentality. Now if we can just get the brick & mortar practitioners to see it that way.

There was an excellent posting in Bulldog Reporter telling us it’s time to seize the day – carpe diem. Although it’s an exciting and momentous time to be in the communications business, as I’ve mentioned many times, I’m new to all this.

So when Bull Dog Publisher Jim Sinkinson asked, ‘How has our experience prepared us for this moment in time, at this juncture in our professional lives?’ I started thinking. I have more than 10 years of experience in the communications industry and have been published in national publications, worked alongside some of the best writers and editors, pitched some great stories, met some fantastic people, but that experience does not necessarily help me navigate my way around the blogosphere.

The article talks about being anchored in the past and how Apple, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, YouTube, were all started by young people not anchored in the past. Those people, Jim says, embraced the future.

Message mapping, powerful PR writing, crisis management, telling stories, writing stories, interviewing subjects, building trust and creating meaningful relationships will always be core skills of the communications professional, they are not the past, but the context in which we use those skills is being dramatically turned upside down.

The new tools – blogging, search engine optimization, social media, online video, wikis, virtual worlds – I’m still learning. In light of that, I am off to the Digital Media Conference today to immerse myself knowledge of these tools and how they can bring my past and future together. Wish me luck.