Here are my hightlights:

Keynote - Emanuel Rosen did an inspirational job and also just had a well-structured presentation with stories at the center and take-away points that were meangful.Those of us who speak often could learn a lot from his simplicity. He told us what we could learn from non-profits nd the lessons really were relevant. Everyone really liked his presentation.

 

Keynote - Rob BonDurant from Patagonia was the right mix of culture and marketing detail. Here's a guy who totally understands the power of brand, where it comes from and just how to drive folks to conversion at the same time. Too many CMO-types become disconnnected with the nuts and bolts of how marketing works. That won't fly in the social media age.

 
Keynote - Sugarland, Kristian Bush was terrific. (above: Gayle, his manager, Kristian and Ted Wright/Fizz) More than one person told me after that they had never listened to them before but were now complete fans just because of Kristian's enthusiasm and genuiness (and the kickass song they played/showed from their Christmas album.) I had the opportunity to speak with him offline and he shared even more detail about the WOM marketing activity that he does to remain genuinely connected to fans. I loved that he went into Walmarts and secretly hid concert tix, captured it all on a Flip Video cam to post online for fans. What he didn't share onstage about that whole Walmart integration was a simple tactic where he called up Walmart store managers the day the promotion (a DVD) broke to leave them a personal vmail about it. Imagine how that fueled their enthusiasm. His insight about how moments in time become key memories and stories. That led them to create concert-specific posters and t-shirts. I told him how I often use "tell everyone a favorite concert" as a tremendous ice-breaker for groups. (The Cult at Felt Forum in 198x with Rick Rubin on the sound board) Ted Wright from Fizz deserves all our gratitude for connecting Kristian with all of us.

 
Keynote - FTC and social media with Chuck Harwood/FTC, Tony DiResta/legal counsel for WOMMA, Jory DesJardins/BlogHer, Sean Corcoran/Forrester and led by Paul Rand/ the next President of the Board at WOMMA (above: Tony, Jory, Sean and Chuck). All the panelists contributed a great POV and it was especially valuable to get such a thorough walk-through from Chuck Harwood.  Our WOMMA work with the FTC has paid off in such a strong relationship. Ethics will expand again as a key issue and WOMMA's Legal Affairs Group will help protect a lot of brands with our best practices.

General Session - Customer Service with Levis, Bunn, Comcast and Best Buy's Twelpforce. I predict that customer service will become a bigger part of WOMMA in the future. Frank's work at Comcast and John's at Twelpforce/Best Buy have developed pretty sophisticated procedures and teams. Still, I was struck by the genuiness of Tom Asher from Levi Strauss. he had buttons made up for his team with their primary purpose - "I live to make your butt look great" (paraphrasing from memory). His team wants to deliver one level of service for everybody. He shared an anecdote about shipping an urgent package of black jeans to Thailand that only later they learned were for Steven Seagal on set for a movie. Customer Service sits at the heart of word of mouth. Time and time again, we head from customer service experts who see their job as creating vocal advocates for their brands.  

General Session - Academic Panel with Wharton, Tel Aviv University, Fordham, our own Walter Carl from ChatThreads and Brad Fey. Heavy stuff. I was not able to see the whole session but hard lots of the more advanced marketers in the room appreciated its heft and substance.  

Breakout Sessions
I got to as many sessions as possible. Only one truly disappointed. If I were to point our three sessions that had special relevance for me amidst all of the great ones. I would call out:

HP's Kari Homan shared not only about a simple metric they created around the revenue generated by postive word of mouth (and the loss from negative WOM), but she also shared about how they are organized internally. Their Digital Strategy group is a federation of marketers with program managers in 5 segments including mobile and social media. Rather than create a separate social media task force or center of excellence, they have opted for a model where social media is integrated with marketing (is this at the expense of "communications" integration?).

Ogilvy's Kaitlyn Wilkins and Blogher's Jory Des Jardins shared their case for Tropicana whcih was complex and highly integrated. I am obviously connected to this project and therefore biased. Still, this is a great case and both are passionate, insightful presenters.

Yvonne Nava from iTunes oulined how they had used Vitrue's Facebook management software to really optimze how they were using Facbook overall. her presentation ratified a lot of our own embrace of the "conversation calendar" model for engaging fans. ("Conversation Calendar" is a term that Facebook uses to describe the plan of differnt interactions delivered continuously through a brand page.). In iTunes case they have a spectacular well of content (music, videos, et al). Other brands may not have such an obviously valuable content asset but will find that they can program a rich calendar of interactions from media, offers, conversation starters, applications and events. 

Lot of lessons learned over the past week. I returned completely energized (okay, a bit tired) with fresh ways of looking at things. That's what you want from a conference experience.

1. Full Disclosure is a Must: Tweets that are from paid or otherwise compensated advertisers must include a disclosure like (#ad) or (#Sponsor) to be in compliance with the new FTC Guidelines. With that clarity, followers will decide themselves if they want to continue to follow folks who deliver paid messages

2. Relevance Requires Few Ads: users who rent out their tweets will have to do so judiciously both choosing sponsors they care to endorse and keeping them extremely limited. So-called "trust agents" will lose trust, or worse, relevance for their readers if they pump out too many paid messages

3. New Formats on the Horizon: clearly Twitter, itself, is working behind the scenes on revenue (read: advertising vs. premium service fees). Not only that but services like ad.ly will continue to explore acceptable formats. If I can quickly see the paid tweets in my Tweetdeck stream becuase they are shaded differently or feature some other visual marker, that is to everyone's benefit.

4. Advertisers Will Lose Interest: Initially the format will draw the lazy marketer (thanks to Erik Boles and his comment on Scoble's post below). They will seek a reach play and what they really need is a "relevant reach" play combined with some string engagement on another platform. They will seek click throughs form tweets as a measure of success and when that eventually doesn't deliver business success for clients, the fad will die off.

Good Post on Subject From Robert Scoble

Scoble has a good post on Twitter advertising and based on today's NYTimes article on the subject, this will likely become a bigger deal for us Twitter users in the short term.  Robert explains his initial reaction to tweet-based adverts and then his exploration once joining ad.ly.

"But all this stuff makes me worried for the future of Twitter. I think Twitter needs to come out for or against these new ad networks and needs to build a platform that properly identifies advertising tweets via a different color. I’d love to be able to “tag” Tweets using my SuperTweet idea and write “advertisement” in the SuperTweet, which would tell everyone that that Tweet is an ad."

Read the comment stream - it's worth it.

Record Attendance and so Many Brands
Attendance: 480+ Marketing and Communications pros from major brands, agencies, technology/solution providers. We have moved past a group of 'evangelists' into a active membership of experts with substantial experience. Intuit, Ford, Tropicana, Unilever, HP, McDonalds, Comcast, Levi Strauss, Best Buy and so many more were there.

Personal Significance: This was my last WOMMA Summit as president of the board. A lot of folks worked to make WOMMA what it is today not the least of which is our great Executive Director, Kristen Smith. Our record attendance and the spike in brands attending (and brands decoming members) pays off on a lot of work from all of us.

Experience Trumps Evangelism
Outside the Sessions: Everyone shared about the programs they have going on. And more than that, brands were talking about how they were training internally and organizing around social media.  Picture a dinner with a major hotel/gaming brand, consumer products good company and a premiere financial services company all swapping stories about how they are organized, how they sell-in programs, how their marcom universe thinks of social media and word of mouth. You would be surpised at how similar some of the organizational challanges are. 

Spontaneous meetings happened in between sessions and sometimes became more urgent then attending one session or another. Folks clustered around the tables set up throughout the exhibit space to share war stories and get advice. I loved the brief conversation with one of the McDonald's twitterers (they have 5) in the bus ride over to the Palms. He and his teammates have a very personal touch. I love that he can reward customers with surprise 'thank you' freebies. 

The exhibitors came as experts with something to offer not hungry salespeople. You were just as likely to sit down with Peter from LiveWorld or Reggie from Vitrue to hear their solution to a social media marketing problem as a colleague from an agency or brand.

And then there was the House Party at the Palms. The suite was outrageous. It gave me a new metric for the huge scale of Las Vegas (where even the morning muffins are the size of a small pie). And the company was terrific. No one got in the hot tub but plenty tried the rotating make-out booth (I know, sounds creepy and outrageous).

Our event hotel was the Paris which I can heartily endorse. We do some work for the parent brand, Harrahs, and this was my first experience at the property. It was all good.

The theme overall was one of experience. Everyone shared what they were doing, not what they observed others were doing or what their latest blog post POV. Here are some great reources that came out of the meeting:

WOMMA Measurement Guidebook: We set out to do this at least year's Summit and here it is - a practical guide to measuring social media and word of mouth programs

The Twitter Transcript: I have never seen this done before and while it may sound ridiculously boring in concept, browse through this as it really captures what peaked participant's interest throughout.  

The Photo Gallery: Great collection that captures in and out of session activity and faces.

The WOMMA Word Blog: Solid recaps of much of the action

(photo: this was taken from the WOMMA Gallery on Flickr)

He offers his own perspective on the first day and where he thinks this all may lead. After spending most of the two days there myself and [presenting to the FDA on the second day], I would say that all of his first day observations are relevant for both days.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

We will have a live wrap-up of the FDA hearings at the WOMMA Summit this week. We will also have a live session with the FTC in attendance as our next step in developing precise and practical best practices for that agencies recent Guidelines to marketers.
  

Speaking on behalf of WOMMA, Melissa Davies (member company Nielsen) and I delivered two different "testimonies."

I addressed questions 1 and 3 from the FDA docket. My goal was to share our recent experience with the new FDA Guidelines, suggest a level of brand responsibility around sites where brands establish a "material connection" and offer a suggestion for a new vocabulary to bring whatever guidelines come from the hearings more up-to-date and aligned with the industry.

Melissa shared her POV on the real instance of Adverse Events based upon some novel research her company had done.

One thing did surprise me. Most of the presentations not-focused on adverse events were focused on digital marketing basics - search marketing, banners, et al. Its true, pharma has been held back in the basics. The FDA needs to deliver some 'pretty good' guidelines on this Web 1.0 stuff quickly and then turn its attention to the true social media practices.

There were quite a few presentations that corroborated our point that the FDA could serve the public best by delivering some basic "guardrails" and then encourage and allow marketers to define the actual best practices around implementation.

We need to create a climate condusive to innovation from the market. That's what led to Web 2.0, social media and the Internet, itself.

The FDA "socal media" Hearings are going on all day today and tomorrow. Packed agenda - 60+ speakers including Ogilvy and WOMMA. You can watch it live here from the FDA.

On Thursday night, November 12th,  from 6:30pm - 8:30pm, WOMMA and member companies -  Live World and Ogilvy PR -  will have a tweet up at the Ogilvy offices in DC (1111 19th Street - 10th floor). Tony DiResta who is WOMMA's legal counsle will give a post-hearing wrap-up and a lot of us who participated will be there offering our won thoughts. Mostly its social.

You can RSVP here or just show up.

WOMMA has just gone through a productive year with the FTC that culminated recently with the FTC Guidelines on Endorsements and Testimonials.We will have a follow up session with the FTC at this year's WOMMA Summit in November.

WOMMA's Role

Ultimately, WOMMA wants to protect the consumer and the trust that brands can build with consumers if they use social media well. Consumers increasingly expect brands to engage and be available in social media. Brands value third party word of mouth as one of the most trusted sources for opinion and purchase decision. Brands and consumers want to connect in socila media. And we have to do it right or the basic premise beneath WOM - trust - will crumble. We also want to empower marketers to productively engage within social media. Pharma has been held back in part because of their fear of additional regulations or actions.  

The FDA's 5 Questions

The FDA has set up a listening session on November 18 and 19. The agenda is full of marketers and each of us has a 10-minute slot to help inform the FDA's 5 questions. 

It is not clear yet if these are even the right 5 questions. Still, in respect to the FDA and the simple principle that we have to start somewhere, I am grateful that they opened their doors. You can review the FDA's Notice of Public Hearing here.

Here are the 3 questions we plan to address with a quick summary of our POV:

Question #1: For what online communications are manufacturers, packers, or distributors accountable?

In today’s social Web marketers and consumers alike are flocking to third party sites and platforms both to be where consumers are and to garner legitimate third-party mentions that corroborate their products’ benefits or around a topic related to a disease or condition. The power of word of mouth means that marketers want influencers/bloggers to experience their topic, product, or service that relates to a brand and then share about it authentically.

WOMMA has an aggressive POV on what is proper disclosure both in spirit and actuality. Aligned with the recent FTC Guidelines, we see the opportunity for marketers to not only practice ‘full disclosure’ of any and all material connection between brand and influencer/blogger, but also to strongly encourage those influencers to do their part to properly disclose. As with the FTC Guidelines, it doesn't take payment to define a material connection. Marketers are better off disclosing any type of material connection whether they be travel expenses for a health blogger, technology support on an unbranded community, or even the snacks at a tweetup. Disclose and let the consumer judge credibility. 

Question #3: What parameters should apply to the posting of corrective information on Web sites controlled by third parties?

Social media is defined by conversations and a hyper-democratized  approach to publishing. Brands and marketers want to connect more directly with customers to better understand their needs and build a stronger relationship. In addition, brands want to ensure that the full story behind products are shared outside their Web sites. They want to be where consumers are spending their time and that is increasringly across the social web.Can pharma marketers be allowed the opportunity to comment on blogs and message boards – completely transparent about their identity and interests – to help keep the information about medical products as clear as possible?  Most pharma marketers do not feel empowered to comment or "fact correct" as the historic FDA guidelines might interpret that as a new instance requiring advertiisng or labeling information. Imagine if every comment required that full page disclaimer you see in print ads.  Conversely, we must not require an unsupportable burden - the requirement to "story-correct" across the vastness of social media. Like the FTC Guidelines, the marketer must focus their energy on keeping their own communications accurate and encouraging and even enforcing accuracy from any influencers they proactively outreach to.

The challenge with health care information is to allow for this conversational interaction while always putting the full story behind products and services front and center. No blog comment field or Tweet will sustain the full content of a product Web site. We may need to allow pharma a consistent "one-click" solution where marketers can comment and link back to the full body of a product insert.  

Question #5: Specific to Adverse Events Reporting

One of the biggest effects of social media is the new opportunity for brands to hear what consumers are saying in public discussions about products, services and issues important in their lives. Smart marketers have adopted “big ears” to make sure they listen and respond to customer concerns. 

The historic and important requirements around adverse events reporting have held many health care marketers back from listening to consumers. How the intent of adverse events reporting actually applies when a patient posts a product experience in Twitter with no contact information in their “bio” or exactly when an adverse event is established over the course of several blog posts is not clear. We need to find a clearer way of recognizing an adverse event and then reporting it that does not hold back a marketer from listening to what consumers are saying in the public space.

Outcome of the Hearings
The real solution may lie in the FDA establishing clear principles and then encouraging the industry to define exact practices as we are doing at WOMMA in relation to the FTC Guidelines. Can the FDA really hope to define the exact nature of a url or how to balance their historic need to approve marketing claims with the non-stop, real-time nature of a twitter-ized social Web? Will this type of detailed regulation help or hold innovation back? We need principles that protect the consumer but do not curb marketers from innovating.

Stop by:

If you are in DC for the hearings, stop by Ogilvy on Thursday night. WOMMA, LiveWorld and Ogilvy will be hosting a post-hearing Tweetup to recap what we heard that day. RSVP Here

We just went through a deep-dive on Microsoft's Looking Glass which points to a further evolution of the market towards in-house and integrated solutions. Is that defiance of the SaS model or are they accurately anticipating where big brands need to go in the future?  

Before I get to Looking Glass, Here are a few of the trends I am seeing:

1. the early lead of service providers who do everything from the technology to the insights is falling away. In its place are dashboard technology providers that put the tools in the hands of brands and agencies - the folks that know the brand business. Even Nielsen has a simple dashboard solution.

2. technologies are focusing on 1-2 of the 7 major purposes of Listening Posts. They are slowly focusing their strengths in certain areas and being more open about admitting what their solution or organization cannot support

3. there is a whole new set of technology providers who are building a flexible framework to be applied to multiple language markets. Once you broaden your view to identifying technologies that work across 4 or 5 language and geographic markets, you suddenly see a whole new set of providers like eCairn, Attentio, Brandwatch and others popup.

4. automated sentiment rating continues to be a holy grail (solutions with 60% accuracy are near-useless) except amongst a very few who have made progress notably Crimson Hexagon and Collective Intellect.

5. brands are splitting between those that want simple and fast and those that want tailored and highly relevant. Radian6 smartly stepped into the simple and fast space and continues to excel there even as others launch comparable "monitoring-only" solutions. A few brands have buy-in to invest the time and money for more tailored solutions. Which brings us to:

Microsoft's Looking Glass

We recently met with the development team at Microsoft responsible for their monitoring/listening solution dubbed Looking Glass. The solution is a 3 server-based model and sits on top of or integrates with Silverlight for the display layer, SQL server and Sharepoint. It is a work in progress and has some significant advantages over other solutions depending on which of the 7 reasons you need a Listening Post and what other Microsoft investments you have made.   

Here are 4 reasons that Looking Glass may be great for enterprise listening:

1. It uses Bing for blog and Web search. That engine will likely provide a strong heart for teh service for years to come.

2. Its real power is in the customizability down to its ability to pull in new data feeds. That means that enterprise can combine data feeds that are most relevant to them (the future of Social IRM is in the integration with CRM databases. This platform will handle that.

3. The Silverlight-powered display is good-looking. Don't underestimate the power of great information design to make listening solutions usable.

4. Like Visible Tech it features task-delegation functions. If you want to assign someone to respond to a Tweet or a post, you can do that within the system and track those responses.

This is meant for the more advanced enterprise willing to invest the integration and customization hours never mind the hosting/serving of it. As we move towards more advanced models of integrating cgm listening into the enterprise like the Social IRM model, the Looking Glass model may be a strong solution. Everyone awaits the debut of the next Google Labs experiment where they deliver the 30 ton megaton bomb on teh listening market with their own solution. I only presume that is somewhere inside their skunkworks....

This year's Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) Summit is something else. It is the fruit of two years effort by a lot of smart marketers to bring the best of social media and word of mouth marketing together. We wanted to help experienced marcom experts share best practices in the best way possible - via our peers. As current Board President of WOMMA, I can proudly say that this event reflects the essential and exciting role WOMMA plays now.

Here are 7 reasons why this year's WOMMA Summit is a must-attend event for any marketer who needs to apply social media in a disciplined, impactful way:

1. The best insight comes from real brand cases. WOMMA Summit will feature disciplined cases from Ford, Tropicana, General Mills, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Microsoft, CDW, IBM, SAP, Walmart, BestBuy, HP and more. Learn from real practices.

2. Our session "The Role of the FTC in Word of Mouth and Social Media Marketing" will feature the Chuck Harwood, Assistant Deputy Director. he will help everyone better understand the new FTC Guidelines and WOMMA's next effort to define best practice disclosure

3. The Brands Council at WOMMA will host its own meetups for brands allowing marketers to share experiences and get advice from their peers.

4. Ray Day, VP of Global Communications at Ford, and Scott Monty will keynote and share insights about how Ford has woven social media into the fabric of the company.

5. A post-hearing analysis session dedicated to the FDA Hearings on social media in health product marketing.

6. A full "track" dedicated to Research and Measurement AND the release of a final draft of the WOMMA Measurement Guidebook. I don't know about you but measurement - both performance and ROI - is the most important issue from brands who want to expand their use of social media. You will get practical, applicable-now models.

7. The first annual WOMMY Awards will identify the best of the best in social media and word of mouth marketing (I think there were over 200 entries!)

Bonus reason: The band, Sugarland, will keynote about their extraordinary work with fans and that's just cool.

This will be a terrific and talked about event. Just go to the Website and judge for yourself. In tough economic times, we each have to choose what is essential to our business. This event was designed to deliver an essential experience for brands and marketers needing to learn expert and best practices for social media from the people actually doing it not just talking about it!

When: November 18-20
Where: The Paris in Las Vegas (a Harrah's property!)
How: Go here to register 
Go here to learn more

Register today with the code "fanofogilvy" and receive $200 off the fee. There will be no other discounts.
I will be there. Tons of brands will be there. I hope to see you there.