For marketing it’s a great tool because it’s a relatively pain-free way of vetting a product or a campaign ahead of a major launch. If the masses have given it the once-over and supplied criticisms and suggestions, then the final product is likely to be better received.

The collaboration just announced between Sony and Last.fm to launch the first “fantasy music festival” is a good example of crowdsourcing for the purposes of marketing. Brand Republic has more details:

The competition, in the style of fantasy football game, will give music fans across Europe a €1 million budget to put together their fantasy festival line up. Last.fm users will be encouraged to invite friends to compete through Facebook Connect and email. The music service will score musicians based on trends, listening data and online buzz, to determine the rankings, beginning in mid-November.

Such a large cash prize will doubtless encourage many to take part. But looking beyond the competition, the data that users supply about their musical preferences will be an invaluable asset to those involved in music marketing.

Buying an album or downloading an Mp3 is one thing. However the true test – what music marketers are most curious about – is whether an artist has become someone that a consumer has more than a passive interest in. By listing an artist as one whom they’d include in a “fantasy festival”, it tells marketing heads that this artist, if not already established, may be going places. That’s data charts can’t give.

The data from this competition will also help tour organisers understand who should be on tour with whom. Facing declining record sales revenues, labels are putting more emphasis on income from tours. By putting together artists whom a large number of people have indicated they’d like to see share the same stage, the ROI is likely to be higher.

This partnership is also a win for Last.fm’s brand image. Owned by CBS, Last.fm remains well-liked by its users, who are all musicphiles. Facing creeping competition from Swedish start-up Spotify, this partnership with second-largest global recorded music company increases Last.fm’s brand visibility and could increase its market penetration. For Sony, they stand to gain reputation currency with a key user base from Last.fm through the affiliation.

The answers were varied: Two maybes, one yes and one no.

Here are some good pull-quotes from the article that sum up the sentiment fairly well. First, from Paul Vaughan, business operations director, Rugby Football Union, who said “maybe”:

Brands that want to reach a fanbase have to find the right way of doing it and pass the fan-cynicism test. Fans are smart and can see through brands that are out to exploit. However, research also shows that fans have a greater propensity to buy a brand if that brand invests in their passion.

Coming in with a “yes” vote was Scott Garrett, Director at Synergy Sponsorship. His reasoning is that transparency is key to gaining the trust of “unofficial” organisations:

Any form of brand association must be sense-checked for brand fit. If there’s even the slightest sense of a brand trying to shoehorn its way into fans’ psyches or leverage legit imate passions, the informal networks that sponsors seek to exploit, will turn against them with alarming alacrity.

The lone “no” vote” came from Chris Townsend, Commercial Director at LOCOG (The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games), who argues that brand alliances is a legal grey area and runs the risk of cheapening exclusivity agreements:

[T]here is a thin line between innovative and illegal. Brands pay millions of pounds to be officially and exclusively linked to sporting events – without our sponsors, for example, Lon don 2012 simply would not happen. Choosing an unofficial route brings significant risks; while the marketing department sees a cheap and easy means of exposure, the legal department could be bracing itself for a busy time.

This is a tough subject because, as Paul Vaughan pointed out, sport fans are a fervent lot when it comes to their home squad. For marketing purposes, that’s a very desirable group to be aligned with. The “unofficial” group will seek out the validation of being aligned with an official sponsor, however they’re less likely to take on the marketing and advertising responsibilities.

As always, transparency is key. Scott Garrett nailed it when he pointed out that fans can turn the tides very quickly if they feel that they’re being taken advantage of. If there’s transparency in the agreement, brands are less likely to experience a harsh backlash.

Today the rivalry has escalated to Apple asking consumers to question the overall trustworthiness of the Microsoft brand.

Consumer trust is a very touchy subject. But it’s also a hugely important thing for any corporation to have. From the consumer’s point of view, when one corporation tells them not to trust another corporation, often red flags will go up.

Some may view this new advertising campaign as Apple attempting to manipulate the opinions and trust of its worldwide user base to its advantage.

Both Apple and Microsoft should tread carefully in this new area of competition. Putting consumer trust on the line is a big wager, with the potential losses great.

For many, the goal is to gain as many “followers” or “fans” online as possible. That’s the gold standard for determining how popular or established your reputation is.

Thing is, that’s only half-right.

Corporate entities will often default into communications plans online that are one-way and highly regulated. No direct engagement, no responding to customer queries. There’s an assumption that, if someone complains, no one will really hear them. In the early days of the internet, pre-Facebook and Twitter, that was more likely.

However the culture online has changed. People have great capacity to amass large followings with relative ease. And with these mass followings, they, too, are given a global platform.

What gives them the leg-up is their audience is more receptive and in-tune with the dialogue than the followers of the corporate entity. According to a recent Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey, “ninety percent of consumers surveyed noted that they trust recommendations from people they know, while 70 percent trusted consumer opinions posted online”.

It’s increasingly important that corporate entities be aware of who the influencers are in their networks. They’re the people who can turn the tide of public opinion quicker than most PR campaigns, because there’s inherent trust.

For an example of good use of social media and influencer targeting online, check out U.S. telecoms company Comcast, on Twitter as @ComcastCares. TechCrunch has more in an interview with Comcast CEO Brian Roberts:

Comcast has for a while now been using Twitter to scan for complaints and engage with customers. The idea was not his, but rather rose organically when someone in the company realized that a lot of public complaints were being sent over Twitter … Roberts went on to note that “Famous Frank,” also known as Frank Eliason now has 11 people working under him simply to respond to information about Comcast being broadcast on Twitter. Roberts says that it’s an entirely different kind of dialogue coming in then the usual phone complaints, and he seems very pleased about the work the team has done with the customers on Twitter.

Comcast’s strategy isn’t going to make everyone happy. But given the sheer size of the company, the fact that they’ve taken to such an organic process of customer service speaks to the company’s understanding of how the internet can spread messaging, both good and bad.

It also ensures they’re able to stay in the loop about what’s being said, by whom, and whether their influence is large enough to cause bigger problems down the line.

The story being told by the boy’s parents was that their son, Falcon, had climbed into the balloon and it eventually became untethered. Once in the air, the balloon reached an altitude of 7,000 feet above the ground.

A few hours later the balloon landed without the boy inside. Panic ensued, with some new outlets suggesting the boy had fallen out. Screen grabs of an unidentified dark object repelling from the balloon were shown to the world.

Fast forward a few hours and it’s revealed to be a giant hoax perpetrated by the boy’s parents, who sought to parlay sudden fame into a reality television show. But before that officially leaked out, internet users were already hard at work digging into the backgrounds of everyone involved.

Thousands of internet users found evidence that the two parents were lovers of reality television and had twice appeared on shows. Then it was discovered they’d been shopping a reality show about their family to studios, which had  been roundly rejected.

Each of these revelations were posted on Twitter by thousands of users. The “Balloon Boy” hoax was uncovered, explored and debunked essentially as the event was unfolding.

A week later, “Balloon Boy” remains a top Trending Topic on Twitter, with more than 100 people updating about it every five minutes.

By the time the family made it to the now-infamous Wolf Blitzer interview, where the “Balloon Boy” himself mentioned that he thought the entire thing was ‘for the show’, all it did was confirm was many had already believed to be the case. Criminal charges against the boy’s parents are now pending.

When so many people are conned into being genuinely concerned for the well-being of a child thought to be in serious harm, only to find out it was a giant hoax, it causes people to approach the world with a greater skepticism. In today’s Wall Street Journal, this subject is discussed:

With fakery everywhere—some of it amusing, some of it not funny—people’s ability to know where things fall on the spectrum between fact and falsity becomes so compromised that they retreat into a shell of cynicism about everything. And there is a lot to process: 9/11 deniers, Iranian Holocaust deniers, Obama birthers. Lily Tomlin provided the epigraph for our age: “I try to be cynical, but it’s hard to keep up.”

In the corporate world, this makes a hard-sell even harder. People retreat to skepticism, or hide behind the mantra of it’s-too-good-t0-be-true.

The internet poses a new challenge to those wishing to create publicity for themselves through an event. Internet users are naturally curious people. With an endless supply of information available and search algorithms getting more sophisticated, even the most inane or old fact about you is easily found. Real-time web applications such as Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed mean this information can be published and spread instantly and globally.

Transparency in business has never been more important than it is today. This “Balloon Boy” incident cements that fact. Being open and honest about your aims and processes leaves you less open to criticisms and accusations of dishonesty. If the “Balloon Boy” parents had thought of that, perhaps they wouldn’t have found themselves in this mess

However this can work against a company when the news is bad and the methods less than transparent.

Case in point, American telecoms giant AT&T’s recent attempts via lobbyist Jim Cicconi to thwart increased regulation on the internet, known stateside as “net-neutrality rules’. The Washington Post has more:

Cicconi has criticized FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s push to strengthen and broaden rules for how Internet service providers treat content on their networks. Cicconi said such rules should not apply to wireless networks, which have less capacity than fixed wireline networks like cable. He has said that AT&T Mobility and other mobile broadband providers should not be strapped by new rules when it comes to managing broadband traffic congestion.

The other major stakeholder in this debate is Google. Here’s what they’ve got to say about it:

Fundamentally, net neutrality is about equal access to the Internet. In our view, the broadband carriers should not be permitted to use their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content. Just as telephone companies are not permitted to tell consumers who they can call or what they can say, broadband carriers should not be allowed to use their market power to control activity online. Today, the neutrality of the Internet is at stake as the broadband carriers want Congress’s permission to determine what content gets to you first and fastest. Put simply, this would fundamentally alter the openness of the Internet.

AT&T’s lobbyist is doing the company a great disservice by, in a round-about way, telling the company’s employees that they should protest unfettered access to the internet. Since AT&T signs their cheques, it makes it difficult for an employee to openly disobey something like this.

Because the internet is transparent, AT&T’s activities have been given wide-spread attention. It’s got similar traits as the Trafigura scandal that unfolded in the UK last week: A big company trying to have a say over information, or a vital service, the alternative of which is free-flowing information and data to all. Concerned citizens then took it upon themselves to spread the information, turning it from a footnote to a viral news item.

The take-away item from this for corporate entities is to understand fully the potential viral nature of an item of potentially bad PR. Because AT&T gave their lobbyist the mandate to distribute that message to more than 300,000 people, it was bound to leak. With the leak, and the contents of the leak, AT&T lost control of the messaging and opened the company up to wider, more cutting critiques from customers and media.

It’s likely that AT&T’s stance will begin to inform public opinion. However it’s unlikely to be in the way they had hoped.

The Guardian explains:

Lawyers for oil traders Trafigura finally abandoned attempts to keep secret a scientific report about toxic waste dumping in west Africa, that was shown to the Guardian … The Minton report, commissioned in 2006 from the London-based firm’s scientific consultants, said that based on the “limited” information they had been given Trafigura’s oil waste, dumped cheaply the month before in a city in Ivory Coast, was potentially toxic, and “capable of causing severe human health effects”.

Despite the backdown, serious damage had already been done. Across Twitter and the blogosphere, people were digging into Trafigura, their lawyers and everyone involved in the alleged cover-up. The messaging around the trial and the report seeped out of the tight grasp of the stakeholders and proceeded to bounce around the web.

Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger phrased it nicely:

“Trafigura thought it was buying silence. A combination of old media – the Guardian – and new – Twitter – turned attempted obscurity into mass notoriety.”

The second incident involved an inflammatory column by Daily Mail writer Jan Moir on the mysterious death of former Boyzone singer Stephen Gately. Given her position as a well-known columnist, having readers disagree with her views is part of the job description. However, again thanks to Twitter’s ability to spread news like wildfire, the inflammatory column became headline news.

In a ‘Comment is Free’ column, Charlie Brooker captured the general response to the off-colour column:

It has been 20 minutes since I’ve read her now-notorious column, and I’m still struggling to absorb the sheer scope of its hateful idiocy. It’s like gazing through a horrid little window into an awesome universe of pure blockheaded spite. Spiralling galaxies of ignorance roll majestically against a backdrop of what looks like dark prejudice, dotted hither and thither with winking stars of snide innuendo.

Given that Brooker is a well-read journalist in the UK, it’s fair to say both Moir and The Mail have lost complete control of the situation. And days later it’s still spiraling. Readers have reacted decisively, lodging 22,000 complaints with the Press Complaints Commission since Friday 16 October.

But what can you do? The internet enables lightning-fast communication on a global scale. Writing in the Financial Times, David Bowen of the web consultancy Bowen Craggs & Co., lists seven points to consider:

1. You have 48 hours to save your reputation.

2. The traditional method is no longer enough.

3. Understand these channels.

4. Corporate communications needs to be reconfigured to respond, fast.

5. Draw up a reputation management response plan, to complement crisis management.

6. Use all the weapons you can.

7. If you are drawn into trench warfare with your critics, consider carefully the best approach.

It’s difficult to determine what the impact will be on the reputations of the above mentioned until it the controversy dies down. From the looks of it, both incidents appear to have a few more days of life in them.

If either had a reputation management contingency plan in place, perhaps they could have prevented some of the damage. For others, it should serve as a case study in what can happen and how to stay ahead of the curve.

Barbato, who joins from a boutique technology agency, has several years experience in the fields of IT and telecoms public relations. Previous clients include Affiniti, Corel, 1&1 and Sonus Networks. Her role at Glasshouse Partnership will be to build the technology and telecoms division, as well as to work closely with BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT.

The team is also pleased to announce the appointment of Ben LaMothe, a post-graduate with significant experience in social media and blogging, as a Junior Associate.

Ben is in the dissertation phase of an MSc in Electronic Publishing at City University London. He has previously worked in the web division at Telegraph.co.uk, where he assisted in the development of their new blogs platform; and with United Business Media, as a web & social media consultant. His role at Glasshouse Partnership will be to help build the social media and blogging divisions, and to work closely with Glasshouse’s varied clients.

Both bring considerable knowledge in their respective specialisms of technology and social media, which will add considerably to the agency’s offerings.

As the start-up becomes increasingly flush with capital, even before an IPO, it finds itself in uncharted territory. Despite the fanfare, social media is still young. The path was originally paved by the likes of Friendster and CampusHook, but it has since eclipsed both, overtaken MySpace and is with newcomer Twitter for most used social networking site.

I wrote that Facebook and founder Mark Zuckerberg are in a unique position to make an impact in a new industry, which would cement further growth and offer numerous additional advertising opportunities:

About 66% of Facebook’s users are between the ages of 18 and 34. They are the internet generation. They know how the web works, typically get news online or on mobile devices, and have always known news online to be free.

Facebook became cash-flow positive in September, one year earlier than they had planned. Reports put year-end revenue at being about $550m (£337m). Having cash on hand to move forward in the midst of a recession puts Facebook in good standing.

That’s a lot of money for a company with 300m users worldwide that hasn’t even gone public. Much of their money comes from ad revenue. Since Facebook is mass-appeal, you wouldn’t think they’d have the ability to charge premiums. They don’t. They just have a very captive audience.

When it comes to time spent on the Internet, Facebook is king. Users spent an average of five hours and 12 minutes on the social network in July, according to Ad Age, putting it head and shoulders above its competitors.

All of this ensures that social media will continue evolving rapidly, and that corporate entities and brands should remain aware of new developments as they happen, lest they be caught unawares as many were with the rise of Twitter.

Self-Help Africa’s work focuses on delivering rural development initiatives across nine African countries.  And their proposition is a refreshing one: to focus on the diverse entrepreneurial opportunities which exist for rural Africans, particularly farmers, by giving them acccess to the tools and training they need to build their own economic opportunities.  These lessons then get disseminated more widely across those communities and eventually become overseen by the local leaders themselves. In the communtiies where SHA has worked, food production has increased by 100%, incomes by 50%, and access to agricultural extension services by 50%.

From a Glasshouse perspective, I found their approach convincing, since donors — whether individuals or government agencies — are increasingly looking for measurable, lasting impacts from the money they invest.  This type of approach helps build the necessary infrastructure and institutions upon which broader, more autonomous, and market-driven future development in Africa can rest.