Agenda: BRITE Workshop on Online Communities
October 16, 2008, New York City
Columbia University
8:30 Registration
| 8:30 |
Registration |
| 9:00 |
Welcome & overview
David Rogers, Host, BRITE Conferences; Executive
Director, Center on Global Brand Leadership,
Columbia Business School |
| 9:15 |
Best & Worst Practices for Company-Run
Online Communities: Results of the 2008
Tribalization of Business Study
Ed Moran, Director, Deloitte & Touche LLP and
Francois Gossieaux, Co-Founder, Partner, Beeline
Labs
Businesses in a wide range of industries are
building online communities for their customers,
which can dramatically increase revenues and reduce
costs per customer. Yet, many of these efforts
produce sites that few people ever visit; in many
cases, business investments and metrics for
measuring success fail to match declared strategic
objectives. Francois Gossieaux and Ed Moran will
present results of a study of more than 140
businesses with online communities conducted by
Deloitte, the Society for New Communications
Research, and Beeline labs. The study examined the
leading benefits of online communities, key factors
contributing to community effectiveness, and the
greatest obstacles to making communities work. |
| 9:45 |
Interactive session: Setting goals &
aligning strategy for online communities
Francois Gossieaux and Ed Moran |
| 10:25 |
Community as Part of Your Site Offering:
Strategy from 50,000 Feet and Tactics from the
Trenches
Sylvia Marino, Executive Director, Community
Operations, Edmunds.com
For over a decade, Edmunds Inc.—publisher of four
leading websites for automotive consumers,
enthusiasts, and industry insiders—has built a
strong consumer audience with social media such as
forums, consumer reviews, and blogs. With new
initiatives like its Carspace.com social networking
site, Edmunds has put its user community at the
center of its sites. Sylvia Marino, head of
Edmunds' community initiatives, will discuss:
online community strategy & evaluating new
initiatives; tools to get build your community in
other sites (Facebook, twitter, etc.); legal and
operational issues surrounding community management,
membership, moderation, and content; and metrics for
ROI and measuring success. |
| 11:05 |
Morning break |
| 11:20 |
Building Brand Buzz with Online
Communities: Case Study and Research Results
Aliza Freud, Founder and CEO, SheSpeaks and
Olivier Toubia, David W. Zalaznick Associate
Professor of Business, Columbia Business School
This workshop focuses on how online communities
engage consumers and create authentic word of mouth.
The presentation will include a case study on
SheSpeaks, a women's insight and word-of-mouth
marketing network. The case will show how SheSpeaks
worked with the OPI beauty brand to establish a
direct dialogue with targeted female consumers to
spark new interest, obtain candid feedback, grow
word-of-mouth awareness, and build long-term brand
advocates. Freud and Toubia will also present
results of research conducted with Columbia Business
School comparing the efficacy and ROI of this
approach vs. the use of traditional advertising
media for the same brand. |
| 12:05 |
Interactive: Creating Experiences For
Online Communities
Bernd H. Schmitt, Professor, Columbia Business
School, best-selling author, "Big Think
Strategy," with Aliza Freud, Sylvia Marino, and
Olivier Toubia |
| 12:35 |
Lunch |
| 1:35 |
A New Model for Enterprise Valuation: The role
of brand in innovation- and tech-driven companies.
(BRITE Research)
Natalie Mizik, Gantcher Associate Professor of
Business, Columbia Business School
In this session, Professor Natalie Mizik will
explain why traditional valuation approaches perform
poorly for highly branded businesses and in high
technology and innovation focused industries. She
will then present a new valuation model that
enhances traditional methods by explicitly
incorporating the perceptual characteristics of the
firm's brand. The benefits of brand-related
information are particularly pronounced in the
high-technology and innovation focused industrial
sector and attest to the importance of
brand-building in technologically-oriented
enterprises. Professor Natalie Mizik's results are
part
of a new research brief commissioned for a series of
BRITE case studies for Columbia Business School. |
| 2:20 |
Integrating Online Communities: From
service and product forums to a holistic approach to
customer communities
Richard Binhammer, Conversations, Communities
and Communications, Dell, Inc.
Dell has been a leader in using social media to
engage its customer community in tech support,
product development, and public relations.
Initiatives have included corporate blogs,
customer-to-customer support (C2C) forums, IdeaStorm
for idea generation, online videos, and ratings &
reviews. Richard Binhammer will discuss Dell's
current community initiatives and future plans to
integrate these diverse programs into a holistic
approach throughout the company. |
| 3:00 |
Afternoon break |
| 3:30 |
Using Video to Build Buzz: How indie
bands can plug into MySpace, Facebook, and fan
communities
Marisa Bangash, and Melinda Lee, Co-founders,
Uncensored Interview
Broadband video platform Uncensored Interview
produces one-of-a-kind interview content for bands
like The Bloodsugars, Young Knives and The Wombats
and partners with indie record labels to use them as
catalysts for buzz among music fans. Co-founders
Marisa Bangash and Melinda Lee will present case
studies of how two bands achieved viral results by
understanding the different behaviors of fan
communities on YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter
and other online sites. Their Webby-awarded content
includes over 6,000 videos, with distribution
relationships spanning music labels, digital retail,
blogs, podcasts, and search and music entertainment
properties such as Domino Records, Joost, Amie
Street, E. Factor, IndieFeed, Indieoma, and Songza. |
| 3:50 |
From BarackObama.com to AT&T: Using
online communities to engage, energize and mobilize
constituents
Thomas Gensemer, Managing Partner, Blue State
Digital
With nearly a million members, the
My.BarackObama.com social network has helped to win
a presidential primary, raise enormous funds online,
and reshape the role of the Internet in political
organizing. The company behind the social network,
Blue State Digital, has worked with more than 100
clients in politics and business, to develop new
media strategies to grow relationships with
customers and advocates. Managing partner Thomas
Gensemer will discuss how they have worked with the
Obama campaign and clients such as Stonyfield Farms
and AT&T to energize and mobilize constituents on
their behalf. |
| 4:30 |
Summary / debrief |
| 5:00 |
Finish |
Agenda may be subject to further change before event
date.
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