We sat down with Mike at our North America digital meeting to get his thoughts on the digital landscape in the U.S. – where it stands, trends, barriers to adoption and some examples of industries and companies he admires (including Ford Motor Company and, not surprisingly, professional sports!).  Take a look – and share your thoughts in the comments.

When San Francisco 49er President and CEO Jed York sent a tweet asking fans to submit via Twitter why they should be the recipient of four tickets and pregame field passes to last Sunday’s NFC Championship game against the New York Giants, it wasn’t a question as to if I’d enter – it was how. To put the excitement of this game for 49er fans in perspective, not only would the 49ers make it to Super Bowl 46 if they defeated the Giants in the NFC Championship Game, but my boys hadn’t made it to the playoffs since 2002 and hadn’t made it to the Super Bowl since 1994.

The question became how to differentiate myself from the countless tweets Jed York would receive, and how to pull this off in less than 24 hours (!!). Stepping back as if I was consulting a client, I naturally decided on a video submission – most people would simply send tweets so multimedia was the way to go. Of course the video would be placed on my YouTube channel, tagged to have strong searchability and be no longer than one minute of course to best ensure it would be watched in its entirety.

But the bigger question was the focus of the video. Following a brainstorm with my friend, colleague and soon-to-be video creative director, Kerry Hall, we came up with the campaign idea – my 49ers enthusiasm couldn’t represent only me, it had to represent all of San Francisco! I spent my Monday evening identifying ideal quintessential San Francisco individuals who should be represented in my video and scripting the 49ers expressions and press conference quotes to include. And the next day, we hit the streets of Union Square, filming me in my throwback Steve Young jersey and gold 49ers startup jacket – cheering and screaming with San Franciscans for the legacy team so appropriately named after the gold prospectors from the California Gold Rush.

From the hotdog stand worker, to the trolley passengers, to the cop, to the construction workers – I represented the best of the Bay!

Following some scrappy video editing with the assistance of my colleague Pierre Le Leannec, I was ready to send Jed my tweet submission linking to my YouTube video. (Well, okay, only after nervously reading and rereading my tweet and excitedly hovering over the send button on Tweet Deck for about 5 minutes, and having the tweet proofread and edited by a couple people.) SEND!

But what better way to help my plea for Jed to award me those NFC Championship Game tickets than to leverage my network and Twitter followers? How could Jed not watch my video with the huge amount of tweets directed at his handle, and reinforcing that I’m THE number one 49er fan? Thanks to my friends & family, Text 100 colleagues, clients, reporters and even people I’ve never met for retweeting my video, and endorsing me to go to the 49ers game.

And as a result (cue drumroll please)…

Although the game may not have worked out in the 49ers favor (to put it nicely since there will be no profanity on Hypertext J), I’m extremely fortunate and thankful to have had the amazing experience of going to the game with tickets five rows off the field. Up to nearly 5,000 YouTube views, I can honestly say the video garnered more attention than I ever would have thought, plus local San Francisco blogs such as SF Gate and SFist even covered and linked to the video. Next year is our year, 49ers, and I need to start thinking about how I’ll top my campaign for Jed to send me to the game next year!

As these leaders looked ahead to the future of the industry, they all agreed – the road ahead is paved for success, not just because of the way social media and digital tools have evolved the way we build relationships, but because of the changes happening in society. A corporation’s greatest asset is its reputation – and in a world where transparency is of utmost importance to the social consumer and other stakeholders, communications is in a strong position to lead the way.

Further to the discussion on transparency is the question of how, if at all, we ensure that we’re building a reputation for PR as an industry. Do we “PR the PR?” Rather, the focus should be on great communications as it supports business goals – showcasing the success of brands in terms of their reputation, rather than highlighting the PR work that supports it. As communicators, it’s our job to be the standard barriers for reputation and transparency, and making sure that’s what the communications industry is all about.

Check out the video below for Aedhmar’s takeaways from the discussion – and be on the lookout for the March issue of PR Week for more details from the roundtable.

Special thanks goes to Marc Jaugey from PayPal for setting up this interview.

More details about Andrew :
His Wikipedia page
His media training activities

Article initially published on Text 100′s Paris blog

Credit picture: Kerolic

Now, without further ado, here’s the video… about video!

Staples created a scale model of Sydney Harbour built entirely of stationery to mark the launch of Australian website. The catch – the model was made entirely of Staples stationery products. A time lapse video was filmed of artists working on the model as it took shape. Distributed with the official launch announcement, the video went viral within hours.

The Sydney Harbour bridge was made entirely out of bulldog clips and the world famous Opera House was a gleaming shade of white painted entirely out of tippex! The entire model was created for Staples by artist Darcy Prendergast using 344 recycled sticky notes, 84 boxes of staples, 361 bulldog clips, 169 paperclips, 107 rubber bands and 132 coloured pencils.

So far the video has chocked up over 90,000 views and generated mainstream media coverage and kudos amongst the often cynical Australian marketing media. This campaign is a great example of how a creative idea using social media can be applied for almost any brand.

- By Simon Clark

Cross-Posted from the Text 100 Sydney Blog, Digital Comms Down Under

• How to create a stand-out video that’ll benefit your brand
• How to reach your audience with video
• What makes a successful video

It was a good, dynamic conversation where panelists came from different backgrounds – from online video distributors, to a hosted software provider for media & entertainment companies, to me – a communications and digital consultant for Text 100 clients. But don’t take my word for it, take a look at this video clip on YouTube from the panel.

It’s this dominance of the social networking scene (no pun intended) that has brands flocking to Facebook to connect with their target audience, but how are those efforts being received by Facebook users? Text 100 grabbed some Flip cameras and took to the streets to answer that question in our own social networking video. Don’t mind the rough edit – we’re no David Fincher*.

The thoughts expressed here come as no surprise – although people are all over Facebook, they are still most influenced by what their friends share – and with all of Facebook’s new features, it’s easier than ever for users to customize what they want to see when they open the site.

So what can brands do to best ensure their news is being heard? Users want engaging, relevant content – not just a news stream of random updates. Brands should consider if the content they’re posting on Facebook will truly benefit the end user – is there an element of entertainment (such as a funny video), or an opportunity to offer a promotion, discount or contest to your loyal Facebook fans? Is a recent product enhancement going to help make your customers’ lives easier? Appeal to the personal side of customers, and brands will win out every time.

*Director of “The Social Network”

Whether you like it or are stifling a gag reflex (or both), it’s hard to deny the effectiveness of such visceral images.  So what I want to know is, how come when it comes to the effective use of images in communications, so many PR people still don’t get the picture?

I got into the business, like so many others, because I am a natural “words guy.”  But you can learn to think visually.  Fact is, you better learn, or you are relegating yourself to an increasingly silo’d and fossilized form of communications.  The Pouring on the Pounds video, above, is just the eye-candy that draws viewers to a web site full of relevant heath information and tools.  It’s part of a comprehensive campaign that taps the proven superiorty of powerful images to draw people in.  And there is absolutely no reason why campaigns like these shouldn’t be dominated by savvy PR professionals.

Here’s a test to see whether you are (at least working on being) a visual thinker:

• Are your slides still riddled with more bullets than the walls of the Alamo?  If so, you need to read Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen, subscribe to his blog and start adopting his advice, pronto.  When you’ve upped your game a bit, you might check out the guys over at Duarte Design, who helped  a guy named Al Gore with a rather famous presentation called An Inconvenient Truth.  (And thanks, Garr, for turning me on to the Pouring on the Pounds video to begin with.)
• Do you regularly check out TED, to see the world’s greatest presenters in action?
• Do you check out the latest stuff, and share yours, on slideshare?
• Are you tracking the media’s move to data visualization?  (Thanks, Sam Whitmore.)
• Is istockphoto bookmarked so you can bring your ideas to life with high quality images?
• Are you educating yourself on video SEO so you can jump to the top of search results?

Seems to me visual thinking is an absolute pre-requisite to all forms of professional communications going forward, whether digital, social, online or offline.  I’d love to hear–wait, I’d love to see!–what others are doing to focus in on visual thinking.