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The big conversation at the iMedia Summit today has been focusing on the Superbowl advertisements – no surprise really given the event kicked off with a Superbowl party & Bob Garfield’s opening keynote was a deconstruction of the ads.

The biggest talking point with this crowd: Google’s ad. Most love it (in fact I just polled 24 brand marketers & 15 loved it while only 2 didn’t like it). Yesterday during the Superbowl my CEO Rob Key leant over to Craig Daitch & I seconds after the spot aired and said “how long until we see a parody of that online?”

Well, Slate didn’t disappoint with this satirical take on the ad seen through the eyes of Tiger Wood’s search history after that fateful day in November:

Hat tip to our good friends at Agency Spy! And stay tuned to our @Converseon Twitter account for updates from the conference.

This week we are attending the iMedia Brand Summit in Las Vegas, with our CEO Rob Key leading a spotlight session title ‘Listening 2.0: Activating Social Media Across the Enterprise’ on Tuesday morning.

We’ve been supporting iMedia events for some time as they tend to bring a mix of the biggest brands, smartest minds in online marketing along with an arry of innovative vendors. We anticipate this summit to be no different with presentations from the likes of Bob Garfield of AdAge & NPR fame and attendance from senior marketers from Kraft, General Mills, Zappos, American Express and more.

Rob’s presentation will focus on how our clients are using Conversation Mining to drive insights and strategy across the business, along with the process we’ve developed to take brands through a social media evolution and some tactical tips on how to apply social media with your brand today to drive business results.

We’ll be live tweeting the event via our @Converseon Twitter account so make sure you’re following us for updates, we’ll also be taking another poll of the brand marketers in attendance on some key social media issues, as we did at the  San Diego Brand Summit last September.

New York was certainly a destination for those in the social media industry this week. There were a host of amazing events during 2010’s Social Media Week making it hard to choose which ones to attend. Converseon was happy to be a part of two of them.

Yesterday, amid crepes, mimosas and business card exchanges, a sold-out crowd of people, ranging from self-proclaimed “social media newbies” to seasoned social media practitioners, descended on Converseon’s headquarters for a morning of listening and of course, conversation.

Rob Key, CEO, kicked off “The Road from Listening to Activation” panel with a reference to an ancient Buddhist proverb (isn’t that how all the events kicked off this week?) “If you see Social Media on the road, kill it” challenging those in this quickly growing industry to think bigger, deeper and broader about the possibilities of the social web.  Rob went on to say that “the Year of the Social Media checklist is over,” (2009) “and that 2010 is the Year of Enterprise Activation.”  How does “Enterprise Activation” happen exactly?  That’s precisely what the panel discussed.

Rob then introduced the panel made up of Jon Burg, Emerging Channels Specialist at Digitas; Craig Daitch, SVP of Activation at Converseon and Andy Von Kennel, SVP, Growth Director at Rapp to discuss the role listening plays in social media activation.  Here are some of the highlights… (Tweet-style per @PaullYoung’s great twitter notes!)

“Most brands think  ‘What can I do on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube?’ not ‘What do people want us to do for them?” @jonburg

“It’s not just about mining conversations, we need to think about & analyze what people are doing with Search” @avthinks

“If I listened (re: traditional methods) to my customers, they’d tell me they wanted a faster horse”  Henry Ford quoted by Rob Key

“Time to stop talking about what social media is, and start talking about what it can do” Rob Key

“A prospective customer doesn’t care what part of the company you’re in – they care about whether you can solve their problem” @cdny

@JonBurg: Just because you have ski poles, doesn’t mean your in the Olympics (Just b/c u have data, a FB Page, Twitter, etc…)

“It’s not the technology that matters, it’s the human intelligence behind it” @cdny
(also echoed by Jeff Doak, CTO of Converseon, in a presentation earlier in the week about the Science of Social re: listening technology and the importance of humans in listening)

“The SM Monitoring technology field is still the Wild West and what most vendors claim to do, they still can’t do” @jonburg

@avkthinks “We were able to use social media with a client to figure price and a new flavor. Social media was used as a means to do market research”

“The connections in social media is like ‘dark matter’ in the universe – we know it’s out there but we can’t quite see it all yet” Rob Key

@cdny: “Agencies look at listening as validation, but often miss the rich context that informs deeper planning”

“The big challenge is taking large volumes of online conversation & dragging out the insights that can inform your business” @jonburg

“Clients are more sophisticated on listening: word clouds & volume don’t cut it” @avthinks

@jonburg: “You can use listening for everything: call center structure, media strategy, product design & naming”

We were also happy to hear that yesterday’s panel “…was the most insightful event of the week” from Dani Klein. Thanks Dani! And thanks Amanda, for sharing your thoughts on yesterday’s panel as well. Sounds like the crepes might have been your favorite part!

It would be incredibly difficult to summarize the event not just because so many topics were touched on but because different people take away different things.  For me, I’m passionate about watching industry evolve. Companies that are listening to their consumers, actively listening through some of the amazing technologies available to us today, will emerge triumphant over the next several decades because they’ll have recognized the transformative possibilities for growth when their consumers, through the digital expression of their likes, their wants, their needs; actually determine the future of their business.

Social Media Week is nearly upon us and of course Converseon is deeply involved in the New York City focused events – the highlights for us our ‘The Road from Listening to Activation‘ panel on Thursday Feb 4 and our CTO Jeff Doak appearing alongside Yahoo! researcher Duncan Watts for the ARF’s ‘Science of Social Media‘ event on Tuesday Feb 2.

“The Road from Listening to Activation” – Thursday Feb 4, 10am

Our SVP of Activation, Craig Daitch, will be discussing social media monitoring to inform media and engagement strategy alongside Digitas Emerging Channels Strategist Jon Burg & Andy Von Kennel SVP at RAPP.

The event sold out in a few hours, so apologies if you missed out on a ticket. We’ll be covering the event here on the blog and Twitter (along with photos and video) so be sure to subscribe for the update.

“The Science of Social Media” – Tuesday, Feb 2, 2.30pm

Converseon has been deeply involved with the Advertising Research Foundation for some time precisely for their scientific approach to marketing, and this event should be no different.

Our CTO Jeff Doak, who steers the continual development of our Conversation Mining and other proprietary technology,  will provide our point of view on how “social psychology, user experience, site design, and an effective marketing strategy play into social media participation”.

He’ll be joined by Ned Winsborough, CI Manager, Consumer Networks at General Mills and highly regarded Yahoo! researcher Duncan Watts. Duncan Watts research with Yahoo! has been widely referenced, in particular Smart Company’s interview with him last year ‘Is the Tipping Point Toast?‘

As with the Converseon event above, we’ll be covering this event in-depth here at the blog with our Director of Social Media Constantin Basturea to provide post-event analysis.

In addition our Converseon team will be attending several other events, so keep an eye out for Paull Young at the New York Times ‘Social Meida and the Haiti Disaster‘ event on Monday and you can have a beer with a number of us at the MediaBistro Tweetup on Tuesday night.

Maureen Heymans, Technical Lead for Google Social Search says:

“We think there’s tremendous potential for social information to improve search, and we’re just beginning to scratch the surface.”

Watch this video to find out why:

We think Google Social Search is only going to continue to gain traction.  Expanding your company’s and employee’s social presence could begin to have a much more meaningful impact on search rankings, that goes beyond social media’s current influence on rankings.

Ignore your Google Profile at your own risk!

In the next two weeks we’ll participate and speak at a couple of important industry events in the US and Europe. Please check them out and, if you’re a participant, make sure you come by and say hi!

The Internet has added new ways for companies to listen, augmenting surveys, focus groups, and other traditional market research. Learn how Web listening is changing, and how you can organize internally in order to discover better insights through listening and take advantage of them to deliver maximum business impact. You’ll also get a sneak peek into what you should expect in the future, so that you’re company is ready.

Damage control in social media: discussing effective strategies for turning negative into positive. In the age of web 2.0, unhappy customers visit social networks and blog about their complaints. It is therefore essential for businesses to have a contingency plan on how to minimise the damage done to a brand during a ‘viral outbreak’.

Rob Key, CEO, Converseon: Social Media from the Inside-Out

In this interview our Senior SEO Analyst Ted Ulle, otherwise known as “Tedster”, the Google forum moderator on WebmasterWorld, explains why your customer’s online conversations are a crucial component to a comprehensive search engine optimization strategy.  Ted also discusses Converseon’s approach to Enterprise SEO and the need for organizational consulting, clearly explained by our Chief Strategist, Mike Moran, in his best selling book Search Engine Marketing, Inc.  The interview took place at last years PubCon Search Marketing Conference in Las Vegas, where Ted is a regular speaker.

How is your social media listening impacting your SEO strategy? Share your experiences and advice below…

Friday, Mike Moran will be speaking at the 2009 Search Insider Summit. At this event Mike will be sharing his knowledge and insights on ‘How to Sell Search to the C-suite.’ His advice will help fellow search advocates develop build buy-in with the upper echelon, prepare their organization for success and understand what it takes to create an enterprise search solution.

Mike will be speaking a 9:00 a.m. on Friday, if your attending the Summit we hope you’ll stop by and say hello

Also, be on the look out for Mike’s tweets from conference.

This week our Converseon team will be representing at two industry events – the WOMMA Summit in Las Vegas and PR Camp NYC.

We are proud governing members of WOMMA and strong supporters of their events and continued industry thought leadership on topics like ethics and the new FTC rules. Our CEO Rob Key and VP Erik Rabasca are both attending the WOMMA Summit in Las Vegas this week, with Rob leading on a panel on Thursday ‘Transforming Corporate Cultures from the Inside-Out Using Social Media‘ alongside our clients Bert Dumars from Newell Rubbermaid and Pauline Ores from IBM.

The WOMMA Summit is one of the best events in the industry, and if you can’t make your way to Vegas (or if you’ve been scared off since you saw The Hangover) you can watch live-streaming video of the sessions for a small fee.

Closer to home this Friday our Account Director Paull Young will be participating in PR Camp NYC. PR Camp is an innovative new event with a focus on interactivity and conversation, and Paull will serve as one of the ‘counselers’ leading a discussion on the integration of digital marketing and public relations. There’s a great line up of speakers and its sure to be an interesting event – tickets are still available here at the bargain price of $200.

If you’re going to be attending either event please look out for us, and if you can’t make them be sure to follow Converseon on Twitter for updates from both.

We’re happy to provide a free download of the new Aberdeen report “The ROI on Social Media Monitoring: Why It Pays to Listen to Online Conversation” – just click through to download a free copy.

Converseon sponsored this report and it has some very interesting findings, including:

• Best-in-Class companies are 2.6-times more likely than Industry Average companies, and 93-times more likely than Laggards, to improve their ability to generate consumer insights that drive new product/service development

• 78% Best-in-Class companies of Best-in-Class organizations, compared to only 8% of laggards, have improved their year-over-year customer retention rates

• Best-in-Class companies are 3.3-times more likely than Industry Average companies, and 82-times more likely than Laggards, to improve their ability to identify and reduce risk to the brand

Jeremiah Owyang recently published an interesting post on ‘The Eight Stages of Listening‘ for an organization, this research not only outlines some of the best practices from companies doing the deepest social media monitoring to date, but also how they’re providing value across the business.

Please click through to download your own free copy of the report (link expires: 01/01/2010)