The CLF Roundtable on Creative Leadership in Times of Uncertainty

Facilitated by;
Ralph Kerle, Executive Chairman, the Creative Leadership Forum.

We are finding more than ever senior executives are uncertain of what the future holds and are seeking information, dialogue and conversation amongst their peers and stakeholders, customers and shareholders alike. Our Chairman has recently been involved in designing and running a series of highly successful Roundtables for Australia's leading executive education institution and one of Australia's leading IT companies and their clients with the purpose of surfacing an understanding of what is occurring now in their industry sector, what the emergent future might look like and how they might approach that emergent future creatively. The Roundtables consist of no more than 12 people, needs to be in a private dining room and run from 12noon to 2.00pm with the option of an extension when the conversations become interesting as they have - one lasting well into the afternnon. Guests must be senior decision makers only.

If you would like to know more about how these events operate, please contact Grant Crossley on gc@thecreativeleadershipforum.com

Why Big Brands Struggle With Social Media

Social media continues to grow globally in terms of adoption, usage, interest and impact in a massive way. It’s undeniably changing the way that content and information work particularly in terms of the publishing of consumer opinion. This has transformed the way that consumers relate to brands and the way that brands should operate, driving direct interaction, transparency and a more consultative approach. However, we still operate in a system defined by the old media world and consequently big brand involvement is still in the main tentative and sporadic. From my experience of trying to get big brands to embrace the social revolution, there are a number of reasons why they have yet to embrace the real opportunities that involvement can deliver: 1. Social Media is often viewed as just another marketing channel: It is of course so much more

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10 Secrets For Creating Viral Content

I’m frequently asked the question “how exactly do you create content that goes viral?” I always try and explain that while it isn’t lightning in a bottle, it isn’t something exactly formulaic either. I’ll usually start answering the question by explaining whether you’re creating blog posts, images, videos, online marketing campaigns, web apps - you name it, it’s really all about the content. But all other things being equal, there is still a ton of great content out there you’re competing with. How exactly do you get your idea to replicate in the petri dish of the web and accelerate out of control between real users? I’ve been successful at creating viral content both with posts on my own blog as well as with client projects including web applications, community building projects, new products, etc. I’ve also created plenty of stuff that didn’t go anywhere, which is all part of the process. The web is the ultimate scratchpad for communications professionals. If you’re not failing, you’re not succeeding either. There is not necessarily a science to viral, although I’ve been able to reproduce it enough times to have picked up on a few secrets. Today I’ll share just 10 things I’ve learned from personal experience creating viral content:

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Crowdsourcing : The new weapon of cyber war

The power of thousands of individuals acting en masse has become a weapon of war. While politicians, revolutionaries, and totalitarian governments have long known how to send crowds of protesters to the streets to parade in front of the television cameras, the new trend is to mobilize forces over the Internet to engage in the equivalent of mass online protests. In some case the results can be humorous. In others, not. Remember Mr. Splashy Pants? In an attempt to garner sympathy for its cause Green Peace posted a poll to choose a name for a whale. A call to the members of Reddit , the hugely popular social bookmarking site, was put out. It read: Greenpeace are having a vote to name a whale they have ‘adopted’. All the options are the names of ancient gods of the sea. And then there’s ‘Mister Splashy Pants’. Please vote ‘Mister Splashy Pants’.

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Crowdsourcing through Knowledge Marketplace

SAP recently decided to solicit ideas for business-friendly social networking applications from a crowdsourcing platform, Innocentive. SAP got 1,239 responses, which it is currently evaluating to find the best proposed solution. The experiment went so well that SAP submitted another idea to crowdsourcing, this time in search of a vendor-independent way to handle Web services errors, and got a viable solution by December. When SAP debuts its next social networking functionality or Web service error-handling capability, odds are some freelance developer far from Walldorf came up with some of the code. This marks a true revolution in the evolution of service delivery, which we visualize as follows:

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