The number combines a series of in-depth interviews with the most prominent names in the industry to captivate their readership with the latest innovations, insight, and leading edge developments available in the market today.

Some renowned names that came forth in this November Special include MySpace, Microsoft Advertising, Dada, Google and of course, our very own 77Agency.

After having attended the IAB Forum which took place this 5th & 6th of November in Milan along with our 77Academy students, I wanted to share with you the bits and bolts of one particular conference, dedicated to Web 2.0, led by industry leaders, Yahoo!, MySpace and Tag Advertising. One of our 77Academy students, Zsuzsanna Racz, brightly summed things p for us in the following post.

IAB Forum Milan: WEB 2.0

First up was Giusy Cappiello, Tag Advertising’s Sales Director, which operates oneBlog, the first Italian technology network. The agency has recently launched blog advertising for Volvo’s XC60 to invite people for on-the-spot test drives and open Q&As sessions with industry experts.

This new way of communication between business and interested users, however raises some concerns. If users are free to comment on a product, the company might end up with bad reputation. And here comes the evolution of the web: moderating the comments to control there is no one who is offensive, which brings us back to one of our previously discussed topics, online reputation management.

The next up was Lorenzo Montagna, Commercial Director Yahoo! Italy,  who discussed “a successful case, where knowledge, commercial communication, people and brand grow together”. Today the company offers information and communication (portal, search), personalization (My Yahoo!) and sharing (Y! answers, flickr and delicious) to its 550 million users. Montagna presented successful cases of businesses advertising on user-generated sites.

In its early days, Flickr, for instance, display only textual advertising in order not to be invasive. Today you can find photography-related banners, e.g. Canon’s new model. He also discussed how businesses can make the best out of Yahoo! Answers, where you receive the answers to your questions two hours later. For example, by having a dedicated group of creatives assigned specifically to tackle Q&A’s on a specific subject or industry, as Johnson & Johnson did with regards to the pregnancy and parenting topics. But why the hamster?

And last but not least, Francesco Barbarani, Country Manager for MySpace presenting “new scenarios to communicate with users” where he promised not to talk about his company too much, however, we couldn’t help hearing about the 117 million current MySpace users and the 5 million active bands that are in it, plus the fact that they are the second largest video sharing site after YouTube, where 2/3 of the videos are seen on the users’ profiles.

Here’s the message for you: instead of intrusive monologues try to create an exclusive dialogue with potential consumers. People don’t want insensitive advertising, they want companies to get in the cosumer’s shoes instead and give them what they want and like to hear.

This is what web 2.0 offers you.

(Image credits : IAB Forum 2008 Photo Gallery)

The increasingly integrative focus of marketing communications can be attributed to the notion of synergy. The marketing mix may be composed of different, isolated elements but all of these individual components are working towards achieving a set of common objectives, such as increasing market share and sales.

They therefore need to be considered in conjunction with one another, fragmented pieces that can be brought together to create a more coherent picture of success, i.e. the 2 + 2 = 5 phenomenon.

But where does digital marketing fit into this picture?

Shimp (2000) defines IMC as ‘An organisation’s unified, coordinated effort to promote a brand concept through the use of multiple communication tools that ’speak with a single voice’.

However, to conceptualize the internet as a single one of these ‘tools’ would lead to belittling its actual significance. Nowadays, linking both online and ‘off-line’ communications in a complementary fashion is imperative to reinforce the generic brand message and assist in facilitating the creation of a unique market positioning.

Moreover, the current financial turmoil lends itself to the adoption of a more performance based marketing approach akin to the digital arena.

Economic turbulence has caused a fuelling of online marketing spend, with a new report by Rackspace claiming that many companies intend to spend the majority of their 2009 budgets online. In this sense, while other industries suffer, digital marketing may be one of the few sectors to boom in the downturn.

The new Gmail lab applet helps you test whether you are sober when you are trying to send an email, by giving you simple math problems. Look here:

By default it works on Friday and Saturday night between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. but you can turn it on at any time of day. If the party people are not able to solve the math additions and multiplications with one digit number (or even three digits, depending on the level of difficulty selected), the email will not be sent.

Get some sleep and write again in the morning – hopefully with a clear mind.

Gmail offers solutions for workaholics as well. The applet called Email Addict tries to save those users who are close to be driven crazy by the long hours spent writing emails. When you enable it a link appears in the upper right corner of your explorer. You just need to click on it and it blocks your screen for 15 minutes and suggests you to “take a break, get some real work done, or have a snack”.

Gmail Googles and Email Addict together with other 11 experimental features were built in order to improve email user experience and provide its users with the best content possible. After trying these new functions you can send feedback to Gmail, explaining how the new applications saved your life.

As you already know, our 77Academy was present at AdTech London with a stand next to Epic Advertising, so a group of us headed over to the city to represent our premium, fast-track new media training program.

The first day at AdTech was intense. Buzz was massive, there were people everywhere; marketers, managers, CEO’s, directors, entrepreneurs, sales people, promoters, even gladiators wandering the AdTech grounds.

Our 77stand looked impeccable and we had a huge flow of people coming over wanting to know more about our training courses, asking, requesting, signing up!

Below are some images of the AdTech experience so you can get a glimpse of what our stand looked like, the crowd- the atmosphere.

Also, check out this streaming by Silverstream which shows a brief rundown of what the first day at AdTech was like. (I’m also on the video :-) )

77Academy will be participating as an exhibitor at this year’s AdTech in London on September 24th and 25th.

If you’re around the London area next week and going to AdTech, stop by our stand #161 where we will be featuring our fast-track training program for businesses looking to expand their new media marketing team and in the search for new talent, fully equipped with the latest media tools and technologies.

Come and check out what 77Academy can do for your business and learn more about the resourceful modules, hands-on practical experience and one-to-one tutoring sessions we offer our 77Academy students to develop the necessary skills to run effective online marketing campaigns across the full range of media channels.

And this invitation is for you!

If we look around, there is nothing to worry about climate change: from oil producers (remember the Shell ad?) to car manufacturers, everyone is green.

This colour appears to be the most fashionable over the last three years because it has been the topic of discussion of all the PR services at multinationals. However, no one can make a business evolve to sustainable development in such a short time, but everybody can pretend to do so and then greenwash its consumers.

The term “greenwashing” was coined by Jay Westerveld in 1986 to describe the false claims of the hotel industry. Greenwashing applies when a company falsely claims that its products or practices are 100% environmentally friendly and use this assertion as a means of differentiation to win the trust of consumers.

TerraPass, a US based environmental marketing agency, published a report last year titled “The Six Sins of Greenwashing”. According to this report, “all but one of the 1,018 products reviewed committed at least one of the Six Sins of Greenwashing”. The website Good Guide goes even further by providing “information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of products and companies”. These two examples symbolize the rise of well informed and empowered groups of interest that can destroy the credibility of a company.

In this background, the media industry has to go green, but can do it progressively by avoiding the trap of greenwashing. The Zero Emissions/Zero Waste target is the ultimate goal, but before reaching this ideal you can take several measures, the most original one being -greening your website-.

Has it ever crossed your mind your own website is a source of Co2 emissions?

Carbon-Neutral-Website and Terrapass offer you the possibility to offset the emissions of CO2 of your website based on the consumption and the location of your servers. CO2stats goes one step further in the calculations by  taking into account “the greenhouse gas footprint of visits to your site, based on locations of your visitors and servers, computer types, window and monitor sizes, local fuel mixes, download sizes and times”.

The use of carbon offset is only a part of the solution that does not prevent you from taking more crucial measures. Be oblivious to it… and you become a greenwasher.

Owning a TV channel was out of reach for the vast majority of people, except for Silvio Berlusconi- likes. However, the internet today enables you to become a TV mogul easily and at no cost. Over the last two years, several online live broadcasting tools have appeared and have triggered the creation of thousands of channels by internet users.

Who’s who?

In the end, what it all boils down to is having a broadband connection, a web cam, a mic and some imagination to produce your own content. Having all of the above you can then broadcast from the operator’s website or export your video onto your blog, personal page, corporate website, etc.

Justin.tv, UStream.tv and Mogulus are three of the main actors in this industry, the first one having over a million members. Kyte and Qik differentiate themselves by offering the possibility to broadcast from your mobile phone, a functionality that greatly enhances the reactivity of this medium. There is plenty of room for growth especially since YouTube announced it will not move to live broadcasting. However, this sector is still in its infancy because all the protagonists are till looking for a valid and sustainable business model.

So what is the potential for marketing use?

Above all, it is important to keep in mind that it is a cheap and easy tool to use that can reach a massive online audience. Firstly, its nature makes a perfect fit into a viral marketing campaign because you can “spread the word”. Secondly, due to the community dimension of this tool, marketers can use it to detect new trends and behaviors, consequently adapting their marketing campaigns to customers. Thirdly, a brand could have its own TV channel or encourage its customers to develop a program regarding their products.

TV Channels biased?

A TV channel is a double edged sword that can either impact your sales or perhaps damage your image. But it is a tool that marketers can no longer ignore, in the end, marketing is all about controlled-risks, isn’t it?

One problem with current social networks is that they require us to build social networks and interact with our ‘friends’ within the world built by the social network architects. These walled gardens may soon be a thing of the past as Google looks to open up the social web and let users interact with friends from any social network on the web through Google Friend Connect. With Friend Connect users will no longer need to create new accounts or build new friend lists when joining a site with a network application: They can simply socialize with their friends from their current networks on this one very site.

Social Web Concerns

Google’s main focus, as claimed by Friend Connect designer David Glazer, is to ensure that users are in complete control of their data. Google will not store any data retrieved from the users existing various networks when they log in to websites that use the application. As it is early days for Friend Connect, Google is still being very cautious about which sites they give permission to use the code.

Socialize My Site

Friend Connect has also been received as a very easy-to-use application for site owners. All that needs to be done to add the application to an existing site is to log into the Friend Connect Admin Site enter site details, select the various social apps you wish to have on your site, copy the code, paste it in and voilà you’re connected. There is no need for programming and sites can grab social applications in a matter of hours if not minutes. The different social apps a site owner can add include user registration, invitations, member photo galleries, message postings and user reviews increasing the user interactivity of a site instantaneously.

So Competitive

Current social networks Facebook and MySpace have also released similar services and may currently have the upper hand with strong strategic partnerships with other major websites and control over tens of millions of user profiles; not having an existing social network walled garden may actually have an advantage in the long run. They are effectively trying to create a social network of social networks and break down the restrictions that currently prevent internet users from having a continuous social experience across the entire web. In fact MySpace has joined Google’s Open Social Initiative possibly trumping out Facebook’s from the future of the social web (unless of course they too join this soon-to-be mega network). The fight for the control over the social web is going to be a fierce battle. There is a lot of money and power involved in socializing the web and to be the market leader in connecting individuals and websites on this level will be an extremely lucrative position; we just have to hope it won’t be abused by who ever wins.

Examples of sites testing Friend Connect: My Latest Piece, Guacamole, Ingrid Michaelson, BibleApps.

by Peter Jackson from 77Academy

Google has been hard at work developing their Google Enterprise business. They have advanced their customizable search hardware and software to make them more affordable for the smaller enterprise and to give users a boost in functionality:

Universal Search

Google released the first version of their Google Search Appliance back in 2002 as an internal search solution for businesses. The plug and play box enables employees to search their intranet for internal company information and helps businesses optimize search on their public sites by hosting their searching capabilities; basically it’s Google in a box. This years Google released their fifth edition of the hardware and software along with a vamped up mini-me version for the smaller firm; the aptly named ‘Google Mini Search Appliance’. Both machines allow businesses to search over 220 different file types in one simple Google style search supposedly increasing employee efficiency by lessening the time searching for items as well as increasing user adoption as there will be less need for training. The most affordable mini me version costs $2,990 and holds up to 300,000 documents. The big one is slightly more expensive starting at a cool $30,000 but does hold up to 30 million documents and can search up to 50,000 documents.

Website Search

The mammoth search engine has also enabled businesses to easily create customizable searches for their own websites where the business defines what pages will be searched and how the search results appear (well, text and background colour for now). The business signs up to the service then selects the site from Google’s index that should be included in the search, customizes the search, imbeds the code and then, hey presto, you have your very own Google search on your website. Of course this is accompanied by a bit of Google branding and Google’s very own ads which magically disappear for the princely sum of $100 a year.

Google Apps

Google has also advanced their Google Apps package for enterprises. The package of customizable applications is based around Google’s very own Gmail. Enterprises can use domain names as their Gmail address, instantly chat with contacts and personalize their home pages. A new and slightly scary addition is an email detection function where Gmail detects when an email is about an event and then suggests adding it to your diary.

by Peter Jackson from 77Academy