longtailpolitics

I evantually stumbled on the last panel of the European Communication Summit in Brussels in the beginning of this week. I’ll post this im english, because it is just practical.

Today the European Association of Communication Directors holds his annual conference, the European Communication Summit in Brussels in the Residence Palace. That’s were I work and I was just checking the site that I saw that there will be a Web 2.0 panel. Well, since it is alway interesting what communication professionals of Web 1.0 think about the brave new world, I decided to pass by and after a second thought I even took my laptop with me. Usually I’m not that “live-blogging-guy” but anyway today I was feeling like.

On the panel there was Gabe McIntyre, the Founder of Xolo.tv, Corina Cretu, a Member of the European Parliament, Dirk Delmartino, the EU Communication Director of Microsoft, Neville Hobson, the Vice President of New Marketing,Crayon, Pawel Wujec, the Director of Verticals, Agora plus the Moderator, Michael Williams, Chief Editor of Wall Street Journal Europe.

The topic of that panel was “Blogs, Vods and Pods – how the New Media change the rules of the game”. The main impression that I was left alone with after the panel ended, was the fact how few people that are working in the communication business really understand and live the changes that the web brought to their profession. As it was said by Neville Hobson: “Our Jobs are going to change radically. Roles will change. We need to change and we need to evolve…” He seemed to be the only “old fashioned guy” that has understood the basic changes.
Fairly well, there was a lot of talk about blogs and how somebody in charge of communication of a big company should adopt this trend. There was the Spokesperson of Microsoft in the EU that underlined the use of blog within the Marketing Mix. There was Grape from Xolo.tv describing the nerds point of view and being funny. Well, to put it in a nutshell: There was not really something interesting going on. And it is always funny how slowly the traditional big players follow and adapt the changes. When this congress had taken place two years ago, I guess, there wouldn’t even have been a single panel focussing on the topic. Today there was still just one. But I guess in 5 years there will be a whole association centered around PR-Blogging only.

I think this is just the way it will continue. I just wonder if there will be examples soon for companies that embrace the changes and are successful and more competitive than those who do not and loose the game. Traditional PR is still pretty much the way to do it and besides huge players that had a communication desaster here and there because of bloggers, will there be more coming up. Will that stuff get local also? Making your local drugstore with a blog be more successful than the one the doesn’t have one?

This entry was posted on Dienstag, Juni 12th, 2007 at 16:42 and is filed under Public Relation, Blogs, Marketing.