I remember a time when word of mouth used to be this highly esoteric thing everybody feared and nobody could really describe.

Not any longer.

According to this new version of the “Did you know” video, social media is the connection between word of mouth and real money.

25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content. 34% of consumers trust peer recommendations, while only 14% trust advertising!

In the future we will no longer search for products and services…. they will find us through social media, similarly to what is already happening to news.

And if you still have doubts about the power of online word of mouth… check out this wisdom from the # 1 internet content creator in the world (China!).

What was it that  made an attempt to celebrate diversity turn parochial?

I went to see Gay Icons last week-end  and left the National Portrait Gallery feeling both puzzled and disappointed.

The exhibition was put together by ten selectors, including Billie Jean King and Elton John, who were asked to name six people - who may or may not be gay - “whom they personally regard as inspirational, or an icon for them”.
Gay Icons missed a great opportunity to celebrate prominent figures for their roles as advocates of gay rights. Instead, some of the people selected appear to have been chosen only for personal reasons. Awareness of the HIV/AIDS epidemic gets only a few brief mentions.

The exhibition also lacks diversity in terms of nationality. Most of the people in it are either British or American. How sad!

Here is a list of people who were totally ignored but ought to have been part of the exhibition in terms of what they represent as gay icons:

- Greek poet Constantine Cavafy
- German film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder
- Polish painter Tamara de Lempicka
- Spanish film director Pedro Almodovar
- Greek soprano Maria Callas
- American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe
- Italian film directors Pier Paolo Pasolini and Luchino Visconti
- US movie star Rock Hudson
- English novelist E.M. Forster
- American author Gore Vidal

Interbrand’s Chairman Rita Clifton believes that good branding is the only way of generating sustainable value.

I heard Clifton speak at my livery last night about the winners and losers of the international brand world. 

US brands account for 51 of the world’s leading top 100 brands, Germany for 11, France for eight and the UK for only four.

The most dramatic entry into this league has been Google. Clifton attributes its success to the consistency between external messages and internal culture. “It’s no longer possible to look nice on the outside and have an axe-murdering culture on the inside.”

Apple is another winner. Its design has brought humanity to technology. “You just want to lick their products!”
If you are a brand owner, you have to remember three key points: clarity (as to what you stand for), consistency and leadership (to rally people around brand values).

Yang-May and I believe that the interactive web has made it possible for the man/woman in the street to promote their personal brand online the same way celebrities and products do. Web 2.0 has levelled the playing ground. This is one of the main points we will be making this evening as part of our guest lecture at London Metropolitan University.

It’s so exciting! My friend and fellow CWN member India Gary has been included on the Powerlist 2010, a list of the 100 most influential black people in the UK.

Her citation describes her as “one of the most senior black women in UK banking.”

Today, India is visiting 10 Downing Street  with others who have been similarly recognized. The Powerlist is topped by Baroness Scotland, the Attorney General and Tidjane Thiam, chief executive of Prudential.

Awareness of the business case of diversity seems to be growing these days in Europe – also thanks to fierce competition coming from emerging economies. 

One of the main points Bieneosa Ebite and I made on Monday during our talk at the CIPR is that homogeneity leads to blind spots.

Organisations need diverse teams if they want to be able to look beyond the conventional frames of reference and innovate.

If you work in cross-cultural communications, what you want to avoid at all cost is the cookie cutter. 

Koushik Chatterjee, CFO of Tata Steel, gave a great definition of it in a recent interview with McKinsey: “We do these five things, and therefore these five things must be done by everyone.”

His approach to international M&A is different: “we quite genuinely tend to look at an acquisition as a partnership rather than an acquisition”.

“We don’t send planeloads of people into a new company. Instead, we only send a few integrators. That’s been the key interface.”

I particularly like his way of engaging employees from the acquired company, a process he calls “shared change”: “we share and adopt good practices across the organisation through performance-improvement teams…This gives employees in the acquired organisation a sense of confidence that they too have good things that the parent company is absorbing”.

Chatterjee admits that “it takes time to positively influence a large organisation”. But the secret is to build “trust in the sincerity of the shared vision”.

Trust might take longer to establish but once you are there, “things move faster; you don’t have to go around reassuring people”.

Is it for real or not?

Every time I discuss the interactive web with fellow communicators, one of the first questions on people’s mind is “how are we going to convince senior management of the importance of introducing social media”.

I had a great time last week talking to IABC Belgium about International Communications Strategy and the different case studies contained in the book.

My advice to Cheryl who asked me the famous question is to use the information and data available to make the business case for Web 2.0.

While in the West we are still desperately trying to measure the ROI of social media, China has been able to figure out a way to track online conversations and link them to purchase decisions.

According to CiC, the Chinese internet community supports the “most expansive and developed participation architecture in the world”.

The influence of user-generated content (blogs, discussions on bulletin boards, etc.) on the decisions of Chinese consumers has been estimated at 58% while it is less than 20% in the US. 

There are lessons to be learned for communicators.

For example, the same method could be used in internal communications to track employees’ interactions on online forums and assess their attitude towards different corporate initiatives.

(in the photo with me from left to right, Sung-Joo Kim, CEO of MCM Holdings and PAWA Founder & President, Betty Yao MBE, PAWA Co-Founder & Chair of the Management Committee, Mei Sim Lai OBE, Diane Morris, TIAW President and Yang-May) 

Did you know that 2/3 of the world population live in Asia and half of them are women?

Yang-May and I attended the launch of the Pan Asian Women’s Association (PAWA) last night at Asia House.

PAWA is creating a platform for women from across Asia – from Japan to Iran – to share ideas, talk about common concerns and mentor the next generation.

A number of highly accomplished female business leaders these days come from Asia. Thirty five per cent of the 50 top women in world business featured on Saturday in the Financial Times come from the region.

At the launch, I enjoyed listening to Sonia Lo. Sonia was born in Korea and has worked in international finance for Google and United News and Media. She is the founder of London-based Chalsys Capital Partners.

Her advice to professional women is that “pushing a closed door sometimes is not the answer”. Sonia uses self-esteem as her strongest motivator.

I was watching the comedian Lee Evans over the weekend (I am a great fan and … we were born on the same day!).

He was saying how he always prepares tons of notes for his shows only to realise later that they don’t make sense.

I know how he feels…

No matter how often I give a presentation… the Germanic part of my upbringing  always forces me to spend hours at my desk rehearsing again and again…  

When I’ve had enough, I switch off and start thinking of my audience. I once heard that the secret of presenting is loving your audience.

I know it sounds corny…. But it works!

It’s not difficult to look forward to my audience this week.

On Thursday, I will be giving a presentation about International Communications Strategy for the Belgian chapter of IABC.

It was in Brussels that I joined IABC 12 years ago. I served on the local board for a long time. So I am really looking forward to seeing my former fellow board members Lyndon, Sam, Ilze and all the others.

I have started to discuss ICS’s main points on IABC Belgium’s Ning.

As usual, I was asked about the development of internet marketing in Asia. Part of my talk will be about the interactive web in China and how its communities are changing the relationship between people and brands.

You can read more about what Yang-May and I think of internet marketing at DMI online.

The  WB expects the global economy to contract for the first time since WWII in 2009 and world trade is to decline to the lowest level in 80 years.

A trade dispute  has just exploded between Washington and Beijing following the imposition of tariffs on Chinese tires imported into the US.

China’s internet community has gone viral on the topic. And many in the West are thinking. “Isn’t this type of reaction a bit out of date? Given China’s economic power, if they want to sell tires in another country, they can just go ahead and buy a tire manufacturer there. The West has enough broke businesses.”

With the G20 summit opening tomorrow in Pittsburgh, people are wondering what kind of world the aftermath of the financial crisis is likely to produce in the years to come.

The tendency, as we have seen, is to go tribal.

Forbes  is heralding the end of Thomas Friedman’s  ”Flat World” and the beginning of a new “era of decreasing trade”.

I can’t help sensing a strong feeling of hysteria around the whole thing.

Yes, the world is changing. May be much faster than Friedman or anybody else had predicted. But the answer is not to find refuge in protectionism.

Times call for much more creative solutions. Let’s see what comes out of  tomorrow and Friday.

The strangest bit about writing a book is that you lose part of your soul…. It moves on and goes to live a separate life in the minds of your readers.

That’s how I felt on Wednesday night when Yang-May  and I launched International Communications Strategy at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business in the City of London.
Many years of work have gone into the book….. Many conversations in different parts of the world, many hours spent slipping into other people’s shoes trying to understand their ways of looking at the word and telling stories.  It was overwhelming to see it all coming together.

Yang-May and I were also overwhelmed by the number of friends and colleagues that attended our launch.
I would like to thank from the bottom of my heart Diane Morris (with us in the photo), the President of The International Alliance for Women, for all her support and for co-hosting the event. Many thanks also to Arnold Longboy and his team at Chicago Booth for hosting us at their superb venue. The event was catered by Café Spice Namaste. Many thanks to Cyrus, Pervin, Gina and their team for the wonderful food.

And of course thanks to Yang-May  for being who she is…. the best co-author in the world!

Mark Smith of Ipadio.com ran a live phoneblog of the launch. Click here  to listen to our presentation.

Photos: thanks to Nicola Stevens and Diane Morris