An interesting meeting today with Kevin North at Sentiment Metrics, which has developed an online tool for tracking social media conversations. Many organisations are eager to get into Twitter and Facebook, and yet few have an efficient way to learn what is being said about them online. Sentiment Metrics think they have the answer, with their system that tracks all the social media noise and helps you find the bits that interest you. Although ‘separating the wheat from the chaff’ takes careful analysis by someone who understands what an organisation cares about (e.g. their PR agency), the system offers potentially huge time-savings on monitoring and access to a far more complete picture of how a business is regarded. Companies like Regus, HSBC and Sony have already signed up – expect many more to follow.

For us, the highlight of this week’s Business Travel & Meetings Show (other than Business Traveller magazine’s ‘Cellars in the Sky’ wine tasting, obviously) was a workshop on social media. An expert panel of speakers gave interesting insights into the importance of understanding what customers are saying online. However, given that we were all attending an essentially business-to-business event, it was really interesting when one audience member asked the killer question: “Have you ever seen social media work well in a B2B setting?” Cue slight embarrassment from the speakers and a general consensus that, no, they had not yet really seen a compelling argument for, or best practice case study of, social media in this context. (more…)

In a world where many business leaders seem to fear rocking the boat, it was a rare treat yesterday to hear a man who believes plain speaking is often necessary. (more…)

Yves Weisselberger talking at KDS Now! 2011

To Paris this week for ‘KDS Now! 2011’, the inaugural travel and expense conference hosted by our client KDS. The event was a ‘palpable hit’. An audience of 380 T&E professionals from across Europe turned up to hear about KDS’s latest technology (including the Executive Suite, which promises to finally get CFOs excited about seeing a return on investment from their travel spend) and case studies of how businesses such as Airbus succeed in getting ‘more for less’ from their travel budgets. The day was given added vim by ubiquitous travel guru journalist Simon Calder, who kept the audience entertained throughout as host and speaker.

To see photos from KDS Now! 2011 click here.

Last night, 80:20 spent an evening with the production team of BBC Television’s Fast Track travel programme. Fast Track is the Beeb’s most-watched travel show and has an enviable audience demographic, which is dominated by affluent senior executives and professionals. The evening gave a chance to hear directly from the editor on what the programme is presently looking for from companies and their PRs. A big thank you to the Fast Track team, who gave a very helpful and thorough briefing and were most generous with the legendary BBC plonk.