San Francisco – February 2, 2012 – Lithium Technologies, the leader in social customer experience, has appointed Bite Communications as its global agency of record. Bite will drive a full range of communications and thought-leadership campaigns for Lithium, with initial work focused on the U.S. and European markets.

Bite earned the business through a multiagency competitive pitch. The agency will focus on raising Lithium’s profile and helping the company champion the value of social customer experience software.

Emeryville, Calif.-based Lithium has emerged as one of the fastest-growing social media platform providers focused on customer experience. Lithium’s strong customer portfolio of top global brands includes household names such as Best Buy, AT&T, Sephora, Univision and PayPal. Lithium’s cloud-based software helps companies transform the way brands build relationships with their customers and build vibrant destinations for their most passionate brand advocates. With Lithium, brands are able to reduce customer support costs, increase brand advocacy and generate new ideas for products and services.

Michael Paige, Lithium Director of Corporate Communications, said, “The Bite team has really hit the ground running. As a true extension of my team, our Bite colleagues work closely with us to define our strategic direction for communications as we enter a year of even more aggressive growth. Together we kicked off the year with a well-executed and widely covered funding announcement, which is driving a spike in new customer interest.”

The Bite team is headed by Bill Danon in San Francisco and Sophie Brown in London.

“It’s an exciting time to begin working with Lithium as more and more savvy businesses get serious about engaging and empowering customers through social media,” said Danon. “We look forward to partnering with Lithium and helping the company lead the industry through this dramatic shift.”

“We’re proud to add Lithium to our client portfolio, and are eager to help develop a strong point of view for Lithium that will really stand out and drive impact,” added Brown.

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About Bite Communications
Bite Communications is a 250-strong communications consultancy with offices in Bangalore, Beijing, Hong Kong, London, Mumbai, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Shanghai, Singapore, Stockholm and Sydney. Bite combines insight, expertise and passion to help its clients create points of view that shape valuable conversations. Current clients include AMD, Citi, Microsoft, HTC, Parallels, Sybase, Lithium Technologies, Broadcom, Nokia and Trend Micro. Visit us at: www.bitecommunications.com

For more information:

Marcelo Vilela
Bite Communications (US)
+1 415 365 0404
marcelo.vilela@bitecommunications.com

Sophie Brown
Bite Communications (London)
+44 (7919) 098 893
sophie.brown@bitecommunications.com

President Obama doesn’t just live on Pennsylvania Avenue. He’s also been known to call Twitter and YouTube home. Obama made his permanent stamp on the Internet and social media in the 2008 election – the most social US election to date. During his time in the White House, he’s continued his leadership of the online world with regular appearances on YouTube, a vibrant Facebook page and today, a Google+ hangout.

In a follow-up to his State of the Union address earlier this month, today President Obama “hung out” with fellow Americans via Google+ while millions more tuned in and submitted their burning questions. My burning question remains: how do you get picked to hang out with the President of the United States?

Politics aside, if you weren’t one of the lucky folks hand-picked for face time Mr. Obama, what can you learn about PR and social media from today’s event?

1. Promotion: Don’t underestimate the role of traditional media in promoting online events. I read about today’s event on the All Things D website – not on Twitter or Facebook. Blogs and print media are potential drivers to your online event. Know what your audience is reading (beyond your Twitter feed) and find them there.
2. Media training: Politicians are perfect examples for executive media training and Obama is no exception. When asked about a recent report in the New York Times, Obama bridged into his answer by saying, “I think that story was overwritten.” He then went on to answer the question and insert his key messages, as any good politician (or executive) should!
3. Technology: By all accounts, the Google+ Hangout went off without a hitch. The White House tech staff along with YouTube and Google, were polished, prepared and had obviously practiced. Nothing annoys the online audience more than technological issues during a live webcast. Let this be a lesson to prepare for millions of viewers, even if you’re not the President.
4. Authenticity: We talk a lot in social media about creating an authentic voice for your brand. During the Hangout, Obama offered to forward the resumé of an unemployed engineer to a company looking to hire high tech employees. While he may not forward the resumé himself (that would be quite the endorsement!), it’s that kind of personal interaction with your audience that encourages loyalty. Go above and beyond the call of duty for your fans.
5. Know your audience: Addressing YouTube viewers isn’t exactly a Congressional hearing. While the topics addressed in the Hangout ranged from economic policy to education – and a variety of other serious topics – we were grateful for a little comedic relief at the end of our hour with the President. Our favorite Saturday Night Live Obama impersonator made a cameo to ask about the role of comedy in presidential politics, to which Obama (the real one) replied “It reminds me that I’m working for you guys.”

What else did you learn from today’s Google+ Hangout with the President? Get ready for more lessons from campaign central as the race to the White House heats up in 2012.

In case you missed the event, the video should be available for replay shortly.

The audio backing track to the close of the WEF 2012 was the sound of scurrying journalists looking for an angle. There was no outstanding character, story or theme, so the media did the decent thing and squeezed 500 words of wrapper copy out of that fact and filled out colour pieces with celebrity names and party details as if they were gossip diarists for the week.

However, if there was no outstanding take-away, the background thrum was plain enough: the collapse of all (or many) member states in the Eurozone and the possibility of yet more doom and gloom about the global economy. There was much fretting about Portugal following Greece into farce and tragedy although — sensibly, given the fact that the original failure in international banking came as an eyebrow-raiser to “economics experts” the world over — nobody was going out on a limb to make hard predictions.

On the plus side, there was hope that globalisation will balance more local failures in Europe. We all know about China and India (‘Chindia’) or the superset of outperformers that includes Brazil and Russia (‘Bric’), but what of Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey (MIKT) or even Columbia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt and Turkey (‘CIVET’). Potential saviours of capitalism as we know it or opportunity to create daft neologisms? You decide.

This economic elephant was so big that even Prince Andrew couldn’t miss its presence on an expensive table in his Klosters chalet. No longer a formal trade envoy, HRH still managed to host a reception where he mocked the fortunes of debt-laden rivals and suggested that the UK was, by contrast, “open for business”, according to reports. Clearly, when it comes to crass statements replete with heavy-handed humour, the apple in the Windsor family did not fall far from the tree. As the cute picture caption writers of the Daily Mail noted, he then spent six hours “on the piste”. See what they did there?

The lack of starriness was clearly a worry for many writers hoping to build bridges between the business pages (grey men with large bellies wearing suits) and celebrity pages (beautiful people with no bellies wearing sunglasses). Mick Jagger did in the end show up (after saying he would show up and then saying he would not show up) but only for a private meeting. Similarly, Bill Clinton — ‘Davos man’ as the BBC’s Tim Weber described him so aptly — was there, but not at the main conference. Is this the new trend: to attend but not attend? Certainly both Jagger and Clinton are experts at leaving them wanting more. It was enough to have journalists wishing Bono would appear. Almost.

Interestingly, WEF proper was attended by Chelsea Clinton, prompting the thought (here, at least) that another Clinton could yet make a bid for the White House.

So that was another year at Davos as the billionaires and Next Big Things packed up their tents and left a small town to return to its skiing and fondue.

San Francisco – January 26, 2012 – Andrea “Andy” Cunningham has joined Bite Communications as president of North America, a newly created position to spearhead the consultancy’s growth strategy and diversify its client service offerings.

A serial-entrepreneur and tech marketing communications pioneer, Andy has been at the forefront of strategic positioning and brand marketing for Fortune 500 technology corporations such as AMD, Cisco, HP, IBM, Motorola, Oracle and Xerox for over 25 years. She has been credited with shaping and establishing game-changing market categories including desktop publishing for Apple and Adobe; video gaming with Atari and Electronic Arts; and software as a service (SaaS) for HP. Andy also worked with Steve Jobs to launch Apple’s original Macintosh, the company’s NeXT line of “Cube” computers and continued to work with Jobs for several years after he left Apple to form Next and acquire Pixar, the animation film studio.  Her experiences working with Jobs and Apple were chronicled in Walter Isaacson’s recent book, “Steve Jobs.”

In her role as President at Bite North America, Andy will lead the management team in building out an integrated marketing and communications offering to help clients become category leaders, to advance corporate reputation, increase shareholder value and drive sales. Key investment areas she will drive at Bite include building market-focused practice and strategic marcoms services such as insight and analytics, content development and diversified distribution channels.

“Smart marketing is increasingly about enlarging a company’s digital footprint.  Old-fashioned media is still important, but success is foremost about having a data-fueled strategy, creating compelling content and understanding which channels best reach your audience – which is only sometimes the press,” Andy said.

Andy came to Bite from Rearden Commerce, where she served as chief marketing officer for the next-generation e-commerce company that raised $133 million in new funding from partners American Express, Citi and JPMorgan Chase. She conceived the company’s market position and developed the “Empowered by Deem” ingredient brand that will be rolled out by the financial services partners over the coming year.

Before joining Rearden, Andy was founder and CEO of CXO Communications, a privately held brand strategy and communications firm based in Palo Alto. While running CXO, she counseled boards of directors, CEOs and venture capitalists that are influencing today’s technology and consumer industries.  Before that, Andy was founder and CEO of Cunningham Communications, a 250 person PR agency that was acquired in 2000 by Citigate, a division of Huntsworth Plc.

Clive Armitage, Bite CEO, said: “Andy Cunningham has an exceptional track record and expertise in building businesses and elevating clients’ market position, which has resulted in a string of highly successful enterprises and technology brands. Andy brings a wealth of marketing and communications experience to Bite as well as an influential industry network, which I’m certain will be an amazing resource for our people and our clients.”

Bite Communications is also pleased to announce it recently appointed Victoria Graham as vice president for digital solutions, Lisa Worrall as vice president for corporate and corporate social responsibility, Michael Celiceo as vice president for its start-up and entrepreneurial practice and Molly Holtman Stein as vice president of the enterprise practice.  All four are based in San Francisco and focusing on the U.S. market.

About Bite Communications
Bite Communications is a 250-strong communications consultancy with offices in Bangalore, Beijing, Hong Kong, London, Mumbai, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Shanghai, Singapore, Stockholm and Sydney. Bite combines insight, expertise and passion to help its clients create points of view that shape valuable conversations. Current clients include AMD, Citi, Microsoft, HTC, Parallels, Sybase, Lithium, Broadcom, Nokia and Trend Micro. Visit us at: www.bitecommunications.com.

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Press Contact:
Lisa Worrall, Vice President
347-277-2594

lisa.worrall@bitecommunications.com

“You should definitely go. If I were a journalist, I would definitely go. You’d get a lot of stories and everybody is there. Everybody.”

So said Marc Benioff to me back in, I dunno, maybe 2006, at the door of his Soho Hotel, London suite after showing me, a journalist back then, the pitch for the company he had started, Salesforce.com.

Name-dropping, I know, but what impressed me was the enthusiasm — beyond even the thunderous sense of wonder he could conjure for his own product — with which Benioff was promoting the World Economic Forum. And he is a very good pitchman indeed.

That brief discussion backed up my growing sense that the WEF in the small city of Davos in Switzerland (population: 11,000 and some) had become the new nexus for the world’s movers-and-shakers and makers. And since then, the conference has grown to become a shared space for everybody from politicians to pop stars, captains of industry, idealists, visionaries and dreamers… not to mention a smattering of self-publicists.

It is a place where the very biggest questions are asked. Why are the poor always with us when there is so much wealth? What happens to privacy in the internet age? How should we raise and educate our children? Is capitalism good or bad? How do we move about our crowded cities? How do you prevent pandemics and cure the sick? Why did the global banking system fail and how do we prevent that happening again? What are the long-tail effects of globalisation?

Over canapés and cocktails, in meeting rooms and the temporary corridors of power, the great and good swap notions and hatch plans that even the most powerful governments and super-states cannot hope to emulate.

This year Mick Jagger has already cancelled plans to turn up but Lily Cole is there, Bill Gates has called for agricultural research to stop food running out, capitalism has been defended by the Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, and President Obama has pledged to defend and secure the US’s global supply chain.

Of course, as with any talking shop, many good plans will fail and projects peter out, even when their merits are acclaimed by the world’s most powerful men and women. But Benioff was right: it has become the planet’s most important conversation and, even if you can’t get there in person, it’s not to be missed.

Video will be increasing important as bandwidth grows and video is increasingly available on mobile devices.  The trend will encompass both short clips and longer feature content on YouTube, Chinese video-sharing site Youku and others, as well as interactive video communications via Skype, Facetime and other applications.  And video will remain a valuable search strategy, since video content is 53 times more likely to get a page one Google ranking than text.

S-commerce and M-commerce will become significant sources of online sales, as people become both more comfortable with being offered chances to buy products and services in social media and on mobile, and as the technologies develop to make online purchases faster and easier.

A much larger percentage of mobile users will be smart – smartphones will have deeper and deeper penetration, and that will open up a larger universe for marketers to do larger scale and sophisticated mobile marketing.  Now only 19% of handset owners in Asia Pacific have smartphones (compared to the North America’s 63%). Handset costs will drop and feature phones will begin to be marginalized.  And Microsoft Windows Phone 8 will likely gain users even as Apple iOS and Android continue to grow.

There will be some interesting consolidation reflecting market shifts, convergence, and the changing dynamic brought by increasing use of the cloud.  For example, RIM, maker of Blackberry, may potentially get bought, either by another handset maker looking to control the user base, or by a software/platform company (similarly to Google’s intention to buy Motorola).  Yahoo! may well have a new shape in a year, with either a different structure, new owners or both.

The importance of Apps will decline after a frenzied couple of years of growth and development.  With deeper penetration of smartphones, broadband, cloud computing, and HTML5, websites will have enhanced functionality, interactivity, power and speed.  The need for specialized apps for mobile or tablet users will diminish and apps will increasingly service more as “bookmarks” for highly functional websites, or as ways for companies to generate revenue by selling premium apps.

Will my predictions prove correct or just dragon’s breath hot air? Let’s check a year later.  In the meantime Kung Hei Fat Choi!

The arrival of interesting internet-connected TVs at CES had me thinking that, for what’s supposed to be a very fast-moving sector, the technology industry can shift very slowly indeed. Consider this: the PC, TV and internet are often cited as the three most important modern developments in the way we consume information and are entertained. And yet, in two decades of trying, nobody has come up with a good way to combine all three phenomena.

CES: The time for the smart TV must be nigh

The internet on the PC works great if you have broadband, but TV on the PC is a kludge that works out as enriching an experience as editing a spreadsheet on a smartphone. Similarly, attempts to put the web on TVs have usually been horrible or suffered from severe compromises such as dependence on streamed content. Nobody has cracked the code of making a product that takes all the best features and enhances them through the combination. Instead they go together like boiled eggs and silver spoons — respectively nice in isolation but leaving a nasty when taken together.

For a cocktail of reasons from vendor politics to lack of standards and woeful design fails, that goes for any attempted combination seen so far: so-called ‘smart TVs’ have tended to dumb down the individual component strengths so we’ve been left with an orchestra of related bit parts from set-top boxes to DSL routers, high-quality programme content, huge displays, 3D and multicore processors, all refusing to harmonise except through plug-ins, spaghetti wires and cables. And yet everybody believes there’s a huge market for a device that takes the best from all three capabilities.

The smart TVs at CES suggest we remain at the ‘close but no cigar’ stage but the pace is picking up as rivals anticipate the arrival of the long-rumoured Apple TV. The stakes are so high that no major device maker or platform owner can ignore the action; forecasts are necessarily hazy but an outstanding product would surely become an instant must-have purchase.

After 20 years of Frankenstein attempts to bodge together recalcitrant pieces of the puzzle, the time has come for a device with all the processing power of the computer, live programming strengths of the TV, access to information afforded by the internet and the user interface that can make ingredients improved by the blend. If not now, then the time for the smart TV must be nigh.

Google’s mission is to “organise the world’s information” and it has done a fine job over the past decade or so by bringing order to the web’s trillion+ pages. But the web has changed since Google was incorporated in 1998. The web is no longer static and the content that makes up the internet has been democratised. Instead of a minority updating the internet, now everyone in the world can potentially impact the make-up of the web. The web is now social.

Google's social search could give more prominence to its social network, Google+

So Google has launched Search plus Your World to make its search results more personal in response to the rise of the social web. It wants to do this to make sure the best and most relevant results are returned. The search giant will now include social data from its fledgling social network Google+ to complement search results, complete with information from people’s social graph. Now if someone wants to find information about a car, they will not only get links to pages of car manufacturers, but also comments, pictures and other content about cars from their Google+ network at the top of the page.

There are critics of Google’s move and many say it’s twisting search results in order to boost its own social network. Twitter’s general counsel Alex Macgillivray has been vocal and said it’s a “bad day for the internet”. Twitter expects that its own content will be sidelined and that Google+ will be given undue prominence in search results. But Google cannot index content from Facebook and Twitter as the networks do not allow it to crawl their pages for data.

For many, Google is the gateway to the internet and how they find information on events, their passions and products. So for brands, social search will be important because it adds another factor to the way Google ranks pages for different keywords. We might see some brands being forced to reconsider the importance of Google+ as a social network to reach out to their target audience – because Google has played its trump card to make it significant: search.

In my role as Chairman of the Asia Digital Marketing Association, I recently participated in the keynote panel at the AdWorld 2012 Conference in Beijing, stage by DCCI (Data Center of China Internet). It was a thought-provoking and interesting event, if for no other reason than that I was the only non-Chinese, native English speaker out of the 1,800 attendees! The topic of my panel was connecting with consumers online and opening “Blue Ocean” opportunities in the changing world of digital marketing. The panel included representatives from Sohu, Netease, Tencent and other leading Chinese online players.

A central part of the discussion was about whether the traditional sales funnel is still a valid concept in the digital age. Marketers have longed believed there is a clear customer journey from brand awareness, to interest, to preference, to action (e.g. making a sale) to an ongoing customer relationship (CRM).

With thanks to Kevin Chen and Gordon Li in Bite’s Shanghai office for their input, I was able to address the question as to whether the funnel is still relevant online, and in China.

The key is to realize that the digital world is real – consumers live, search and buy here. I said (through a translator) that the funnel is still useful, although the whole process is much faster, more dynamic, and less linear in the digital age. Marketers must choose the right channel for the their goal; there is no all-in-one approach suitable for every level of the funnel. For example, web portals are the right channel for building brand awareness, with banners and rich media. Lower down in the funnel, to convert interest into sales, marketers need to use analytics to generate qualified clicks, with a lower CPC, that lead the target audience directly to the brand’s ecommerce website. A branding campaign’s approach might be totally different from a lead generation / sales driven campaign, but throughout simplicity is essential. The event organizer came up with the far-from-simple theme “SICAS,” which stands for Sense/Interest & Interactive/Connect & Communicate/Action/Share. As you can see from the diagram, this looks more like an atomic engineering chart than a marketing plan, but it’s an interesting way of looking at the funnel from a new angle.

Today, whether you are an entrepreneur just starting out, or a giant multinational, everyone has access to the same powerful tools to influence every level of the funnel. And although the market is changing faster than ever, marketers now have the capability to capture changes in consumer behavior faster and the tools to adjust campaign execution in real time for maximum effectiveness.

We know the “real world” life cycle of a customer relationship (recruit, segment, convert, retain, and win back). So too in the digital world we can record and monitor every web user’s touch points and make sure that we have the right business model for the one-one-one personalized online marketing environment. Our Bite Shanghai and Hong Kong offices have done some very interesting work in this area, including using e-couponing and sampling to help sell consumer products, as well as driving web traffic to clients’ e-commerce sites. One learning has been that web users are much more likely to share content if there is an incentive attached, such as a coupon, a small gift or chance to win a competition.

As for the rest of the panelists, I have to be honest and say that because I don’t speak Chinese I am not really sure what they said, but I am sure they would agree with me!

Social media phenomenon of the week must be the backlash against Dolce & Gabbana for attempting to prevent ordinary citizens from taking photographs in front of their flagship store in Hong Kong’s Canton Road. Hong Kong’s bulletin boards and online forums have lit up with indignant posts from indignant Hong Kongers railing against this latest excess of big business at the expense of the post-80s generation. The protest culminated on Sunday with a demonstration of hundreds outside the store.

Predictably, traditional media have picked up on the story, with coverage in the Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal and Financial Times questioning the causes and implications. The PR and branding industry has chimed in too, offering a variety of commentaries, including the somewhat questionable assertion that the online backlash is somehow connected to a lack of freedom of expression.

But perhaps this is all a bit more simple. The traditional media has long reveled in “silly seasons” – times of the year when there’s simply little hard news, so wacky stories expand to fill the void. Why can’t social media have a silly season too, when otherwise calm web users get their knickers in a twist over something that – in the overall scheme of things – is a pretty small issue?

Here in Hong Kong, we have three short weeks between western and Chinese new year holidays, so there’s not that much going on at work. Europe appears to have not yet fully returned from its winter chalets to continue to destroy itself and the global economy in the process. The US primary candidates are trying their best, but they are too far away. And our Chief Executive election is a non-event. What else is there?

It is unfortunate for D&G that this issue has been blown out of all proportion. They could have shown just a little contrition. But I suspect they’ll survive, and even thrive. In a week when you can now buy an inspirational Steve Jobs figurine, and Eric Cantona is running for President of France, it’s clearly silly season, after all.