I love Halloween. Always have, always will. My dad owned a Halloween store and when I was a kid he’d get me out of school early to help work behind the counter. Halloween is a time of nostalgia for me, but today my thoughts turned to Halloween tricks and treats in social media.

So, the tricks first. Companies how try to pretend to be consumers on blogs and in social media spaces. And, organizations that think creating their website and walking away is a solid strategy. (It is if your goal is to become irrelevant and invisible.) And, of course, plagiarism. You have to love when someone presents someone else’s content as their own. (For the record, I doubt I’m the only one who had the idea of writing about Halloween tricks and treats, but I assure you I haven’t read anyone else’s posts!)

More fun are the social media treats. It is awesome when you hear from an old friend via social media. Whenever I have a new Facebook friend request I get very excited about the opportunity to stay connected with a current friend or get reaquainted with someone I’ve lost touch with. And what about news? Social media makes me smarter. I wrote about Social Median yesterday and don’t mean to be redundant, but I really love getting my news this way. And digital social media makes sharing so much fun…I got a request yesterday from someone asking me how I made a Halloween treat they saw on my Flickr page. Offline I might have gotten a request from folks who came to the party, but online I can share my corny ideas with anyone who is as goofy as I am.

And now Trick or Treating is going digital too with the Twitter Trick or Tweet plan. The idea is to virally help people meet other interesting twitters while simultaneously raising money for charity.  I haven’t tried it yet, but will before I do some old school trick or treating later.

The presidential election cycle in the US is unlike any other for many, many reasons. I won’t bore you with my thoughts on politics, but i will say that keeping up with the constant flow of information has been nearly impossible. I knew I had a problem when I’d wake up in the middle of the night and before getting a glass of water I’d refresh MSNBC on my browser, or check the feeds on my blackberry.

Burson-Marsteller recently created an alliance in a great new company, Social Median that is what I’d consider News 2.0. Essentially the site is all about customized news - the topics and sources you deem relevant as well as news from people that you consider to be “newsmakers.” I thought the site was excellent before, but now they have launched a new microsite that is a game-changer as far as I am concerned.

Elections.socialmedian.com aggregates news and user-feeds related to the 2008 US presidential election and allows users to join in the election coverage and discussion. Developed in partnership with The Washington Post and it aggregates both election news and social commentary (twitter, flickr, youtube, facebook, etc.) as well as includes a widget to allow users to participate in real-time election discussions. So, for news junkies like me, I can get all my news in one place, and have a new system for deeming what is important to me based on what people I trust find valuabe. Check it out. And, while you are there, let’s share some news.

The global digital leadership team met two weeks ago in Palm Harbor, Florida (right outside Tampa) to discuss strategy for 2009. Each year, the digital team gathers to review past initiatives and plan for the upcoming year. I was happy to see friendly faces from around the network again: Charlie Pownall, B-M’s Lead Digital Strategist for Asia-Pacific, Desiree Collier and Stephanie Bonnet, Co-Lead Digital Strategists for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Felix Leander, Lead Digital Strategist for Latin America and a new face, William Kemp, Lead Digital Strategist for the United States.

Over the course of three days, our regional strategists presented current market findings, potential areas of growth and possibilities for integrating new products and services. We reflected on successful internal campaigns of 2008, most notably Digital in Action, the company’s hyper-targeted digital training program which was rolled out in nine markets (and counting), and Digital Week, showcasing our digital thinking and our new mobile capability. As we move into 2009, and in light of the economy, digital continues to show its full potential in the marketing communications field. Burson-Marsteller’s digital perspective truly revolves around educating our clients on how digital can improve their brand, why investing in relationships with the client’s stakeholders is more important than a singular transaction, placing the impetus on participating and lastly, creating a persistent presence at anywhere and anytime.

I look forward to traveling to our offices worldwide next year and focus on enhancing our global digital capability, ranging from innovative and relative products for Burson-Marsteller and its clients to demonstrating our wide-array of digital expertise in the ever-evolving market.

What are your plans for 2009?

As Samuel mentioned in the previous post, we had the opportunity to attend WPP’s second annual “unconference” in Athens, Greece called Stream. As I was fortunate to receive a return invitation following last year’s inaugural program, I was really looking forward to connecting with some of the Internet industry’s smartest minds and sitting in on some fascinating discussions. Now, there was only one problem I: trying to attend every interesting session was physically impossible as my laptop, notepad, pen, BlackBerry and digital camera could only go so far. The “Big Boards,” as they were called at the unconference, dictated which presentations were available during Friday, October 3 and Saturday, October 4. I wanted to attend every discussion but needed a figure out a way to do so.

What was I to do?

Like Erin, as I’m essentially connected all the time, I feared the digital jitters. Yet, I put down my laptop, Blackberry, camera and realized: “Now’s the time to go analog and social network with real and not virtual Tweeple.” In order to maximize my time at Stream while meeting participants during the two days, I followed two rules: (1) Meet as many people as possible and (2) write your thoughts in your Moleskine. I met attendees from some of the largest Internet companies in the world to those venture capitalists who were bullish on the current economy. I even had the chance to ask Jason Calacanis why he and Michael Arrington chose Footnote, a social network for the deceased, as a TechCrunch50 Finalist (something I’ve been dying to know since I saw Footnote present a few months ago). His answer: “We wanted to see the crowd’s reaction,” and what a reaction the crowd gave!

As I met more Stream participants, the pages in my Moleskine started to get filled with scribblings of their respective interests: monetizing social media, cultivating innovation, helping European entrepreneurs, the future in 2010, or reducing our carbon footprint with the help of technology. By the end of Stream, I had a sizable amount of notes to review on my plane ride back to New York City. After looking over my notes, I achieved my goal: hyper-multi-tasking and networking with just a pen/paper. “Wow,” I thought, “I don’t have to be connected all the time.”

I was right. In hindsight, I learned and absorbed much more information than I could have while working on my laptop or BlackBerry, always pinging with new emails to distract my thought process. I’d suggest stepping away from email for a few hours and just use a pen and paper to capture your work. You’d be surprised how much you can get done!

For more information about this year’s awesome Stream unconference, browse the Twitter time line.

Following is a guest post from Samuel Degremont, Manager in the Digital Practice in our Paris office. Samuel advises clients on corporate and marketing digital strategy, blogs and social media actions, online buzz creation and crisis management as well as online community management. You can follow his up-to-the minute thoughts on Twitter or read his commentary on the Burson-Marsteller Paris Blog (in French). For other guest posts on the Digital Perspective blog, see here.

I’m back from Stream 2008, where I met WPP’s top digital minds as well as a lot of interesting people including Tim O’Reilly, Jason Calacanis and Yossi Vardi - a lot of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, tech and media participants.

Focusing on how our Digital industry would evolve in the coming years, the “unconference” allowed everyone to participate in discussions related, one way or another, to Digital. See below for a few examples.

Adaptation in Africa

Google’s Anil Hansjee explained the business development logic of the company within developing countries, particularly West Africa (see an introduction to the discussion here). Africa is viewed by Google as a “huge long-term market,” in other words, the infrastructure and usage does not allow Google to market their already successful advertising solutions and productivity tools (including GMail).

For instance, in Kenya, infrastructure in terms of Internet connectivity is rather poor, and equipment rate (computers, Internet access, Internet cafes) is relatively low and lack a presence. Internet business is split among a lot of small players (about 20 ISP with an average of 3000 users). Local content production (which would be searchable, indexable, and of value to local Internet users) is not produced in mass.

Kenyans, however, do connect together with low-end devices such as inexpensive cell phones. From what Anil mentioned, there are more SMS messages exchanged in Nairobi per day than in NYC.

In this difficult local market, Google sees a lot of potential and adapts its global strategy to more practical tasks than “organizing the local content”. Rather, Google empowers local users with tools that allow the development of local use and content.

Google therefore invests time and money with local partners to build a more robust technical infrastructure (for Internet access) and partners with local Telcos to work on mobile (SMS) based solutions: weather forecasts for agricultural needs, SMS banking systems, Classifieds etc.

It’s a sound strategy (relying on local partners and leveraging their local knowledge) which will probably benefit Google in the long term, both commercially and in terms of brand loyalty.

Adaptation in India

Back from Stream, I gave some thought to the SMS solutions available to developing countries, and I found the example of India of interest.

The situation in India (not discussed during Anil’s presentation) is slightly different than what happens in Africa. The subcontinent has a much better infrastructure in terms of mobile carriers, with an estimated 300 million mobile phone subscribers at the end of 2008. Internet use is not much developed, with an estimated 40 million users (2006).

Local players (see below) have adapted to this situation, and offer therefore services for SMS users that allow effective reach and advertising distribution.

• SMS Gushup: This Indian startup allows users to create groups to which they can send SMS updates. As compared to the web-based Twitter micro-messaging service with an estimated daily exchange of about 3 millions messages per day, SMS Gushup sends about 10+ million SMS per day to its groups of users. The “Rockstar” group on SMS Gushup has 99627 members, top groups appear to have 50k members on average…which is enormous. The business model is based on advertising, where every single SMS sent to the group contains a small ad link, which pays for the service. Premium groups are ad-free but require a monthly subscription.
• Google: Finding a more developed infrastructure in India than in Kenya, Google released an equivalent to SMS Gushup called Google SMS Channel, which you can access once logged into your Google Account. The service was just released earlier this month so the number of group members is still low (in the 2000 figure), but it shows how Google adapts to the local markets it operates into.

Adapt, or Perish?

In fact, global models distributed the same way across the world don’t work. It’s the case for cars, it’s the case for a lot of consumers goods. It’s also the case for web-based models, which definitely need adaptation to the technology and uses at work in each country. When there’s not much use, help build it. When usage is different from your primary target countries, adapt to it, or fail.

And its also the case for leading PR and Media companies around the globe.

First, companies have adapted to the growing, exponential Internet use by hiring Digital specialists and allowing resources to internal training (as we do regularly at Burson-Marsteller – see here) – and if they did not follow this adaptation path, they’ll probably be considered less and less pertinent by their clients.

Second, companies need to constantly adapt to their local markets. They’ve done this in in traditional PR and Advertising for decades, and they need to have the same approach towards Digital campaign conception and implementation.

Because every country looks about the same in terms of Internet use at a macro level, it’s tempting for companies to go for global Digital campaigns. However, on a micro level, usage and maturity of the audience are so different from one country to another that adaptation - at least - is mandatory, but it’s even better to have a co-creation with the local Digital specialists.

That’s what we’re trying to build at Burson-Marsteller, with Digital Strategists in charge of coordinating different market areas where our clients operate. The Strategists ensure that a global Digital vision is implemented with an adaptation to local Internet needs and usage.