The video below is a great (and short) interview from the excellent MyRagan (an online PR community generated by Ragan Communications, a US based PR consultancy). It features Adam Brown, Coca-Cola's Group Director of Digital Communications, discussing the PR strategy and benefits of 'Expedition 206' - Coke sending three of their brand advocates to all 206 countries in the world where their product is for sale. Watch it in the video clip below, or if you are reading this update via email, then head over to MyRagan's website directly to view.

It doesn't discuss the PR measurement side of the activity in much detail however. That's where maybe the PR community and I can help tomorrow (Tuesday). I will be the guest of Shonali Burke answering questions on all things relevant to PR measurement in both the traditional and new media. Fittingly I will be doing this via a Twitter chat. Shonali's #measurepr has grown to be a tremendous success with regular chats on alternate Tuesdays. Previous guests have included the excellent Sean Williams of CommAmmo and the indomitable Katie Paine of KDPaine and Partners.  

Shonali's 'Measure PR' twitter chats are always entertaining and well attended. The event should attract many leading lights from social media PR from across the globe so if you're looking for an international perspective on the latest PR measurement issues and trends, why not join us on Twitter at 5-6pm GMT (12-1pm Eastern Time, 9-10am Pacific Time).  Be sure to follow along in realtime either in MyMetrica, Tweetdeck or Tweetgrid and don't be shy, join the conversation  

Finally, if you would like to direct message me, please be sure to follow me first - find me on twitter at @richardbagnall.

I hope to see you there.

I'm in San Diego over the weekend for the 2009 PRSA International Conference - the largest international PR gathering in the world. Many of the thought leaders of our industry our here to share their thoughts on the future of communications, to teach, to learn and of course to network.

The networking began in earnest last night with a tweetup named in honour of surely one of the world of PR's leading networked communicators Shonali Burke. Shonali used to run the PR for the ASPCA, the USA's equivalent of Britain's RSPCA where her leadership and forward thinking on the importance of measuring public relations won her many accolades.  

Shonali now runs her own consultancy in Washington DC and counts among her clients the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation. #shonalitweetup allowed me a great opportunity to chat to some fascinating people also attending the conference.

Well worth following on twitter and in attendance last night were: 

• @shonali - Shonali Burke
• @leeodden - Lee Odden
• @swoodruff - Steve Woodruff
• @rockstarjen - Jennifer Wilbur
• @kamichat - Kami Huyse
• @vargasl - Lauren Vargas
• @pryouready - Ashley Houghton
• @dfriez - Debbie Friez
• @lisasommer - Lisa Sommer
• @natalie_joy - Natalie Joy

and many, many more. Log in to Twitter and seach for the #shonalitweetup to see who else was there.

The conference gets under way in earnest today with a keynote speech from Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post.  The Huffington Post is firmly in the firing line of traditional media owners like Rupert Murdoch who consider that it is plagarising their premium content.  Her comments and views on these issues and the future of our industry are bound to be interesting.  

I'll be hoping to update via our blog, but for real time updates form the conference, follow it's hash tag on twitter #prsa09. If you would like to follow my time here with a focus on PR measurement and the future of PR generally, then please follow me too @richardbagnall for my personal updates. 

Incredibly a year has passed since I attended the last IPR Summit on PR Measurement. This week will see me heading off to New Hampshire once again to meet many of my industry peers to discuss best practice in public relations measurement and evaluation. New Hampshire at this time of year is incredibly beautiful as shown in this great photo by taken by Katie Paine.

2009 has yet another jam packed programme mixing work shops, case studies, panel discussions, the latest from academia / thought leaders, the Jack Fenton Golden Ruler Awards and of course a significant focus on social media measurement. The full Summit programme is available here.

I have been asked to represent Metrica's views in a panel discussion entitled "An In-Depth Look at the Strengths and Weaknesses of Advertising Value Equivalency". On the panel, I will be joined by Dr David Rockland, Partner and MD of Ketchum, Dr David Michaelson, President of Echo Research and Angela Jeffrey, Vice President Editorial Research at VMS.  Our panel will be moderated by Dr Donald K. Wright, Professor of Public Relations from Boston University.

David will be giving a short presentation on the subject in advance which I am sure will be as good as his excellent talk on the subject back at AMEC's First European Summit on Measuring Public Relations back in June this year.

I know what I shall be saying about Metrica's views on AVE's of course already but can't spoil the event by saying too much in advance.  But what about you? What would you say about AVE's if you were in my shoes?  I'd love to hear your thoughts and would welcome all of your views in the comments section below.

Finally, it's not too late to book your ticket and join in the debate on the metrics most appropriate to media evaluation. Will we see you there?

There have been a number of interesting developments recently as search and social media continue to work closer with each other.

Microsoft's Bing, trying to steal a march on Google, recently launched a beta of BingTweets - a search engine that blends real time twitter results with Bing's web search too.  It's a very useful site.  

A search for example for PR Measurement will pull up Metrica in Bing's web search, but wont necessarily mention us in the Twitter feed.  Search for PR measurement jobs however and Metrica appears both in Bing's web page results, as well as the twitter feed showing the chatter around our search for a great sales exec (full job spec in case you're interested: Metrica sales exec role).  

Bing's approach blends a decent web search with the immediacy of a twitter search. Bringing the information together definitely beats having to do a manual search on both a web search engine and twitter.

The benefits of blending search and social networks are not lost on the major search engines. Traditional search is already starting to feel like yesterday's industry. More than ever people are looking to find relevant and up to date information from conversations that are happening now.  

As a result, all of the major search engines are looking for ways to encourage and engage on-line communities. Yahoo has recently redesigned it's homepage to embrace web 2.0 style personalised content. (Incidentally in another sign that the old world is changing, it has also recently become the last of the major players to announce that it will no longer be supporting the meta tag 'keyword' in its search results).

Google's not resting on its laurels either.  As Jeremiah Owyang explains, rather than trying to create their own social network portal (like Facebook or Myspace), Google is looking to envelope the social web with Google profiles, Gmail, Sidewiki (already covered on Metrica's Measurement Matters) and Wave. Instead of having their own URL, Google will be enabling every online activity to be a social one run through their own platform. That said, early reviews of Wave from it's intial beta users are that it's 'impressive but useless."

Back to Bingtweets, and some people have noticed that in the last 24 hours it has started to behave a little erratically from a stability point of view. This has coincided with Twitter also having issues which has suggested that behind the scenes, Bing and Twitter are about to sign a major search deal. This would make sense to Bing as it looks to make its search more relevant and 'real-time' and would make sense for Twitter too as it continues to look for ways to monetise without irritating its army of users with adverts. Watch this space.

Either way, it's just one more wake up call to the PR industry that it's time to embrace new challenges and techniques as social media continues to change the way public relations is planned, implemented and measured. 

In the UK everyone has an opinion on Marmite.  (A yeast based "nutritious savoury spread that contains B vitamins, enjoyable in a sandwich, on toast bread or even as a cooking ingredient" for those of you who may not have heard of it).  You either love it or hate it. The marketeers at Marmite know this all too well and for a number of years now have run quirky campaigns playing up to this.  

Marmite's homepage even directs visitors to one of two main areas - for those who think it's 'perfect' and for those who think it's 'horrid'.

Now it seems Kraft, the makers of a similar Australian product, Vegemite, are discovering for themselves the polarisation that these types of spreads seem to generate. Earlier in the summer, Kraft held an online competition to name their new 'cheesy' (flavour not style!) spread.   The result was iSnack 2.0

I'm not sure how this name came to be the one selected from 48,000 entries, but it wouldn't need a focus group to realise that this is a name that was likely to cause a disconnect with consumers.  After all, it's a spread, not a web application!  Apparently, Kraft felt that "the winning entry was chosen for its personal call to action..."  Despite more than 3 million jars of the new product being sold in quick time, the public backlash was so vociferous - largely through social media forums - that Kraft has announced it will be changing the name.

This time they have embraced Web 2.0 techniques and, harnessing social media and viral communication, have run an online poll with a small selection of more suitable names for the public to vote on.  The results are going to be announced tomorrow (Wednesday 7th October).  Will the public love it or hate it?  

It strikes me that either way its launch has been a success.  It's created an awful lot of publicity for the new product and what must be Vegemite's ultimate measure of success and ROI - sales - don't seem to be doing too badly as a result.  As Tom O'Donnell from the Australian Institute of Sales Marketing and Management says: "they couldn't have bought the advertising space which the interest in this name has generated''.

As for me?  Well I still prefer Marmite.