Today’s conversation turns inward and is with Steve Marchant, head of Brodeur Partner’s business-to-business practice. Steve talks about the perspective of the hard-edged business executive in developing and assessing the success of brand communications. Steve, based in Boston, manages many of Brodeur Partners’ largest and most profitable accounts.

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Please join us next week for another Brodeur Partners Podcast

This week’s conversation is with Bill Mount of the firm Drumcircle. Don’t know what a drumcircle is? Find out as Bill walks through his thoughts on creativity and creative thinking. Bill should know. Prior to heading Drumcircle, Bill was creative director at Ogilvy + Mather.

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Please visit us next Wednesday for our podcast with Cleve Langton, head of new business development at Brodeur Partners.

What it is: Launched on April 15, 2008, Facebook Lexicon is a neat tool that allows users to follow language trends across Facebook’s public and semi-public forums or walls. Similar to Google Trends, it offers users the ability to track the popularity of different words or phrases.

What it does: In short, Facebook Lexicon counts the occurrences of words and phrases on profile, group and event walls over a period of time — as far back as 2 years — while creating a trend graph in the process. Simply enter your search terms (up to five) and witness the discussion trends users engage in on a daily basis. A new version of this mapping tool offers the following functions:

Dashboard: provide quick metrics, like number of posters, percentage of posters, number of posts, and user demographics all in one screen

Demographics: breaks down who is discussing a given topic by age, gender, and country. Percentage of Posters shows the percentage of posters in each demographic that mentioned the topic each day.

Associations: Similar to a tag cloud, the “associations” function shows terms that frequently show up in posts with the topics on X and Y axes. For example, the terms “Red Sox” and “Yankees” will frequently occur in posts about “baseball.”

Sentiment: shows the percentage of posts that are positive vs. negative about the topic

Pulse: shows keywords that frequently occur in the profiles of users who mentioned the topic, ranked by how many times the keyword occurs and how closely associated the keyword is with the topic

Maps: shows where people are talking about the topic, with darker colors indicating more mentions of a specific topic per day

What it is good for: In an industry that’s rapidly adopting web 2.0 applications in branding strategies, Facebook Lexicon offers communications professionals the ability to dissect user data from the world’s most popular social networking site.

By pulling data from the wealth of Facebook discussions, Lexicon offers users an insight of what Facebook addicts are talking about. This can be a powerful tool for industry professionals who want to gauge coverage of their product, or that of a competitor, among users.

For instance, the graph below illustrates the buzz generated by both Duke and UNC. As one can see, Duke’s presence on Facebook is slightly higher than that of their tobacco road rival. It is also evident that the majority of online discussions take place during March. I wonder why?

Moving Forward: Overall, Facebook Lexicon has the POTENTIAL to be a must-have for all agencies serious about social media metric tools, but not just yet.

Although Facebook Lexicon does do a great job implementing Google Trend properties into the social networking site, it still has some flaws—all dealing with lack of data. Depending on your search term, you could receive a gold mind of information or the dreaded “There is no data for your query. Please try another term.”

According to Facebook, “A term will only be displayed if there have been sufficient mentions of the term to display results. If a term doesn’t show up in the graph, or if there is a gap, it doesn’t mean that no one mentioned it; it means that not enough people mentioned that term for it to exceed the threshold.”

Another drawback to this nifty tool is that all the neat functions listed above (dashboard, demographic, sentiment, etc.) are still under development. Users can preview this new version by searching one of the 17 predetermined search terms listed by Facebook, but it ends there.

On a comforting note, Facebook Lexicon does go out of its way to protect user privacy by stating that “The system strips out all personally identifiable information so that there is no way to track a mention back to a specific person. No human at Facebook ever reads these Wall posts, and Lexicon does not look at personal messages, invitations or any other private user-to-user communications.”

Final thought: Wall discussions are read by tens, hundreds or even thousands of people (depending on your friends list) and in an industry rapidly merging with social media, keeping track of user sentiment across all web 2.0 properties is a must. Although the new Facebook Lexicon is still under development, go ahead and play around with the current version; you might be surprised at what discussion trends you find about your company!

I’ve never been through bankruptcy. And I hope I never have to.

I have, however, had the opportunity to help a few clients who’ve been forced to to visit the bankruptcy court and later reemerge as something — well — something different.  Some took on a whole new identity.  Others dusted off the logo put a bit of polish on it and moved on.  There were as many different strategies as there were clients.

One thing I know.  It’s wasn’t fun.  *(At least for the company … the advisors had a ball … more about that later.)

So it is with an almost macabre fascination that we all watch the venerable General Motors go through this wrenching exercise made all the more horrible by its sheer size and its association with everything American — good and bad.

For GM, the strategy appears to have a heavy dose of “death to the old GM”.  Here’s how the GM CEO put it:

To those of you who have never tried a G.M. vehicle or have tried one and given up on us, we look forward to the chance to win your business and earn back your trust. Give us another chance. The G.M. that many of you knew, the G.M. that, in fact, had let too many of you down is history. Today marks the beginning of what will be a new company, a new G.M. dedicated to building the very best cars and trucks, highly fuel-efficient, world-class quality, green technology development, and with truly outstanding design.

Pretty harsh.  Almost demeaning.  Did he really need to plead?  Did he need to call out the “old GM” just like Cheney called out the “old Europe” as something to be discarded?

What is your advice to General Motors?  Before answering that question I suggest that you read the Ad Age story on “How Would You Pitch the GM Account?”  It is a quick but fascinating read.   My favorite quote is from John Colman, CEO of the Via Group in Portland who, when asked would you be interested in pitching the GM business now, said …

A near-bankrupt client, a low chance of success, crushing global scrutiny with hands-on government oversight every step of the way?  Of course we’d do it.  That much fun should be illegal.

I love our business.

I’m thinking that the “new” General Motors can best redefine and renew its brand through innovative new media strategies.  Their advantage — they already have a strong social media infrastructure, some excellent social media talent, and some comparative advantage in the field.  More about all that later.

And yes.  They need to make good cars as well.  But the fact is that they do (you just have to find them amongst the ‘not-s0-good’ cars).

More about my social media plan for GM in a later post.

Until then, how would you advise GM on its new brand strategy?

The August 9 issue of The Economist discusses how Microsoft through the hiring of one of the premiere ad firms is planning on striking back at Apple, who of late has been using the computer giant as a punching bag the way Mohammed Ali abused George Foreman in Africa during the memorable ‘rumble in the jungle.’

However, has Apple secretly helped Microsoft by giving the giant an icon everyone can identify with based on Apple commercials? Everyone knows Apple as the hip, trendy 20-something with ripped jeans, an unironed t-shirt and chuck taylors and Microsoft being the corporate tightwad with a suite and skinny tie.

I am part of the Apple camp… I defected from Microsoft in the late ’90s and I wrote this entry on my iPhone while listening to my ipod. I wonder – as the article in The Economist suggests – can Microsoft somehow turn this icon to their advantage?

As PR professionals we’re often confronted with counseling clients on how to deal with their competitors. Do you go after them in the press giving them coverage in some fashion or go after then silently? I guess it just goes to show that even the biggest companies struggle with these very same issues.

It will be interesting to see how the Microsoft camp strikes back.

As PR Pros, we’re often caught in a cycle of sorts when it comes to recommending and pitching outlets for our clients to appear in.  While we are constantly striving to identify new, relevant and exciting outlets for our clients to pursue, we know which pubs are really the “bread-and-butter” and which ones may represent a type of “risk”.

But that doesn’t stop us from trying.  And it shouldn’t stop a communications department within a company from trying to sell a new outlet appearance to the Suits, either.  Even if that appearance may come with being at the mercy of a flag-waving, self-centered, Bill-O’Reilly-inspired egomaniac.

We’re speaking, of course, of the Colbert Report. Did you know the half-hour, late night show is watched anywhere from about 1 to 1.5 million people nightly in a given week, with about 800,000 of those being 18-49 year olds?  This recent piece in the Los Angeles Times paints an interesting picture of what the show does for book sales – and how the show exposes authors to audiences they may never have otherwise reached.

But the show also regularly features “contributing experts” in its middle segment on the hot (or random) topics of the week, segments that may represent excellent opportunities to show off a member of your company that may be the next big industry guru.  Besides reaching that coveted 18-25 demographic, think of all the decision-makers in the older demographic you may be leaving an impression on.  Truly, a rare opportunity to show off your company’s relevance to current events and industry knowledge while simultaneously letting a bit of your corporate personality shine.

So take risks.  Be open.  And who knows – your company may just get Stephen’s next “tip of the hat”.

So, by now you’ve undoubtedly heard that Nintendo has launched the latest incarnation of its wildly successful Wii platform: Wii Fit. NPR’s usually unflappable Steve Inskeep sounded profoundly embarrassed on the radio this morning, as he stood on Wii Fit’s Balance Board and protested to his interviewee: “but you have to understand. I come from a part of the country where people don’t swivel their hips.” Forbes.com reports: “It’s a deceptive piece of technology that turns the monotony of exercise into a charming game.”

I’m all for a mass audience achieving BMI nirvana with a videogame. But what really got my attention is a recent conversation with an “e-patient” I’ve come to know as I’ve nurtured our emerging Patient Wisdom™ platform over the past year or so. E-patients are a growing, Internet-savvy cohort (over 50 million in the U.S., according to Jupiter Research), who are sharing valuable information and experience as they navigate the healthcare system and manage chronic or serious conditions.

It turns out my e-patient friend, who has multiple sclerosis, discovered the fitness benefits of the Wii months and months ago. Even if you have very limited mobility, she tells me, the motion you engage in in almost any Wii game is great for balance, upper body strength, hand-eye coordination – all important to MS patients. Some innovative rehab hospitals have actually integrated the Wii into their therapy programs, more often as a result of word-of-mouth or other viral buzz than an article in any peer-reviewed journal.

Will Nintendo ever build a marketing campaign around wheelchair-bound gamers? I’m not betting on it, at least not yet. But I never cease to be impressed by the wisdom and creativity of patients seeking to improve their quality of life, and the power of the Web to spread the word.