Web 2.0 Goes Corporate

Jas came across a great whitepaper from The Economist last week about Web 2.0 infiltrating the corporate world. Almost ironic given I sat and listened to Andrew Rashbass from the Economist diss some theories of Web 2.0 last week at Mix07. Much of what he had to say made a lot of sense though.

Anyway, back to the paper. Jas called out some of the most interesting stats so I'll replay them here.

  • 31% of companies think that use of the web as a platform for sharing and collaboration will affect all parts of their business
  • Almost four-fifths of executives surveyed see the sharing and collaboration aspects of Web 2.0 as an opportunity to increase their company’s revenue and/or margins
  • 21% of companies also expect Web 2.0 tools to lower public relations, advertising and marketing costs, while 17% expect to reduce the costs of product and service innovation

This quote in particular was on the money

Blogging,for example, “is very effective from a marketing and branding standpoint,” says Anthony Christie, executive vice-president and chief marketing officer at Global Crossing Ltd. “It’s an extremely efficient, low-cost approach to building your brand.”

“A well-run blog is a way to grow brand equity over time,” says Mr Christie. “It’s a wonderful way for people to realise that there are real people working for these big companies. It will take some time before it makes a difference to our bottom line [but] it is a good motivator for our people. It’s great for them to feel empowered, that’s a great advantage.”

Or even a low cost way to rebuild a brand.

 

These guys could have saved themselves a tonne of money buy reading The Hughtrain or buying Naked Conversations. I guess the Economist logo still has good biz clout though and their Web 2.0 words to the wise a good. Overall I think the paper is a bit optimistic. Either they picked some very tech savvy companies or the UK companies I speak with a quite far behind. Nevertheless, it's one of those papers you can fire to your boss (and his boss) and say "hey, look how far behind we are man....".

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