A brief summary of the Edelman/Intelliseek report

Here's a brief summary of "Trust `MEdia': How Real People Are finally Being Heard. I'm posting this because my one faithful reader was unable to pull up the report. Also, trying to summarize the report will help it become clearer to me.

Before I continue, I do encourage readers to access the report yourselves. Even if the URL in my earlier post doesn't work, I expect that if you google the title the report will come up. The version I have is printed from the online report.

And now for the summary:

The first thing readers need to know is that the report markets itself on the first page as "The 1.0 Guide to the Blogosphere for Marketers and Company Stakeholders." This gives a good sense of the report's agenda, which is to help stakeholders better understand what the report terms "New communications and word-of-mouth marketing."

The executive summary of the report states that an Edelman 2005 Trust Survey found that "peoples' trust has shifted from authority figures to `average people like you.' In fact, 56% of Americans trust only the opinions of physicians and academicians more than they trust the opinions of people like themselves" (2). The summary goes on to note that blogs are both driving and benefiting from this shift.

[A side comment: if folks surveyed knew more academics, they might not have included them with physicians as authorities they still trust!]

The report provides basic info on blogs--information that I'm sure anyone reading The Writing Way already knows. One of the most interesting sections to me was the one on "The Impact of Blogs: Challenges, Opportunities and Changes." Here the report discusses:

--How blogs can serve as new sources of market research.

--How tracking blogs can benefit companies.

--About the development of adverblogs, such as Nike's Art of Speed adverblog.

--How blogs can serve as early warnings systems for companies. (An example of a company that failed to take advantage of this is the bike lock maker Kryptonite, which failed to respond quickly enough to a video posted on a blog that showed how to use a cheap pen to pick these expensive bike locks)

--How mass marketing is shifting to targeted, relationship, and word-of-mouth marketing.

--How blogs in the future are likely to be less text-heavy and more multi-media oriented.

Other sections of the report give what it terms "the new rules of engagement for the blogosphere" and raises "key questions for marketers and communications professionals."

The general conclusion of the report is that blogs are here to stay--and that business, industry, and the professions should take note.