After reflecting on the BlogWell event held last Thursday at General Mills HQ I looped back on my notes, noticed some key points and thought I’d share. The four (of eight) presentations I saw were General Mills (eats), Walmart (retail), Progressive (insurance) and Ford (stuff that moves). Over all I am impressed with the state of the social space being so young, even in big companies. People are out experimenting and learning. It’s an exciting time. I came away thinking that it’s not all figured out.

While at the time of the event the speaker from General mills, CMO Mark Addicks, did not have a Twitter account he did have a couple key insights to share. Goes to show that being on Twitter does not necessarily equal competence in all that is marketing. Just saying. Not that it would or would not hurt to have one necessarily.

Mark noted that scale is useful when it’s used to leverage opportunity. With respect to the social side of the internet they are finding ways to leverage their scale. I’ve thought for some time that one of the most social things we have as humans is our food and therefore it was interesting to hear that Betty Crocker, arguably the first social brand, has nearly no TV in their media plan and an almost entirely digital solution.

Walmart has some 200 Million customers per week. That, like the other numbers they shared are staggering. I mean, I know they are big, I just don’t think about it much.

The stats about their associates website were enough to perk the room up. The site is not available on corporate computers which means the associates need to access the content from non-work computers! Even so, 90% of their associates login to the site at least once every 10 days. Powerful. It seems reasonable to conclude that there are huge opportunities for most any company to grasp when it comes to connecting with staff! The staff wants it. Will companies provide it?

There was a brief ethics presentation in the middle of afternoon. The key take away is that it’s illegal to pay people for reviews. So, don’t do it. Now that it’s a new space it’s still illegal. This includes being vague about where a review is coming from. Be clear if you’re paid in anyway to say what you’re saying in the social space.

Progressive Insurance will insure most anything that moves. Apparently they are innovators, first to market with a number of “products” recently. I had not herd of them. Maybe I am not the demographic. Regardless the one feature I do remember is their insuring a family pet along with the family while in the car. Interesting.

The key point, to my mind, from this presentation was that with social media you have to find your door in. For Progressive it was/is catastrophe. They reach out to people and help them with information when they need it. They listen and respond as they can. They have all kinds of info on their site and they point people to it and other sources. I find it curious that here Twitter’s mobile characteristics are being leveraged. Seems like a very nice fit for Progressive and a strategy that has offered them a number of critical early wins.

Lastly, the vehicle maker, Ford. They have a number of active campaigns in the wild now. It’s exciting to see the experimentation and learning in social media’s relative infancy. Examples of what they are doing include giving cars to people under different circumstances and asking them to document their experiences and share them publicly. They’re listening, from what I can tell, quite actively from within the social space.

Yet, with all those perceivably “best practices” and campaigns generated by their agencies up, running and producing results I found it interesting that Scott Monty addressed leadership to the extent he did in his presentation. It’s not surprising to find leadership as a dynamic, even a critical one, whenever and endeavor includes people. What is surprising is that this presentation is the first of social media presentations I’ve seen where leadership quality was the key point. Curious.

Social media has been and usually is a bottom up kind of reality. I wonder now as the top of corporations start to notice the opportunities available in the social space if it will become like all the other parts of organizations, namely top down. Or if maybe the social realities exemplified online will play a role in influencing change in the corners of all organizations.

It’s still early. Rise and shine. Let’s be better. Let’s be social.

image via tommy_is