Winners of the 2011 Forrester Groundswell Awards: Consumer International

This is our last installment of the Forrester Groundswell Awards: the International division, for entries from outside North America. If you think the US is where all the action is in social applications, you're way off. As you'll see from these entries, there's innovation happening in Singapore, Brazil, The Netherlands, and all over Europe that's arguably beyond anything we've seen in the states. While there is plenty of diversity here, one agency -- DDB -- had an awful lot of winners and demonstrated a competency that other agencies should at least take a close look at. These winners are being announced today at the Forrester's EMEA Marketing & Strategy Forum.

Listening (Consumer International)

Winner

Accor Manages Online Reputation and Customer Service by Sythesio

Synthesio created a tool and system designed to track the online reputation of 12,000 of Accor's and competitors' hotels worldwide in 8 languages. This included a single global dashboard, 40 country-specific dashboards, and 4,000 dashboards for individual hotels with detailed data on 30 topics for local geographies. As a result, the volume of positive feedback online increased by 55%, online sales are up by double digits, and Accor now better understands what its customers want and can identify. Accor has also improved training and employee rewards based on this listening program.

Talking (Consumer International)

Finalists

Cisco Flip Your Profile by DDB and Tribal DDB Singapore

McDonalds Nuernburger Social Product Launch by Neue Digitale/Razorfish GmbH

Audi Q3: Social Car Launch on YouTube by Neue Digitale/Razorfish GmbH

Smirnoff Bangkok Remix by Winderman Bangkok

Winner

KLM Tile & Inspire by Tribal DDB and DDB Amsterdam

KLM’s social program asked social network members around the world to convert their profile picture into a Delft Blue tile holding their face and their personal inspirational words, to be painted onto an airplane. The animation film around "Tile and Inspire" reached half a million views on Youtube. After three weeks, more than 120,000 tiles were created in the campaign's 8 key countries. In key markets KLM's brand preference rose from 15% to 19%. And the tiled plane itself keeps drawing interest on airports around the world.

Energizing (Consumer International)

Finalists

Black Eyed Peas Roadie by DDB Brazil

Cara a Cara by DDB Brazil

The Morning Line by KalkaHensel

Winner

How the Marmarati Launched Extra-Old Marmite

To launch the extra-strong variant of Unilever’s breakfast spread Marmite, We Are Social invented the Marmarati, a Victorian-style secret society of super-fans. These Marmarati recruits posted 150 blog posts and 6,000 tweets, reaching about 2.4 million online readers. 67,000 people voted on the entries on the Marmarati web site. Most importantly, the campaign generated $600,000 in sales for the first six months, at only 20% of the cost of a typical product launch.

Supporting (Consumer International)

Winner

TOK&STOK Twitter Manuals by DDB Brazil

The Tok&Stok furniture chain in Brazil wanted to find the greenest possible way to provide instructions for its easy to assemble furniture. They used Twitter: manuals were reduced to 140 character tweets with a link to the assembly diagram. Consumers simply have to look for the hashtag with the name of their furniture and follow the instructions.

Embracing (Consumer International)

Winner

Come Back Ferrorama by DDB Brazil

The toy company Estrela challenged the fans of Ferrorama, a toy train, on Orkut, which is Brazil’s biggest social newtork. The challenge – prove their dedication by running the train on a torturous pilgrimage across 20km, using and reusing 120 meters of track, and never stopping. The group involved the public uploading video, tweets, and photos of the five-day journey. Their success led Estrela to relaunch the toy. It sold out within a month, including 1230 pre-orders, and has transformed the company’s marketing and business strategy to embrace the digital and social world.

Social Impact (Consumer International)

Finalist

MADLTD (Make a Difference, Lead the Difference) by HCL Technologies

Winner

A Singapore Spring by Tribal DDB Singapore

The site about the elections aimed to collect all the conversation and allow people to see and comment on it. In the week leading up to polling day, the site tallied 44,000 instances of political buzz on social media, blogs, forums, and other sites. When it opened, it tallied 80,000 page views in the first three minutes. In 7 days of campaigning, it hosted 252,000 page views and 6,000 visits a day, and was shared over 2,000 times on Facebook.

Mobile Application (Consumer North America)

Finalist

Sotheby's International Realty Mobile Campaign by Smarter Agent

Winner

Starhub "Musical Fitting Rooms" by DDB and Tribal DDB Singapore 

This program is just amazing. Starhub’s program used fitting rooms in clothing stores and near-field communication to sell music downloads. To reach youth buyers, the music download site StarHub in Singapore hired DDB and Tribal DDB. They worked with clothing stores to put RFID tags on clothes. When the buyer enters the fitting room, a device in the room detects the piece of clothing and plays music that matches the clothing in style – say, country music for a flannel shirt. Then they beam a text message to the mobile phone asking if they customer wants to buy the song. Results: 84% click through rate, and music downloads increased by 21%.

 

 

 

Winners of the 2011 Forrester Groundswell Awards: Consumer North America

The consumer division, North America was the most hotly contested division, with 98 of the 205 entries. Every year I send out the congratulations notes ... and every year I hear back how excited the winners are. If you're building a social technolgoy application, this is the place to look for models -- these are some of the most impressive applications we've ever seen. We recognized them on stage at the Forrester Consumer Forum in Chicago. We'll be announcing the international winners in November at our European Marketing & Strategy Forum.

 

Listening (Consumer North America)

Finalist

The Power of Online Listening and Understanding by Kindercare

Winner

The Dell Social Media Listening and Command Center by Dell

Dell has created this dedicated facility to respond with speed and effectiveness to all its customers seeking help or commenting in social environments. Dell's partnership with Radian6 provides technology to collect conversations and analyze real-time data. This information identifies conversation trends and issues, serving as an early warning and feedback system.It has served 20,000 customers, with a 99% resolution rate. It accomplished goals including quicker customer response times, improved issue recognition, mitigation and management, and enhanced internal coordination and more consistent responses. The command center also serves as an early warning system for developing crises around its products and services.

 

Talking (Consumer North America)

Finalists

Parallels Social Interactivity & Engagement by Banyan Branch 
BC Salmon Facts by DDB Canada
Bacardi: Like It Live, Like It Together by Blast Radius
VH1's Single and Liking It Photo Contest by Invoke and memelabs

Winner

Building a Connected Brand by Ally Bank & iCrossing

Ally bank, a new, online-focused banking entity spun off from GM, needed to generate awareness. Its strategies included a Web site, a blog featuring how-tos and industry experts, 2000 articles on its site, Facebook posts, tweets, and infographics that spread virally. The result of all this content was to generate inbound interest from search engines and social sites. Since January, this activity generated 3 million site visits, a 64% increase over last year, and $128 million in deposits that originated with content visible in natural searches and social.

 

Energizing (Consumer North America)

Finalists

Random House's "Random Buzzers" by Affinitive 
Tweetlevel and MTV by Edelman
Mercedes Benz Tweet Race by Razorfish
Kirkland's Finders Keepers Campaign by redpepper

Winner

Radio Shack's 2010 Holiday Campaign by imc²

Imc²’s campaign for RadioShack had three parts. First was a promoted Twitter trend for #UNeedANewPhone, those who searched saw a tweet with offers for new iPhones from RadioShack. Second was a campaign called Holiday Heroes, connected with the hashtag #IfIHadSuperPowers. If users tweeted a picture, Radioshack turned it into a photo featuring them as a superhero.  And third was a partnership with FourSquare. The results were impressive: a double digit increase in total wireless sales, 68.4 million impressions on Twitter, and Foursquare users becoming heavy purchasers of mobile devices and accessories.

 

Supporting (Consumer North America)

Winner

Get Satisfaction Social Business Platform by Mint.com 

The personal finance site Mint.com was facing a support crunch from rapid growth. It worked with GetSatisfaction to create a solution as the front line of support, a customer community in which customers support one another. Within 90 days, the company saw a 75% reduction in support tickets, got 50% of its traffic from SEO, and engaged with 90,000 registered users across 15,000 topics.

 

Embracing (Consumer North America)

Winner

Co-creation Invigorates Hair Care by Alberto Culver & Communispace 

Communispace created a private online community for Alberto-Culver called My Beauty Café. The community revealed that women struggle to feel fresh and rejuvenated on the days they don’t shampoo. This led to the launch of the TRESemme Fresh Start dry shampoo product, which became the number one brand in the dry shampoo mass channel. By the end of 2010, the product had achieved retail sales topping $7.7 million. It’s now the 6th best selling product in the styling category in mass retail channels.

Social Impact (Consumer North America)

Finalist

Secret’s Mean Stinks by imc²

Winner

Love A Local Business by Intuit

Love a Local Business is a socially enabled competition that allows fans to vote for a small business deserving of love – in the form of a $25,000 business grant. Some of these awards saved local businesses from bankrupctcy. The campaign has generated 80,000 nominations in one month, and 60% of its traffic comes from Facebook. Intuit has recognized 125 local businesses in the US over the last two years.

Mobile Application (Consumer North America)

Finalists

Six Flags "Skip the Line" Game by Ask.com 
Starbucks Mobile Applications by Starbucks

Winner

Relationships + Rentals by Redbox & Signal

Redbox, which runs DVD rental kiosks, offered discounts for people who texted them. The Redbox texting program was a smash success. This program generated 3.7 million new email customers. It pulled in over 400,000 unique people, helped generate 34% in year over year revenue growth, with over 6 million downloads of its app on iPhone and Android. The program gained them over 200,000 new Redbox customers. 

 

 

 

Winners of the 2011 Forrester Groundswell Awards: Business to Business

If you've heard that social media doesn't work as well in Business-to-Business settings -- don't believe it. We had 44 entries this year, and picked the winners you see here -- just as impressive as any consumer application.

Listening (Business to Business)

No winner

Talking (Business to Business)

Winner

Spreading the Word of the 2011 IBM Impact Conference by IBM

The Web and Social Media team for IBM WebSphere software leveraged social media to drive registrations and enhance the value of attending the brand's major conference, Impact 2011. The team spread the news through the most effective avenues: attendees, fans, and influencers on Twitter, blogs, Livestream, Flickr, and Slideshare. IBM leveraged the reach of 147,000 followers to spread the word via Twitter. This helped exceed its registration target by 33%. Additional social media and live streaming extended the conference to more than 8,000 viewers from around the world, effectively doubling the event audience.

 

Energizing (Business to Business)

Finalists

Commonground Social Network by Environmental Data Resources 
PlanetPTC Community by PTC

Winner

"Trade Secrets": Energizing SMB Influencers by Zocalo Group and Dell 

Zocalo developed the Trade Secrets campaign to introduce the Vostro V130 a laptop designed for small business. Zocalo identified 150+ Influencers in the US and UK, with areas of expertise ranging from entrepreneurship to social media to technology and distributed Vostro V130 laptops to enable hands-on interaction with the product, energizing SMBs to share recommendations and encourage trial among others. Two SMB consultants hosted separate 1-hour Tweet chats asking people to tweet advice for making a positive first impression; eight SMB, Social Media and Tech experts "road-tested" and wrote reviews of the Vostro V130. This campaign also delivered 82 individual blog posts featuring the Vostro V130 and/or the Trade Secrets campaign, 300+ attendees at two Dell-sponsored, offline events, 1,647 tweets containing #tradesecrets, and 5,086,230 total earned digital impressions.

 

Spreading (Business to Business)

Finalist

Bosch: What is the Value of Facebook Fans? by Globalpark

Winner

National Facebook Program To Help Salons Market by L'Oreal Professionnel USA

The Salon Facebook Program allows L'Oreal brands and their salons to partner in a marketing and communication effort. L'Oreal partnered with Buddy Media to provide a set of tools with which salons could begin enhancing their Facebook Pages, allowing L'Oreal to measure traction and furnish content for all of its salon locations. By year-end, the combined salon participation is estimated to exceed 6,000 salons reaching approximately 1.7 million clients. Combining brand reach and assuming weekly outreach to this audience, the current eCPM is $8.91 with a projected $3.04 eCPM by year-end, far below magazine advertising.

 

Supporting (Business to Business)

Finalist

LexisNexis Investigators Network by LexisNexis

Winner

Cisco Support Community by Cisco Systems

Cisco launched new technical support channels on leading social media in late 2009 to build a more social and persistent community for peer-to-peer support. These new communities on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube provide direct access to Cisco experts for learning and knowledge sharing, foster issue resolution among customers, and serve as vehicles for critical technical support announcements and updates from Cisco. Since the introduction of social media technical support, the Facebook app had over 15,000 installs and 7,000 monthly active users, and 70% of Cisco users on a Facebook survey expressed satisfaction over the responses they had received for their questions posted on Cisco's Facebook community. Cisco estimates that its community-based support on Facebook and Twitter is saving more than $400K+ annually.

 

Embracing (Business to Business)

Finalists

The Marketo Community by Marketo 
IT Professionals Embrace Spiceworks by Spiceworks 

Winner

Ideas Community by Ultimate Software

Ultimate Software's Ideas is an online community where customers can share, collaborate, and provide direct feedback to its HR technology product, UltiPro. Ultimate's strategy & development teams are extremely active in Ideas, commenting on customers' ideas, providing updates, and soliciting opinions on their own ideas. Since  January 2010, the Ideas Community has grown to 5,469 users, creating 1,992 ideas, with 2,456 comments and 12,374 votes on those ideas. As of July 2011, 72 of these ideas have already been implemented into UltiPro. Another 35 ideas will be included in UltiPro's next release - Fall of 2011. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to pick a winner

by Josh Bernoff

I've been picking a lot of winners lately. I helped pick our next Forrester book from eight candidates (you'll hear more about this soon enough). I helped pick the winning entries in the Forrester Groundswell Awards (North America winners to be announced on Friday). And within Forrester, we're running an idea contest for improvements to our business on our sharing site, the HERO Platform.

I've learned a little about what works well and what doesn't with all these contests. If you have to run a contest, maybe this can help you. What I learned can be broken down into before, during and after:

Before the entries come in.

• Know why you're doing this. We do the Forrester Groundswell Awards to showcase excellence in social applications, strengthen relationships with people who create it, and generate fantastic case studies. We solicit ideas for Forrester's business not just to improve the business, but to help employees feel they can create positive change. Knowing your objectives will help you make decisions about how to run your contest.
• Set the rules carefully up front and publish them. Your entrants will need to know how you're judging -- and so will your judges. Write it down. Post it. Think of what could be misinterpreted and clarify. Fairness is important; so is clarity, if you want good entries.
• Plan to promote. How will people find out about this contest? There are so many awards and contests, yours has to stand out. That means you need to promote it -- and spreading the word through social is a powerful technique. For the Forrester Groundswell Awards, in addition to a blog post, we and our account folks contacted many technology vendors and agencies who are motivated to participate.

During the entry period.

• Get the entries posted in a public place. It generates a lot of interest to allow people to view the entries -- in all three of these contests, the entries went up where people could see them, either on the open Internet or on our internal sharing system. We encouraged people to vote on, rate, and comment on the entries. This makes the entrants your publicists -- they'll drive people to the site for you. I saw lots of tweets about the Forrester Groundswell Awards entries, for example.
• Panic effectively. Based on only a few dozen entries coming in with a week to go, we got worried. I did videos and we did a bunch of other things to beat the bushes. Maybe it wasn't needed -- we got 204 entries, of which more than half showed up on the last day. This right-at-deadline activity seems to get worse every year. All I can tell you is, if you have only a few entries and there's a week to go, there's no way to know if they'll all come flooding in late . . . or not at all.
• Don't shift the deadline. It's a sure sign that your contest is in trouble, and moving the deadline later doesn't tend to generate more quality entries. What it does do is invalidate the effort of the people who did meet the deadline. I got many pleas to move the deadline on the awards -- but keeping in mind the other entrants, I turned them all down.

During  and after the judging.

• Recruit and manage a judging team. The time to recruit a team is well ahead of the judging, not after. Get the judges together, virtually or in a meeting, and make sure the criteria are clear. We have different judging teams on different divisions of the Forrester Groundswell Awards, but a few of us review everything to ensure consistency. I scored the book candidates on various criteria and together with Forrester management, we made the decision. And I have a set of Forrester managers lined up to judge the business innovations. If the team knows the criteria, they typically do a good job. If you have too few people, not only will they be overworked, but they won't benefit from a diverse set of viewpoints.
• Keep track on a shared site. The Forrester Groundswell Awards judging, the book selection, and the idea contest are all on our HERO platform. This works way better than emailing stuff around, and it's crucial to keep everything organized for the next stage.
• Allow time between selecting the winners and announcing. For an external contest (or even a big internal one), you'll want to inform the winners and give them time to prepare. We give winners about three weeks notice. Longer and you risk leaks. Shorter and it's not fair to expect them to react appropriately and come to the event where the winners are announced.

Recognize publicly

• A token is nice. We've done certificates in the past -- this year we're springing for lucite. People like to show off that they won.
• But public and personal recognition is more important. We announce the Forrester Groundswell Awards at our events. We announce the internal winners at our company meetings. When I'm involved, I contact the winners personally by email, and try to make sure the emails are personal. The 23 emails I wrote for the award winners took a little time, but not nearly as much time as they put in creating the applications and submitting them -- they deserve a little effort on my part. We also allow people to put a graphical "badge" on their sites so people can see that they won.
• Involve PR. While I do the contact, our PR staff take over quickly from there. They also run the recognition at our company meetings. PR people (at least the ones I work with) do this professionally, can help make sure winners don't make inappropriate announcements regarding their wins, and are great with details. There are a dozen ways to screw this up. Our PR staff not only catch and fix them, they make suggestions that make the whole process worthwhile.

If you're running a contest, whether its for ideas in your company or recognizing winners in your industry, I hope this is valuable to you. And pop by on Friday to spy our next round of winning social applications.

Forrester Groundswell Awards advice for vendors and agencies

Behind every great social or mobile application is somebody who built it. In many cases, a big part of that success is a technology vendor or an interactive agency that helped create it.

If you're a vendor or agency, the Forrester Groundswell Awards are a good chance to show off your work. Please give it a shot. (Just remember to get your client's permission before you post the entry!) The deadline is August 3 -- submit here. Here's a little video that may help.

 

A few hints on the Forrester Groundswell Awards (2 weeks to go)

by Josh Bernoff

I took the green bowtie out of mothballs. 'Cause there are only a few weeks left to enter the Forrester Groundswell Awards. The deadline is August 3.

The number of entries is low so far. Competition has been intense in the past. Get to work on your entry -- this could be your year to win!

Here are four hints on how to win.

1. Put numbers in your entry to demonstrate that your applications created business value.

2. Include a link to an online site where we can see how your application works.

3. Enter in a category where you can stand out: B2C, B2B, international, or corporate applications, with clear objectives.

4. Start now. The best entries take a while to prepare, and you may need to get your client's permission.

See you at the awards presentation.

 

Winners of the 2010 Forrester Groundswell Awards (Consumer North America)

Today, at Forrester's Consumer Forum, 2010, we presented the winners of the Forrester Groundswell Awards. With social and mobile applications exploding in both number and creativity, we've added a bunch of new categories. In this post, I'll note the worthy winners and finalists in the business-to-consumer division, North America. (Finalists are good enough to win, except that we selected another entrant as even more impressive.)

More posts are coming soon with the winners of the other divisions.

If you're creating social or mobile applications, take a close look at these winners. In categories ranging from chocolate to tampons to financial services, they demonstrate both creativity and measurable results. And what incredible variety! I urge you to emulate, not only what they did, but the brio with which they did it. Be a HERO!

Listening (B2C NA)

Finalists

Listening to the Student Pulse by Bank of America and Communispace
A Fresh Approach to Shopper Marketing by ConAgra Foods and Communispace:
Getting an Earful about Blu-ray by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment and Communispace

Winner

Godiva Sweet Success by Communispace

Once again, Communispace dominates the Listening category with its excellent market research communities. In this application, Communispace created a private, invitation-only community so Godiva could better understand its chocolate consumers. The community helped Godiva to see it could create an afforable product line, individually wrapped chocolates called Gems, and to sell them in a new channel, grocery and drug stores. Gems was the biggest global launch ever for Godiva, which rang up $35 million on a product that may reach 10% of the company's worldwide sales in its first year.

Talking (B2C NA)

Finalists

American Family Insurance on Facebook by American Family Insurance
Bing: Mashable and Graffiti Integrations by Federated Media

Winner

Secret: Let Her Jump by imc² 

During the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, imc² and Secret created a campaign focused on Lindsey Van, a ski jumper who could not compete since there is no women's ski jumping competition. An online video about Ms. Van encouraged viewers to visit LetHerJump.com, a custom Facebook page, where they could sign up and share the video with friends. People watched the video 700,000 times and the Facebook page has 433,000 fans. Among women viewing the video, 57% said their impression of the Secret brand improved and purchase intent among women who participated on Facebook went up by 11% (33% for teens). Clinical sales increased 8% despite a 70% decrease in TV support.

Energizing (B2C NA)

Finalists

TurboTax Embraces Customer Reviews for Viral Growth by Intuit, Inc.
USAA Implements Ratings and Reviews by USAA

Winner

U by Kotex by Organic

Kimberly-Clark wanted to break through in the feminine care product category by encouraging women to talk openly about their periods. To spread the message, they created a branded website, a presence on social platforms, and visibility on the larger social Web, encouraging women to be proud of their bodies and have open, honest conversations about their periods and vaginal care. So far, the campaign has generated 1.7 million Web site visits, 17,500 tweets about Kotex, 25,000 Kotex discussions in the social space generating 88.5 million impressions, a million girls "activated" on the brand site, 93,000 Likes, and 640 million impressions in major print, broadcast, and online channels. 750,000 people requested samples and these converted at a 42% rate.

Supporting (B2C NA)

Finalists

Get it Right Community by H&R Block
Taxes on Twitter: @TeamTurboTax Provides Customer Support and Resources by Intuit, Inc.

Winner

TurboTax Widget For Free Tax Help by Intuit, Inc.

The TurboTax Live Community has helped more than 10 million customers get free tax help from other customers, including 90 superusers who generated over 115,000 answers last year. Intuit created a widget that users could post anywhere that gives tax answers from the community. It integrated the community with Yahoo Answers, which generated a 58% higher engagement rate than people coming in from other channels. Its TurboTron online Super Bowl ad on Yahoo! was seen over 800 million times.

Embracing (B2C NA)

Finalist

Create Dunkin's Next Donut Contest by Studiocom

Winner

Intercontinental Hotels and Chase Create a New Credit Card by Communispace

In 2009, IHG and Chase set out to create a new credit card for members of IGH's customer loyalty program. For twelve months, they collaborated with members of IGH's Communispace Community of loyal IHG customers. They helped design a credit card that includes an annual free night good anywhere in the world and increased point earnings at IHG hotels and for everyday purchases. The new product generated an 80% increase in new accounts in its email campaign, vs. the previous email campaign. 5,000 customers have requested upgrades to the new card.

Social Impact (B2C NA)

Finalists

Acqua for Life by Blast Radius and Armani
Becel - Love Your Heart by Unilever

Winner

Our Health Connects Us by Deutsch LA and Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield

Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield asks: if people wouldn't get healthy for themselves, would they do it for those they care about? They used TV to deliver the idea that healthy behavior spreads within families and supported it with print, outdoor, and a microsite with a Health Footprint Calculator. The insurer also made the calculator available as a Facebook app and encouraged users to follow "Trainer Bob" (from NBC's "Biggest Loser") on Twitter, where he tweeted about health influence within families. More than 79,000 people visited the microsite, generated more than 5 times the Twitter followers of all the competitors combined, and increased familiarity with the brand idea by 17%. Purchase intent among people who saw at least two elements of the campaign increased by 12%.

Mobile Application (B2C NA)

Finalist

Bing Home Turf Finder by Deep Focus

Winner

USAA iPhone App with Car-Buying Tools by USAA

The financial services firm USAA created the Auto Circle app for car buyers to make the vehicle purchase process simpler. It helps USAA members to find their dream car, research makes and models, get a better deal, and get a low price through USAA-certified dealerships. They can also use the app to get auto loans and insurance from USAA, and check insurance costs. Within 11 days after launch, there were 140,000 visits to the app landing page, driven by social and traditional media outreach, and an 80% increase in unique daily visitors to the USAA car buying service, and a 40% increase in USAA member contacts to auto dealers.

 

 

See you at the Forrester Consumer Forum, Chicago, October 27 and 28

Forrester’s Consumer Forum  is a very special place for me, because it's where the ideas for Groundswell were launched in 2007. It was your warm and positive reaction that gave us the confidence we were on track.

At the 2009 Forrester event, our analysts will present research on how evolving consumer online behavior demands that firms step up efforts to engage them, and executives from major companies will share their companies' best practices for creating breakthrough multichannel relationships.

If you haven't been to one of forums, you'll see that we do things a little differently. The two Forrester presentations, which lead off each of the two days, are distilled for maximum value (we put a lot of effort into getting only the best, newest research into these presentations and them delivering them with a little panache). And the industry speakers, while they are just the people you want to hear from, spend more than half of their time answering questions from our analysts and vetted questions from the audience. That makes sure the attendees get their money's worth.

We'll also be presenting the results of the Forrester Groundswell Awards. Together with the rest of the Groundswell team, we've completed our review of all the entries, and the winners have demonstrated some impressive accomplishments. For the first time, this year, you'll be able to meet the winners at a party right after they receive their awards.

This year's outside speakers include:

• Brad Brooks, Corporate Vice President, Windows Consumer Product Marketing, Microsoft
• Michael Darviche, Chief Marketing Officer, Acxiom
• Prasanna Dhore, Vice President, Hewlett Packard
• Barry Judge, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Best Buy
• Bob Kraut, Vice President, Marketing Communications, Pizza Hut
• Michael Menis, Vice President, Global Interactive Marketing, InterContinental Hotels Group
• Sophia Stuart, Executive Director, Mobile, Hearst Magazines Digital Media
• Virginia Suliman, Vice President, Web Design & Development, Hilton Hotels Corporation
• Paul Vienick, Senior Vice President, Long-Term Investing and Customer Experience, E*TRADE

The Forrester speakers include

• Julie A. Ask, Vice President, Principal Analyst
• me,
• Bill Doyle, Vice President, Principal Analyst
• Henry H. Harteveldt, Vice President, Principal Analyst
• Carrie Johnson, Vice President, Research Director
• Harley Manning, Vice President, Research Director

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to learn from the experts — see Forrester.com for more information. If you’ve already signed up, here are some great ways to maximize your experience:

• Follow us on Twitter as we plan and launch the Event.
• RSVP on our Facebook Event page, and network with other attendees.

See you in Chicago.

A review of 147 entries to the 2009 Forrester Groundswell Awards

It's been two weeks since the deadline for entries for the Forrester Groundswell Awards. You won't know the winners until we announce them at the Forrester Consumer Forum in Chicago on October 27 (and yes, the famed green bowtie will once again make an appearance).

You can still review every single entry. (Is there anyone else who does this?) We encourage you to continue voting on the awards and leaving comments. (For those who found the bugs in our voting system, we apologize -- votes entered now will register the correct number of stars regardless of the browser you use.)

The winners will hear from us in the first week of October, including an invite to the Forrester Consumer Forum for those in the five consumer categories plus Managing and Social Impact. But while you're waiting, here are a few fun facts to keep you entertained.

• While we gave people an extra month to prepare their entries this year, 100 of the 147 entries came in within the last 24 hours of the deadline.
• Talking was the most popular consumer objective, with 34% of all the consumer entries. Talking and Supporting each received 25% of all the business-to-business entries. Embracing is hard -- only 18 of the 147 entries were in the embracing categories.
• 29% of all the entries were from technology companies. This included 31 business-to-business entries and 10 consumer technology entries. Somebody at SAP really wants to win -- SAP created eight separate entries.
• Other industries submitting many entries included non-profits and associations (12% of entries), web sites and tools (10%), business services (7%) and financial services (7%). Despite the recession we got three entries from auto companies.
• Only half of the Social Impact entries were from non-profits. The rest were from companies using social technologies for good.
• We really just did not know how to categorize this one.

Overall, the quality of entries is similar to last year, with many good application and a few that are outstanding . . . but you'll hear more about that in October. Watch this space

Forrester Groundswell Awards -- I love the diversity

by Josh Bernoff

The third annual Forrester Groundswell Awards have been open for nominations for a month and a half. As in past years, the nominations will come flooding in at the end (the deadline is September 2, folks, don't be late), but I wanted to draw your attention to what we've gotten so far from an extremely diverse crowd of submitters.

What do bacon, the United States Government, and a town in Australia devastated by brushfires have in common? They're all represented in this year's crop of nominations. If you're interested in seeing all the nominees so far, go to the Awards tab and you can review or vote on them. Don't forget to click on the submitter's name in each full entry, since that takes you to a spot on the Web where you can see anything they want to show off.

On the business to consumer side, we've received two entries for listening and one for talking. Oscar Mayer and Networked Insights are showing off "Bacon Lovers Talk" (BLT), a community that's delicious for everyone except bacon-hater Seth Godin, had reach #9 in search results for "best bacon," and attracted 197 daily visitors. Communispace, which won in the listening category the last two years, is back with a strong entry from Interncontinental Hotel Group. I like the way IHG uses not just insights but quotes and photos from its Communispace Community in its marketing -- the entry attributes a 24% lift in revenue to this.

In the talking category it's your tax dollars at work -- the General Services Adminstration of the US government shows off its site usa.gov, organized not by department but by task -- the right idea when your users are citizens. USA.gov has 9,500 Twitter followers and the GSA's Office of Citizen Services is helping government agencies work with MySpace, SlideShare, YouTube, Flickr, and Facebook.

We have four entries so far in business-to-business categories, three for supporting and one for embracing. Publisher Meredith Corporation has attracted 1,700 members to its Farmers for the Future community on ning. A council for credit union managers is connecting people with peers across the country. And to help environment professionals whose careers have been affected by the recession in commercial real estate, Environmental Data Resources created a support community that is up to 3,900 members. We've also got an embracing app from Definiens for geospatial analysts.

The Social Impact category always surfaces some of the most fascinating and unusual applications. In a heart-rending story, you can read about the brushfire-devastated community of Flowerdale in Victoria, Australia, reached out with social apps from video to Facebook and raised over a million dollars. And you can see how last year's entry "The Mistake Bank" has evolved in this year's awards, it's now a ning community with 500 contributors sharing their biggest mistakes.

It's interesting to see how the early entries have bunched up. If you're interested in entering, not only is there still time to get us an entry, but whole categories like B2C supporting and energizing and B2B talking are still wide open. And while you can wait until the end, you'll get a lot more traffic and votes if you submit early -- we received over 150 entries last year. Remember that the winners will be those who are not only creative but can show proof of impressive business results in their entries. This year's B2C and social impact winners will get a free ticket to the Forrester Consumer Forum in Chicago where they can show off their skills at our awards cocktail party. So get those entries in!