(In swedish)

Our thoughts are with David, his wife and their daughter. With his parents and siblings. Have faith, be strong.

As we regain our footing, we’re reaching out to those of you in projects where David is involved to make sure there’s no slack. In the mean time, please contact one of the partners if you have any questions.

With love
Tobias, Jonas and Christian

Contact information
Tobias Franzén +46 707 973 458,
Jonas Bohlin +46 708 837 292,
Christian Schaffner +46 706 797 877

Unfortunately, this response has been quite unresponsive lately. Dead, in another word.

Now I found something else great by GM, and a reason to swap all those Starbucks screen shots for yet another shameless GM plug: the GM ”Facts an Fiction” section. What they are doing here is in big bold text disrupting rumors and false statements. One particularly interesting ”fact” was that their main brands are actually above average in independent quality indexes. (I ”knew”, along with others I’m sure, that GM created cars of inferior quality.)

This section seems to be quite lively, and it is highly to-the-point. Clearly, they are tired of getting the same questions by journalists, and reading the same errors in papers and blogs. Oh, how I wish others could follow.

And I also wish that they would have been just a tad bit braver – they should have listed the false statements as well. In red. A regular corporate communications ”Mythbusters”.

Guts to completely change the way the communications departments function, think and act.

In my discussions with corporations large and small, there seems to be a recurring trend how the conversation goes:

• Awesome! I saw somebody else do it! I want to!
• Oh, it needs attention? I need to dedicate resources?
• People can comment on my press releases? No way!
• But this changes everything!

Somewhere along the line, most companies who have approached give the idea up. They simply stick to sending press releases. Via fax.

But the few who actually dare to throw themselves out there, into the community of online conversations and conversationalists, almost always seem to be happy in the end. I think it is because they were forced into the online world, and that they for the first time really saw the effects of their communicative efforts.

One particularly brave client of mine took the idea of a newsroom way further than I had originally anticipated. He started following the bloggers who linked and commented his blog, and then started speaking to them. First via mutual blog commenting, and then via email and phone. He had found, and created relationships with, influencers significantly more influential than any media list could ever provide.

And to me, that really sums it up. A Social Media Newsroom today is much more than the technology or the content filling the technology. It is more than the trends and the widgets: it is the fundamental shift in thinking and communications department work. It is an antennae into an online world often perceived as scary, and a communications vehicle quick and effective enough to really make a difference.

My fearless prediction: corporations will continue to embrace online corporate communications. The brave ones will likely do it with a Social Media Newsroom, of this generation or next.