B2B is less sexy

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“We don't have a PR problem, we have a business problem”
Scott Monty (Ford) also said it: “We don't have a PR problem, we have a business problem, but we need PR to tell how we are going to solve the business problem”. Given the current banking incidents, Penders was the ideal person to talk about the changing role of PR and media relations in a rapidly changing media landscape. Trust in companies is lower than ever, Scott also said.

Cindy Penders (ING)
Cindy Penders (ING): 'Fast is more important than correct'

The fact that one tweet can bring down the DOW Jones index is strong supporting evidence of this. The principle of audi alteram partem is no longer applied, efficiency and time management become more important and working methods change: publish first, correct later is the new adage.

Twitter plays an important role. Within two weeks, ING will publish a study that shows that 44% of bloggers, journalists and PR people find information on Twitter trustworthy and go to Twitter first when they want to know something. 76% think that fact checking has decreased due to social media.


The only extensively described B2B case came from singapore phone data Christian Porter-Schultz , vice president of COWI, an engineering firm. It was therefore more than a pity that in his story about how he got COWI to a storytelling strategy, he did not get much further than explaining how he achieved 50% savings in the communications department through centralization and outsourcing. The inside joke of the conference was born: from then on, every joke was finished with 'then we'll just outsource ourselves to Asia or Latvia'.

His message seemed promising: from stories that no one wanted to hear about 37,500 screws and 2.3 tons of paint to stories that are relevant to the customers of the COWI customers (municipalities, for example). For example, what contribution COWI projects make to making and keeping a city liveable. The book Made to stick by Chip and Dan Heath (or the Stick Factor ) has at least helped Christian Porter-Schultz to convert the old, dry text of seven sentences into a single one-liner that tells the story. Too bad his own one-liners did not focus on the story behind the story.

A B2B case of Shel Holtz was Dell's social net advocacy tool . This is a kind of social analytics dashboard, in which every product that is talked about online is analyzed. Dell can see at a glance which products are doing well, which products need additional activities or which have problems - and what problems then.