Halloo Chicago!

It was that time of year again to travel to one of the two annual ECCO PR International Network Conferences. This year saw the ECCO members descend on Chicago (my first visit to the United States!)

ECCO is a global network of approximately 40 independently owned agencies across the globe. Twice a year members get together to share knowledge, best practices and to brainstorm ideas and discuss challenges within the industry.

The two key areas we focussed on this year was on social media and building a PR agency. It was a great session of idea sharing and learning; where in the past I felt that we as South Africa are pretty much on par when it comes to PR and communication related themes, the US is way ahead of us when it comes to social media - there were some very interesting case studies discussed, and new trends in social media mentioned that I am very keen to see how we can role it out in South Africa. With that said, many of the case studies were more consumer focussed brands, but it will be an exciting challenge to see how we can translate it for our purposes.

Two (general) lessons that I learnt during my stay was the absolute pride in the country Americans have - there are country flags on almost every building. They do, and say that that they do everything  bigger and better - to a certain degree I agree, but I also think that the more you say you are wonderful and great, the more you will believe it and those around you believe it. I'm quite tired of South Africans always putting themselves down - we need to believe in ourselves and become more confident in our abilities. We need to stop selling ourselves short. If we say and believe that we are great, and show the rest of the world just what a wonderful country and nation we are, we will all start believing it and living up to a positive reputation. It often feels that we apologise for EVERYTHING - why is that? I believe that if we put it out there it will happen.

The other lesson I learnt was how wonderfully well the Americans do 'sell on' - e.g. for $1 more you can add / upgrade / up-size (their already huge portions). Servers also almost always encourage up-selling and letting customers know about a special.  Yes, this is (again) more relevant when it came to consumer goods and food, but I am keen to test and measure to see how something like that could potentially work in the communication field.

Watch this space for some exciting social media developments and up-selling deals-you-simply-cannot-miss-out-on!