A year and a half ago, an online conversation between two marketing professionals in the U.S. and Australia evolved into a collaborative writing effort by more than 100 bloggers from nine countries that created a book called The Age of Conversation. The project raised nearly $15,000 for Variety, the international children’s charity.

Following the success of the first book, which was published in the summer of 2007, Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton, organizers of the first project, are about to publish Age of Conversation 2, which compiles written thoughts on the role of conversation in marketing today from 237 marketing professionals who blog in the U.S. and 15 other countries.

McLellan, who heads McLellan Marketing Group, a Des Moines, Iowa advertising agency, has been writing a blog for more than two years. His blog, DrewsMarketingMinute.com, is among the 25 most-read marketing blogs. Heaton, who works for global software giant, SAP, writes ServantofChaos.com blog from Sydney, Australia, which is also a top 25 marketing blog.

The project has an unusual story behind it, involving online connections between people around the world who had never met each other face to face.

After McLellan had written about Wharton University’s effort to create a collaborative book, Heaton suggested online that they get a few fellow bloggers to try it.

“Three e-mails later, we had named the book and the charity. It just fell into place,” McLellan said. “The Age of Conversation was the perfect topic. The marketing industry is abuzz about how citizen marketers are changing the landscape, and these books capture that new phenomenon from a uniquely global vantage point.”

Through their blogs, McLellan and Heaton invited other marketing professionals to commit to writing essays about conversation. They set what they thought would be an impossible goal – 100 bloggers. Within seven days they had commitments from 103.

No sooner had the first book been published when the two began planning for Age of Conversation 2. The new book will be available on October 29, 2008 in three formats – an e-book, softcover and hardcover. All proceeds will again be donated to Variety, the international children’s charity.

Pricing for The Age of Conversation 2 is:

* e-book: US$12.50 ($10.00 going to charity)
* paperback book: US$19.95 ($8.02 to charity)
* hardback book: US$29.95 ($4.60 to charity)

Purchases can be made online from October 28, 2007 at www.lulu.com/ageofconversation.

A social media release is available at: http://pitch.pe/961

The second edition of the collaborative marketing book, Age of Conversation, is about to launch world-wide.

The brainchild of Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton, the Age of Conversation 2: Why don’t people get it? has attracted contributions from 237 of the best marketing professionals from around the world. Leading advertising agencies, professional marketers, consultants and writers are represented in arguably one of the most impressive international marketing collectives ever assembled.

This year Newcastle is represented twice with chapters from both Gordon Whitehead and myself.

All proceeds from the book sales go to Variety, the Children’s Charity.

More details are about to be released, so stay tuned. In the meantime please meet the authors:

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Its turning out to be a tumultuous week in Australian media circles:

James Packer has jumped ship from PBL Media, quitting the group’s boards and effectively cutting his ties to the remains of the Packer media empire, including Nine Network and ACP Magazines.

SBS expects to be the first free-to-air television network to offer national metropolitan and regional audiences in a single advertising buy after revealing plans to split its signal in metro and regional markets from February.

The Ten Network is set to next month lay down the gauntlet to Fox Sports and its free-to-air rivals when it unveils that its high-definition channel will televise Australian and international sport 24 hours a day.

National TV ratings: source David Dale, Sun Herald blogs

Channel Nine knows it can’t possibly win the ratings year, but it’s trying a few tricks to make the defeat less humiliating. Last week the strategy came unstuck. After finding its new crime series The Mentalist was pulling 1.4 million viewers on Sunday night, Nine moved it to Wednesday to take on Seven’s Criminal Minds. But 400,000 viewers did not join it on the journey. Minds kept its 1.3 million and The Mentalist plummeted to 986,000.

Seven averaged 30.6 per cent of the prime time audience for the week, while Nine got 26.5, Ten got 20.3, ABC got 17.5 and SBS got 5.0.

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A year ago this week in 2007 Prime was thought to have finally caught the NBN dogs tail missing out on its first head to head battle with the leading rated station by 0.5. Fast forward a year and the ratings tell a much different story with NBN the clear overall leader. However Prime does have 5 of the Top Ten rating shows - and Packed To The Rafters a definite winner.

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Franklin D. Roosevelt was radio president. Kennedy was the first television president. Reagan the first movie-star president. Will Barack Obama be America’s first web president?

The 2008 US Presidential Election will be a referendum on many things - the war in Iraq, the Bush years and now the economy - but it can also be viewed as a referendum on old versus new media.

While the 72 year old, admitted technophobe McCain is the default old-world media candidate, Obama has been the new media superstar, embracing web 2.0 technology and techniques with aplomb.

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Ariana Huffington (of Huffington Post fame) Shares 4 Secrets Of Creating A Successful Blog

Photon Grows Despite Downturn - LISTED marketing group Photon says its earnings have grown 20 per cent in the September quarter despite the slump in global economic markets and reports advertisers are beginning to cut spending.

ConsMedia may dilute stake in Nine owner PBL - CONSOLIDATED Media Holdings has given its strongest indication it is willing to dilute its stake in the debt-ridden Nine Network owner, PBL Media, rather than pump in extra money to support the private equity joint venture.

Yahoo to cut at least 1400 jobs globally - YAHOO reported its third-quarter net income tumbled 64 per cent as the company lowered its year revenue guidance and said it would reduce its global work force by at least 10 per cent.

Newcastle TV ratings week 42, 2008

Just when Prime thought it was within striking distance, they have had a bad week and lost ground on NBN again. SC TEN even clawed back some audience against Prime last week despite the Seven affiliate hving 4 programs in the Top 10.

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In last Tuesday’s episode of Packed To The Rafters, the mother (Rebecca Gibney) refused to watch a Channel Seven show, City Homicide. Her opinion was apparently shared by 200,000 mainland capital viewers, who deserted CH on Monday for Nine’s new season of CSI.

Not that CH’s slippage to 1.4 million worried Seven, which still had nine of the ten most watched programs of the week (topped by Rafters and Find My Family ). Its major disappointment would have been the 1.2 million for the US version of Kath and Kim, which drew 700,000 less than our own hotties last year. On its second Sunday, KKUSA dropped to 729,000, which is an invitation to the axeman. And that was with Kevin Rudd as a lead-in, drawing 1.1 million to a Seven news special.

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Seth Godin is an International thought leader, blogger and author who has helped redefine marketing over the last decade. Seth’s posts are some of the first I read each week amongst the dozens of feeds I have streaming in. One of his recent posts, subtly plugging his new book Tribes, explains the typical marketing cycle and how social media may have finally broken the cycle.

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