This week, while you were working…a few Projectliners were enjoying each others’ company away from work. When we can all get our schedules to line up, our teams at Projectline get together for events and to spend some quality time together. On her recent team event, Brooke took the video camera to capture some of the fun to show you what we were up to.

Tim Thorsteinson (President of the Harris Corporation) and Sean Geehan (@seangeehan and Founder of the Geehan Group) started off The Summit by talking about how Harris drives corporate strategy through their Executive Advisory Board. Great presenters from AT&T, National Instruments, Microsoft Interoperability Council, and Intel followed with stories and advice about using advisory boards comprised of influential customers to guide and inform business decisions.

What’s stuck with me longest?

It was exciting to hear from Citrix’s Chris Fleck (@chrisfleck) about how customers’ voices can directly sway new product development. In his presentation, he mentioned that Citrix had intended to build a new Blackberry application. But, suspecting they needed more info, he blogged the question, “Do you want Citrix XenApp to run Windows apps on the iPhone?” When his post got more than 500,000 views, he used the interest to get resources assigned to building an iPhone app. By tuning into customer needs, they were able to prioritize the app that customer wanted most.

So, what’s next?

There seems to be a movement to integrate broader community-based engagement plans, like Citrix’s, with more narrowly focused advisory boards. As companies engage with customer communities, they have the chance to use community input alongside feedback from advisory boards and other councils. By posing questions to both the community and to advisory boards or internal leadership, you can find out whether there’s a single clear direction. Even when there isn’t a straightforward consensus, clear, genuine communication will let your community members and advisory board know you’re listening. Open lines of communication also mean that, if you change your mind based on the reaction from an advisory board or community, you can admit you’re wrong and amend your decision.

The big takeaway:

We came back ready to start working on coordinating advisory boards, communities, and all the other ways of engaging customers. With transparency and responsiveness, they can work together to strengthen your customer relationships—which is always the top priority around here.

So, what’s the big deal? How will this affect customer engagement marketers?

(Keep in mind: we’re not lawyers, and we’re not giving you legal advice.)

• The new Guides throw out the old loophole that let advertisers get away with putting a cursory disclaimer next to an exaggerated claim (i.e. “Results not typical”). They stress that one way to avoid implying typicality is by providing the details of the situation—we think the best way to do that is a thorough, detailed case study!
• The revisions explicitly address new and social media, stressing that “consumers’ willingness to trust social media depends on the ability of those media to retain their credibility as reliable sources of information” (see page 11). Arguing for transparency and honesty, they make clear that both advertisers and endorsers can be liable for obfuscation or dishonesty.
• The Guides expand potential liability to the endorser, which makes sense in the context of blogs and customer communities. The key to avoiding the pitfalls of consumer-generated endorsement-confusion? Clear policies and processes.

So, are the new guidelines good or bad?

Of course, there are some tricky things about the Guides. You’ll want to make sure you have someone monitoring or managing your social media presence, blogs about your products, and customer communities. You’ll need to double-check that you have solid processes in place for reviewing and approving consumer-generated content. You’ll have to make sure that final editorial pass has legal and ethical issues in mind.

But ultimately, we think the revisions are pretty great. Social media, testimonials, and customer stories are only as powerful as the trust between companies and their clients. The FTC’s choice to weigh in (relatively) early, rather than in a few years, is only a good thing for those of us who know the real value of customers’ trust.

Brooke talks with Projectline’s own Tena (that’s “Tena Fabulous” to us) and gets schooled on the ins and outs of customer communities and their use in marketing.

What’s that sound? I think it’s London calling! That’s right, Projectline is opening up operations in the UK. Brooke interviews Damian to get the scoop on what Projectline is planning and get his perspective on this big adventure as he spearheads the expansion.

Brooke shares this month’s Book Club pick and volunteer event (a Projectline favorite!), and recaps the great time we had at a recent PSAMA event.

The good news is that some companies are willing to make the investment into these critical and effective programs—and many of them will be at the Summit on Customer Engagement (like Cisco, ECM, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Open Text, and Research in Motion).

The way I see it, these organizations have looked into the eyes of our tough economic times and continued to march forward, unwavering in their belief that customer programs are vital to their success. Hopefully they, like me, are ready to absorb ideas from talks like “How Communities Foster Innovation at Citrix” and “Understanding the Value of Customer Engagement” and take those ideas and innovations home to their own programs. (If you like to follow events on Twitter, you can catch some snippets of insight following #SCE2009.)

Question for you: if you’re in the trenches working on marketing programs, are you having more success getting budget for customer engagement programs, or for traditional marketing activities such as direct mail and events? Is your company investing in your expertise and knowledge in the customer engagement area?

Come join Brooke in the fun and exciting world of a video shoot. See the equipment and all the people involved in just one day’s filming. Don’t forget the customer engagement summit, in Quincy, MA, is just around the corner.

Projectliner Elliott Lemenager is at San Francisco’s West Coast Green conference this week to present on social media’s role in sustainable business. If you’re there, check out his presentation tomorrow (Friday) at 12:30—and enjoy the conference!

Learn more about the Customer Engagement Summit coming up in October and how you can get a discount. Eric Larson talks about mixing pleasure with business, where Quincy, MA is (hint: not quite Boston, MA), and his mustache envy.