This is the second post from the SNCR meeting today. It is on a Panel: Innovative Initiatives & Success Stories from Leading Corporations, moderated by SNCR Fellow David Parmet. People from Coca-cola, Dell, Scuderi Group, GM and Sun Microsystems. These are the winners for this year.

General Motors has a team of four looking at social media, a rarity in their market. They will expand their efforts in the coming year. Need to overcome perception of GM as not being environmentally friendly when they are making big efforts in this space. They have encouraged all communication teams to consider social media. One - Expand beyond the Fast Lane blog (which is well known). Two - Want to build relationships with influencers within auto, environment, and family bloggers. Three - Invite bloggers to events and have events for bloggers. They are seeing increases in positive perceptions as a result of these activities. GM communication teams are now coming to them to help get bloggers to events. They also want to put more work into Fast Lane. They are trying to encourage other bloggers but it has been slow to catch on. There is concern amongst their “old school” culture that bloggers will get in trouble for what they write. They do have several senior execs doing internal blogs, including the head of legal. They are trying to increase positive market perceptions and get more people to look at GM cars, they will let the dealers do the selling.

Sun Microsystems is very active in social media. Use YouTube and Second Life, on this panel recognized for their blogging program. Published financial results on-line through Jonathan Schwartz’s blog with permission of SEC to get greater transparency. Much internal discussion prior to do this and Jonathan reached out to EC on the idea. Jonathan published response letter from SEC chairman on putting results on-line and the chairman responded on the blog with a comment. Now over 5,000 employees out of 40,000 employees are blogging externally, some on group blogs. Blogging has helped Sun to be “cool” again. Many bloggers now talk with the media.

Coca-cola is the second most spoken word in world after “okay.” When Andy Wahol did a painting with the Coke image, Coke tired to stop him. Now they celebrate it. Now looking at consumer generated video content and launched a site in 2006 to support it. One video, with Epgy Bird and exploding plastic coke bottles, has been seen by over 40 million people. When the Eepy Bird video first came out there was some concern by some Coke execs, who said they would rather people drink their product, but Coke later embraced it. I confess to not being one of the 40 million to see the video until today. When the Eepy Bird video came out there was an increase in Coke sales. Big success on the web, one video doubled traffic to Coke site. They were the first ad program on Google Video. They have gotten many awards as a result. Coke is now going into blogging more with the Coke historian.

Dell is looking at using Twitter as a marketing tool. The Dell Outlet sells return stuff. Often have surprises with what they need to sell. So how to drive demand. So posted offers on Twitter. Also asked questions on people on Twitter. Twenty two percent of respondents had not heard of the Dell Outlet before seeing it on Twitter. Feels these Twitter users are early adopters and influencers. Get a higher conversion rate from people who arrive on site from Twitter than from regular site. Put Studio Dell on Twitter to get more awareness as people subscribe through RSS. Now want to get more customer feedback. Dell is also big on blogs.

Scuderi Group is small Springfield MA company working on improving internal combustion engine. Decided on a social media campaign to gain more awareness in their market. Looked at a combination of methods, both social media and traditional media. Felt email is dead as an out reach media. Reporters get too many emails to read them. Wanted to create a feedback between social and traditional media. Launched a blog as a distribution method to distribute news, less personal than some blogs. Also created a YouTube channel and did some high end videos for this free channel. Blog promoted videos, as well as traditional out reach. One video has 120,000 views after a Wired story on it with the video embedded. Covered in many mainstream outlets, NPR, NYT.

Some other good users of social media mentioned include Southwest Airlines for blogs and Whirlpool for podcasts