There's a tremendous Transatlanticism about today. Aside being the title of a very nice Death Cab For Cutie album, it's also the quality experienced when Matthew's Welsh-American lilt (he spent 15 years in journalism over there) opens a conference and throws straight to amigo one on the opening Why Blog? panel, Hugh Macleod, who, for the life of me, I had pegged as a Scot until now.

Cartoonist Hugh says his tailor, English Cut, experienced phenomenal sales growth after it started blogging. He just told the room that "blogging is incredibly disruptive and it's going to change you - but it's not going to become a direct sales agent for you". Hugh says the problem, as virgin communicators begin to take to this new medium, is that many businesses who have taken to blogging so far are using them in a traditional direct sales manner, which, as many people in this sphere now tend to agree, is not just a faux pas in what is often a very clubby environment, but also often just plain won't work. If that sounds contradictory given Hugh's success with English Cut, then I'm keen to hear more about the finer points of blog marketing strategies...

09.21 - Amigo two, Guillaume du Gardier, says "the gates are fully open and everyone can find you".

09.29 - Martin, third on the Why Blog? panel, says "ubiquitous networks" (sites) like Flickr and YouTube present exciting marketing opportunities. Blogging, he says, can increase your visibility in Google searches (that's because Google likes fresh content, people) and that 42% of consumers switch brands because of internet research.

He says you can manipulate the conversation but you can't always control it, pointing to how GM consumers created a recent advertising campaign for the motor company using the building blocks of of short video clips. A lot of the power is clearly shifting from companies to people.

-- Rob