After the fantastic Cape Town meal at the BMW Pavilion the Indaba Hotel lunch had a lot to live up to. A wide buffet greeted the guests, and after attempting to sample at least one helping of each dish the delegates began the considerable trek back to the auditorium.

One of the delegates asked for an extra 5 minutes in order to take a short post-meal nap but the irrepressible Sally ploughed on straight into part 3 of the conference. Having already attended the Cape Town conference I was amazed at how different the Johannesburg one was proceeding – not that any of the speakers' content was markably different the second time round, but the questions posed by the audience steered the conference in new directions. It seems that engaging the audience, even at a conference level, provides remarkable results.
And engaging the audience is something that Sally is well versed in – both in an online sense and when presenting at the front of an auditorium. Drumming home the advantages and intricacies of WebPR it was obvious that she held the undivided attention of the guests.

Once Sally was done it was once again Rob's turn. With members of ABSA, FNB and Standard Bank in attendance this was always going to be an interesting session – not least of all for me, having worked on the ORM tool for the past two months.
Tracking the brand's reputations some relevant points were raised: ABSA has a particularly low reputation score, due in large part to My Broadband, where ABSA seems to be a punching bag for the forumites' banking frustrations; FNB is usually recommended as an alternative to ABSA, and despite taking some hits from pulling its anti-crime campaign at the 11th hour popular opinion was split own the middle with regards to FNB's role in the saga. Rob also raised the point that in 5000 mentions there wasn't a single instance of a bank personally responding to its consumers online.

Be human. Be humble. Say sorry. And rectify your mistakes. Simple but wise advice. One wonders whether any of the banks or other brands present truly took heed of Rob's words. One way to find out would be to see how many of these brands are reading this post and are willing to comment...