CAVELOSSIM: While creating online buzz for brands could lead to only generating noise for consumers, the right management of brand conversation across the platform could have a huge co-relation to the future success of the brand, stated Publicis Worldwide CEO Richard Pinder. 
 
While addressing the audience in a session at Goafest 2010, Pinder said, "Conversations about a brand happen everywhere. The conversations could be both negative as well as positive. Controlling or censoring negative conversations does not generally work as has been evident in some cases where negative online conversations were taken down. This resulted in more negative conversations and further control of these conversations resulted in even more damage for the brand."

Pinder, thus, noted that the role of agencies should be to manage the online conversations so that there were many people speaking positively about a brand and fewer people speaking negatively about it. 
 
Pinder cited a study by the London School of Economics which showed that brands most recommended in categories grew four times faster than the category average and another study by Bain Consulting showed that increasing recommendations of a brand by 12 per cent doubled the sales growth of the brand.
 
However, ending on a cautious note about the use of a judicious mix of media, Pinder said, "Obama did not win the US presidential elections because he knew how to use facebook. He did a brilliant job on facebook, but he spent just 4 per cent of his money on the web and an enormous amount of money on TV, more than any other president has spent so far."