Influential Interactive Marketing

NY Times Admires Brand Bloggers & Consumer Evangelists

In a presentation I gave last week, I spoke about the passion that many people feel about their technology choices as a key reason why our technology clients who are not aggressively pursuing a blogging strategy need to tap into this conversation.  Of course, passion can be positive or negative and being in the world of public relations, many of our competitors have focused on the risks of blogs.  They drive their client advice from a crisis management point of view, developing terms like the "determined detractor" to characterize individuals bent on destroying your company and encouraging clients to get involved in the blogosphere as a strategy to minimize this risk.

Is there risk in the open conversations taking place on blogs?  Without doubt.  The problem with blogging for crisis management is that it fosters the fear many communications professionals hold of giving up control of their message.  As a result, it ignores the most powerful potential of blogs and other forms of consumer generated media ... providing a voice for your brand enthusiasts, and letting them speak loudly.  In today's NY Times, Tania Ralli explores the idea brand bloggers - individuals who feel so passionately about a brand that they write about it, share their view and often serve as a brand's most compelling ambassadors.  She writes:

Most consumers are searching for unbiased opinions, a niche that blogs can fill. A testimonial from one blogger can speak directly to readers in a way advertising does not.

As more and more of our clients begin to realize this, communications agencies like us will need to develop stronger and smarter ways of helping each client to understand the value these brand enthusiasts bring, do what we can to help them (transparently) and then step back, shut up and let them have their say.

Technorati Tags: Branding, Advertising, Consumer Evangelists, Interactive Marketing

Starwood Launches a Katrina Online Relief Auction

I recently came across a great travel/advocacy campaign sponsored by Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide (up from October 20-27).  Taking the idea of donating your frequent flier miles to the next stage, the site features an online auction with more than 800 travel related items including a "Carolina Getaway with tickets to a pro football game" and a "Deluxe 4 Night Stay at the St. Regis Shanghai."  The site's main purpose is to raise funds for the more than 900 displaced Starwood employees from the New Orleans region, with 100% of donated funds going to help them.  This strikes me as a particularly successful promotion for several reasons:

1. It humanizes the organization's employees: Too many travel companies focus on their services and amenities, while travellers read in the press about new pay cuts, layoffs and other examples of employee devaluation.  This comes across as a great example of a company sticking up for their employees and doing what they can to help them.
2. It promotes national and international Starwood destinations: Ok, advocacy is great ... but this also ties to marketing result, getting more Starwood properties in front of consumers and judging by the many bids on these packages, consumers see most of the offers as a good value.
3. It is low cost and low maintenance: All they needed to do was enlist support from properties worldwide willing to participate.  The entire auction is online and presumably self sustaining, and promotion is through their current hotel properties (as well as possibly some online advertising which I haven't seen)

In all, a strong example of combining a corporate social responsibility, crisis management, employee relations, and marketing promotion into a cohesive single effort.  I'd love to see more travel companies give marketing like this a try.

Chrysler's Firehouse: Corporate Blog Gone Wrong

Perhaps aiming to avoid the mistakes of Dell in ignoring Jeff Jarvis' blog comments and experience, Chrysler PR chief Jason Vines has taken a wide swing in the opposite direction, lashing out at Steve Hall of Adrants in response to his (justified) posting about the new Firehouse.biz blog as being "stupid, illogical, idiotic and insane."  Mainly Hall's criticism took issue with the composition of the blog as a journalist-only affair where you could only gain access by showing the proper press credentials.  Of course, the comparisons were drawn to GM's well regarded FastLane blog.  To add to Steve's comments and offer my support for a fellow blogger, he's spot on with his view on Chrysler's new blog.  You need to look no further than a few of their own "Rules of the Blog" for reasons why this will fail and earn further ire from bloggers:

• Rule #1 - In the spirit of honest, free-flowing conversation we'd prefer you post comments using your real name, but you will be given the opportunity to post under a screen name. [RB - A blog which requires a login to keep non-journalists out starts with "in the spirit of honest, free flowing conversation"?]
• Rule #2 - Users must stay on topic within any given thread. New topics must be made the subject of a new thread. [RB - Sounds more like a discussion board than a blog]
• Rule #4 - Blog administrators retain the right to ask the user to re-write a proposed submission to comply with the rules of the blog before being posted. [RB - Interesting - does this also mean you will proof my proposed submission for spelling too?  What if I use "colour" - is that ok?]
• Rule #9 - Proprietary information may be inadvertently posted on the blog. DaimlerChrysler blog administrators will act to remove it as soon as possible, and users who have viewed the information will be asked to disregard and not re-distribute it. [RB - I wonder, how can proprietary information be inadvertently posted when you are screening postings, and asking users to rewrite them prior to being published?]
• Rule #11-The FireHouse.biz is not intended as a forum for outside suggestions, including but not limited to those which pertain to vehicle design, product attributes, marketing or advertising, and no such material will be posted. [RB - So after registering a group of journalists who are usually expected to have and offer their opinions, you expect them not to offer any thoughts at all?  What a missed opportunity!]

Perhaps what Chrysler should have done is launched a "media extranet."  Certainly that's what they have now, and it could have helped them avoid the blogosphere showdown starting right now.  Of course, then there would be no buzz either ... which could be Vines' ultimate intention any way he can get it. 

Other posts about this:

David Burn (Adrants)
Random Culture
BL Ochman
Diva Marketing Blog
BlogWorks
Business Blog Consulting

Orbitz is down - CRM opportunity?

Orbitz.com is down - an extremely rare event for large ecommerce sites these days.  I'm sure there will be articles in the coming days about the real cost of this outage for Orbitz.  And at this point it's still down with only their admission that "We are aware of the problem and are working to correct it."  Chances are they will have it up very shortly.  But when the site is finally back up, they will have significant credibility issues to deal with.  Classic online crisis management. 

But this outage could also be an opportunity for the site to reconnect with dormant or past customers. What if they sent a letter to all customers with an apology and incentive to return to the site?  Apology emails have a way of travelling among customers ... which could be a good thing if an incentive were part of the message.  A built in setup for a viral message - where the good is sent with the bad.

Videoblogging - the next big thing?

From discussion boards and newsgroups to blogs to podcasting ... new forms of content creation are evolving the user-contributed "DIY" model of the Internet.  I posted earlier about online photo albums as a symbol of the growth of content sharing online among the general online population.  Blogs and podcasting are part of this trend, which (in recent months) have evolved and worked their way into the commercial sector driving corporations to create blogs and popular radio personalities to syndicate their content.

But for an average user to develop video content and make the jump to videoblogging (also known as vblogs, vlogs or vogs), it seems like the barrier will be far higher.  Not for the aspiring directors and video enthusiasts, but for the same 8 million Americans that have created blogs.  Will videoblogging really be the next natural step?  Apart from special cases like the Tsunami video blog phenomenon, isn't it just too complicated to gain the same traction as written blogs or even podcasting? 

An alternative theory is that vlogs could take a reverse growth cycle to other popular forms of content creation.  Where blogs and even podcasting have largely relied on the collective passion of individuals to establish their popularity ... what if videoblogging were to experience it's true growth from the involvement of organizations and current content provider groups?  It's easy to imagine CNN evolving their decision to launch online video news into vlogging efforts.  Corporate blogs with vlogs integrated could represent the next evolution in connecting a human face with consumers.  Product support, crisis management, consumer marketing, Dyson vacuum-style spokesperson campaigns - each have interesting opportunities with vlogs.  Is it possible that dreaded and maligned corporations might be the ones who help videoblogging truly grow into the next big thing?