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Taking the thread from my previous post, though I liked what Toyota did, since it came across as a successful campaign and gave freedom of expression to bloggers.

Unlike Edelman Public Relations, who has been caught twice in unethical and fake Wal-Mart blog (flog) scandals and has been accused of bribing bloggers to write favorable reviews of Microsoft's new Vista operating system.

Though such moves do give an initial push and glorified PR, this definitely does not help in paradigm shift to customer involvement. What is needed are not “self glorified” comments and posts, rather a way to reach-out to the consumers and “Listen”, “respond” and “improve” to ensure you give what they want.

A good example of responding to customers is of Dell Blog - direct2dell.com, though they too took a long time to respond to criticisms and Bloggers. "No comment" is no answer for corporations that have a responsibility to shareholders, clients and consumers.

Even when Jeff Jarvis started blogging about being in "Dell Hell" because of problems with a Dell laptop, the company did not take any action. Eventually, when mainstream media and Wall Street took note of Dell's problems, which led to financial losses, Dell finally agreed to address customer service issues.

Labels: Bloggers, Brand association, Corporate Blog, online advertising, online marketing, Online PR

I was reading an interesting article in Forbes - “Can you hear me now” by Sherry Turkle. I was quite moved with the way article went about saying how people have now started sticking to their personal network so much that they have lost the art and enthusiasm of meeting in person.

What the article missed talking about was the opportunity provided by these networks to “meet” , “form friends” and “grow” – both in intellectual and personal space.

With every new technology, there are both benefits and flaws. I agree that life without cellphone/internet/blackberry seems dead, and yes with so much of exposure and media availability, contemporary world has a spilt and reduced attention span.

This brings a challenge and opportunity. Challenge to manage time, to give quality time to things which are important, automate things which are mundane/routine and find time to “think and do what is important” and “urgent”. Opportunity to know much much more in same time, to become faster in grasping things and super than super computer!

“Network effect is expanding the collective intelligence of the human race” (Its All in your Head by Robert M. Metcalfe)

I feel with more media, there is an opportunity of viewing/hearing/watching/reading/creating more information and challenge of choosing and segregate relevant piece from junk.

These are teething problems and this would invariably help us all Evolve, become smarter and most important to remain “connected” with information and world!

Labels: online marketing, Online PR, social media, Social network

Creating an On-demand media environment

As a marketer, it sounds interesting and scary.. good to think that people might be interested in reading, knowing, bloging, podcasting about my “company” and scary to think what if they don’t.. what if they are just too busy and are considering ads as frills and turning them into blink spots!

As ipresssroom (http://www.ipressroom.com) mentions in its white paper, blog-powered media rooms allow companies to think beyond the press release and social networking elements like participatory surveys, interactive forums, streaming media, media on-demand, blogs, podcasts, high-resolution image galleries and other online marketing communications elements can help leverage a company’s existing intellectual capital via the web.

I agree and am very happy to see where the next-gen media is moving… but still its difficult at times to sell this concept internally to own PR teams..!

Some Interesting figures regarding Online News readership

Source: comScore Media Metrix, Dec. 2006

So how do we ensure that the concept is sold within the organization?

1. Understand benchmarks and create realistic SOV estimates.
2. Pitch online story/press release to bloggers; wire them to new search engines
3. Measure the Impact

More in my tomorrow’s post!

Labels: ePR, online advertising, online marketing, Online PR