The Washington Post published a great article on how marketing has moved to the blogosphere. Here is my favourite excerpt followed up by my thoughts.
“Kathleen Matthews who heads global communications at Marriott International, came up with the idea for chief executive Bill Marriott’s blog. He saw it as a good way to communicate. “That’s the importance of public relations, of advertising, of everything we do,” Marriott said. “And this is just another channel.” Marriott also likes how the blog shows that he’s “a human just like everybody else.” He sometimes breaks from writing about corporate issues to post about the movies he sees on Saturdays with his wife.”
“Marriott has thousands of employees around the world, who make up about one-fifth of the blog’s readership and comment frequently. “It is the virtual substitute for Bill Marriott visiting every hotel,” Matthews said.”
“He’s not your typical blogger — he doesn’t use computers. Instead, he dictates entries into a recorder and a staff member transcribes and posts them. The audio is also on the site, which averages about 6,000 visitors per week and has had more than 600,000 total visitors since its inception in January 2007.”
“Marriott has made more than $5 million in bookings from people who clicked through to the reservation page from Marriott’s blog.”
So what? What is the relevance if Marriott in relation to so many other brands with less direct touch points to their end customer? Coke distributes and sells through retailers. Furniture, food, so many products are passed through distributors and retailers before ever hitting the customer’s shopping cart or living room. The point is, no matter where in your brand or product lifecycle the customer is involved, they are involved. Don’t try to pretend that they won’t have discussions about your brand elsewhere, they will. Even with Marriott’s blog, a simple search on Trip Advisor for the word Marriott (forget the mis-spelled entries) brings up 138,855 results. Consumers talk, bottom line. Give them a facility to do it where you can be involved, or don’t. Blogs help a brand get involved.
Some brands are just not hip, informal, conversational. Blogs help them get there. For well-read blogs with active reader feedback boards, there are tough decisions about how to deal with comments that are off-topic, negative or downright offensive. “Marriott’s comment section is moderated, which means no comments go up until someone approves them.” According to the article, Marriott says they do not remove a comment simply because it’s negative, but they do cut those not germane to the original post.
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