Blogging, In Control Consumers and the Brave New World

I half-Inched this article, but it's good...

Before we get into the article, I want to hit you with one conclusion for us as marketers.  We need to start talking to Bloggers.  They are not hard to find, and they are the 'new press'.  While we can't control them (that's the point of blogging!) we can try to be their friends.  That means give them what they want, e.g. juicy stuff to blog about, on their terms.  The onus is on us to locate them and engage with them.  Remember when "The Tipping Point" came out? Everybody was looking for Mavens, Influencers and Connectors.  Well, now we can find them, they self-identify every day on the internet.  Here are extracts from the article....

THE GROWING IMPACT OF CONSUMERS' WEB PUBLISHING Why Advertising Can No Longer Be a One-Way Monologue November 01, 2004

By Rance Crain

So marketers want consumers to be in control, do they? "Truly the consumer wants to be in control, and we want to put them in control," General Motors marketing executive Roger Adams told the Association of National Advertisers' annual meeting.

Be careful what you wish for. What most marketers haven't come to grips with is just how much consumers are now calling the shots. They have the ability to change the way ad messages are being received -- and even come out with their own counter-messages.

'iPod's dirty secret'

....the Neistat brothers, created a Web site and film to protest that Apple's iPod battery couldn't be replaced and lasted only 18 months. The film, ipod's dirty secret (using iMacs to produce it) showed the brothers stenciling their findings about the iPod battery all over Apple's poster ads for the product. The Web site generated over 15 million hits from around the world and forced Apple to change the battery.

Another IAA speaker, Kolchi Yamamoto of the Dentsu Communications Institute, called the influence of Web logs "the strength of weak information." After Coca-Cola premiered its new C2 Coke product in Japan, Mr. Yamamoto said consumers created the better part of 40,000 Web pages about the product.....Mr. Yamamoto said opinions about C2 from these "weak information" sources had a greater impact than the opinion of friends, who all tended to think the same way.

Influencers

The blog creators are influencers -- people who pride themselves on knowing all kinds of arcane, insider details about the product, hence giving them credibility with consumers.

What's clear is that advertising no longer has the luxury of being a one-way monologue. Consumers, much like voters, have the ability to not only absorb advertiser messages, but to change other consumers' minds about the message content and the product itself.

So marketers must now be ready to change their communications based on consumers' own feedback. Political ads have long adapted to what their polls show voters are most concerned about, and now consumers have the same opportunity -- only consumers, through their blogs, are polling themselves.

.......Will consumer blogs bypass professional advertising agencies? As I said, be careful what you wish for.

Comments

[Simon Pearce]

Steve, great comments. I agree that blogging is about personal "voice" and people taking control away from corporations (for a prophetic discussion of consumers seeking personal "voice" see Maxmin's pre-blogging futurist book, The Support Ecoonomy, listed on this site in our books list). I also agree that "corporate blogging" has its pitfalls and problems. The power of blogging is not in any one individual blog, but in the internet providing an arena for people to discuss and reach consensus without the "control" of big brother breathing down their necks. Blogging is bringing to popular culture what the scientific community achieved over a hundred years ago, consensus formation by open, direct, discussion and peer review.

Does this mean that all is lost for us promoters of the wares of corporate America? In my opinion, the answer is "no", but the rules are certainly changing...we need to go from "broadcast mode", relentlessly pumping "our message" into dialogue mode: "infiltrating" the blogosphere is probably not the best way to go about it. What I believe to be a potentially fruitful approach is the idea of 'engaging' with bloggers....establishing communications with them and starting a dialogue going. We should see them as a laboratory for new ideas and approaches, as well as a source of insight about what people want. Monitor what bloggers are saying about your industry, talk to them on the web, send them "press packs" when you are trying to get your point across... I am sure that there is more that could be developed along those lines, but those are some initial thoughts.

I will leave this post with a parting thought, related to the notion of a counter-culture that could "drown out" the corporate world's voice. Anybody interested in this should read Bobos in Paradise (also listed on our site under books). That book lays out how culture and counter-culture clashed, mostly from about 1950-1970, with the end result being that both sides "co-opted each other", with neither ending up the same as they began (very Hegelian!). It could well happen again: it may change the face of our industry, but there will always be a place for smart, articulate, creative people to advocate for and embellish mere products into meaningful expressions of identity, lifestyle and status.

[Steve Murray]

I liken the new wave of blogging to a crack opening in a dam. Marketers are desperately trying to figure out the best way they can control/contain/leverage the water pouring on their heads.

Lets take a look at who is doing the blogging:
(Stats taken from livejournal.com a popular online blogging site with 2.6MM active users)
67% Female
73% under 21yrs old

These people are writing on the web because they want their voices to be heard. They’re looking for peers who understand them and who they understand. Do 40 year old male marketers have a chance of winning over this audience?

The new rally cry of "We have to Blog!" sound eerily similar to "We need to be on the internets!"

Can corporate America successfully infiltrate the Blogging community that was founded on the principles of counter-culture, individuality and self-discovery?

If a corporation sponsors a blog they face a critical choice: Either (A) the give the author enough autonomy to establish "street-cred" or (B) force the author to jump through political and legal hoops prior to publishing. Option A risks negative exposure (See the Microsoft blogger who promotes his iPod). Option B leads to a sterile piece of propaganda that no one in the online community (that isn’t already a convert) is going to take seriously.

The biggest mistake bloggers make (myself included) is an over-developed sense of importance. “If I publish it, people must be hanging on every word”

And then, there are the other risks:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/01/09/companies_that_have_.html