My second post is up at Fast Company's Blogjam 2005. Reproduced here.
I'm very impressed that FastCompany is opening up its
server space to its audience in celebraton of the
blogjam 2005. It represent an openness that we don't
see much from business publications, and certainly not
from the corporate world. What I find unique about
blogjam is how FC now has evangelists who can serve as
publicists for their magazine and their blog. Are
there any of us who hasn't casually dropped the fact
that we're blogging for fastcompany at least once?
It's smart, it's fun - and it's valuable for companies
to learn that their audience has something to say.
As Brian put it earlier, < a
href="http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives/2005/08/09/dude_youre_getting_delld.html">no
company wants to get Dell'd. Dell's problem is
not something that is easily measured in terms of
sales figures for this quarter,. How many people
stopped buying Dell because of a Jeff Jarvis post?
Probably not that many. A few deals may be lost when
a purchasing agent had a bad experience at home and
refuses to buy for their corporation, but discounts
always make those problems go away. The bigger
question is how much in marketing dollars and
sweetheart deals (both personal and commercial) Dell
is shelling out to maintain its market position - and
is that money spent on marketing preventing them from
posting higher profits and reinvesting in their
customer service - perpetuating the cycle of poor
performance.
Dell and Kryptonite locks are high-profile cases, but
two others spring to mind in the blogosphere - and the
companies involved did not learn the value of
listening to their audience. Anyone here know much
about Sony Pictures or Pepsico?
Sony
Pictures had a spat with Jason Kottke over
Jeopardy footage that was aired, almost driving him
out of blogging altogether. In this case, its hard
not to be sympathetic to Sony's attempt to make a
lesson out of Kottke, who had aired the huge story of
Ken Jennings finally losing a tip in the audience. To
bloggers, it mattered little, as the story of a giant
corporation attacking a little blogger and threatening
to use their lawyers to squash him was far more
appealing.
Bloggers led a boycott - which hasn't seemed to be
effective - yet. Again, it's hard to measure, but the
story has the potential to become an urban legend
affecting all Sony products, not just Sony Pictures.
At the very least, aren't there quite a few people
enjoying themselves too much about Sony Pictures class
action lawsuit for fake advertisements?
What was Sony's mistake? They can't allow
people to simply take images amd information and post
them whenever they want - and its easy to make the
case that Sony televisions and camcorders have nothing
to do with lawyers at Sony Pictures. Their mistake
was they don't have a voice in the consumer world.
They have marketing pros and multimillion dollar
budgets, but the idea of Sony turning over their
corporate website for two days to their audience is
ludicrous. Its ludicrous because Sony as a property
knows they have to control the message for us masses.
Don't get me wrong - I love Sony - as a product. I
don' know Jason Kottke. I do know that everytime
either "Sony" or "Kottke" or even "sue and blogger"
comes up, I think of this situation.
The second company to have this mistake it Pepsico.
Not as widely played, but the conservative lawyers who
helped break the Dan Rather story latched
on to a speech given by a Pepsico executive.
Indra Nooyi, the president of PepsiCo, gave a speech
where she compared the world to a hand, and the United
States to the middle finger.
The gents at Powerline made it clear they were not
amused, and
response from Pepsi was, well - lackluster at
best. We all know what the middle finger
represents - and anchoring the hand is not its first
function.
Maybe Ms. Nooyi really didn't mean to say that the US
was giving the middle finger to the rest of the world.
Maybe it was taken in that context and she was
unfairly attacked. If that was the case, PepsiCo made
the same mistake that Sony did in failng to establish
itself with an online presence that could respond to a
blog swarm. They failed to see it was a public
relations fiasco waiting to happen, and they didn't
have the presence online to truly respond.
Instead their announcement was mocked, and the urban
legend takes wing of the PepsiCo president who flipped
off the Columbia Business School and the US in the
process.
The post has gone long - but the point is a simple
one. If Fast Company suffered a Public Relations
fiasco tomorrow - would they be able to get their
story out to the blogosphere? Would there be someone
who would listen? I'm not sure how many were invited,
but I'd bet every poster here in the last two days
would at least ask questions directly to FC before
they spouted off. We'd listen with an open mind,
because FC took the initiative to invite us in and
listen to us.
They earned our respect, and over time, our loyalty.
In the emerging online market, there is no better
coin.
