Archive for the 'Digital communication' Category
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BR (Blog Relation), a new way of marketing communication
“To succeed in luxury car market, you should get rid of negative and cheap brand image before you launch your new sport car ‘KOUP’ next year.”
This was one of comments on Kia’s international business blog, Kia-Buzz (www.kia-buzz.com). Since it was opened in September 2007, bloggers from more than 155 countries have visited the blog and left comments on Kia’s new vehicles, motor shows, design issues and marketing strategies. The company staff listened carefully what people say and sometimes they ask questions to them. There have been lots of controversial topics and debates since they started the blog.
To manage its blog effectively, Kia carefully selected 11 blog writers within the company, from different departments and regions. Some of them are graduate trainees and some others are manager levels, and the company thought having writers with different backgrounds and age groups can help understanding customers with various occasions.
The blog has become one of the most cost-effective Internet marketing tools, due to companies’ growing need to interact with potential and existing customers. One of the earliest and the most influential company blogs was Fastlane (http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/), a company blog in General Motors (GM), managed by Bob Lutz, the vice president of the company. It was created in January 2005 to listen customers’ complains about one of GM’s car brands, Pontiac. When Fastlane was launched, many consumers were amazed because Bob Lutz and professional staff wrote posts, listened what they said, answered questions and reflected their opinions on real products!
Until a few years ago, having a home page was everything in Internet marketing, to deliver a company’s message to consumers and give them a nice company image. The growth of Internet has been encouraging consumers to be actively involved in companies’ marketing and production activities. They are not just sitting and waiting for the products and services anymore, but also they try to give their opinions on productions and companies’ activities directly.
These active customers, also called pro-sumers, demand high level of access and interaction in the company’s decision-making process, and blog was the best place for them to communicate directly to companies. This new trend on web is called ‘BR (Brand Relations)’ that covers the area that Public Relations could not reach-approaching each customer’s mind directly. According to this trend, a blog is one of the quickest, easiest, and most cost-effective ways to listen directly what customers want.
However, is it really useful? Should every company start a blog?
A blog is a completely open space, so if someone starts to talk about a specific topic, others can freely react with their comments. It is a place that totally relying on public opinion, so it is hard to predict what kind of reactions that public will make on a post. This means, sometimes it is much more difficult to manage a blog than a website’s contents management. Debates are often happened on company blogs between consumers, but also between a company and consumers, and how the company reacts can contribute or damage its brand image, because even though a blog is just a blog, people who write comments and join debates can be serious and they have a power to spread the story and comments.
Therefore a blog should be considered as a seed of conversation that can create either positive or negative buzz and it is treated as a part of Marketing and Branding tool. Then these points might need to be discussed fundamentally before launching a blog:
- Who is going to visit the blog? and who should be the writer of the company blog?
- How they should react when there is a negative comment?
- How a company should reflect and monitor people’s raw opinions on their strategies?
- What kind of topics need to be selected and discussed?
Yes, it may be just a blog that anyone write anything, but depending on how to manage it properly, it can be a key tool of integrated marketing communication, a really effective new media tool that helps developing communication plan in traditional media channels, or a good contribution in developing brand equity by focusing on consumer involvement and preference enhancement.
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Miss Spell, Miss Quote, Make up: a new approach to writing for the web?
I’m a self-professed spelling fanatic. As an English graduate, the mantra of ‘check, check and double check’ is something that’s deeply ingrained in my daily life. So when it comes to writing for the web, a simple case of poor spelling has the potential to drive me to distraction. But while I was browsing the usual suspects online this morning, I found an article which was taking the chance to say something different on the subject: when writing online, why not try deliberately inserting typos, creating new (and potentially ridiculous) words and misquoting well-known sayings?
Now surprisingly enough, while this maybe a bit controversial for the ‘purists’ among us, it is not entirely alien. There are always the established principles that should underpin a good piece of well-crafted copy, but it is also true that introducing humour or trying to do something different with your content can take it to the next level. And that’s exactly what this does – by subverting the user’s expectations, the writer starts to draw them in, intrigue and amuse them and hopefully, provoke a response.
So perhaps what we should be saying is: if you’re going to use wordplay, don’t just be careful – be clever about it. As we always say, the key to success online is in understanding your audiences. An intelligent tweak of wordsmithing can add spice to your content, but if you pitch it wrong then you could both alienate your audience and devalue your online offering.
Have a look at the article and see what you think: ‘Made You Thunk: Engage Your Readers With Typos and Misquotes’ – and in the words of author Nick Cernis, ‘Use your new power responsibly!’
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Shake, rattle and roll
I’m too busy working on some great new projects to write a very long post, but couldn’t resist letting you know about a very interesting interface design developed at my old university, University of Glasgow.
Its a tactile and audio interface called ‘Shoogle’. (I can’t help wondering if the name would make any sense to those not lucky enough to be born in the west of Scotland…)
Shoogle is a lovely piece of software that enables users to check their mobile’s battery life and for unread / unheard messages by just shaking the handset.
So, you shake your phone and a combination of sound and vibrations mimics blocks or liquid trapped within. A phone full of liquid equals a full battery, just a few drops inside means time to find a charger.
Now, if someone develops a universal charger that works for every kind of mobile my life will be complete…
If you want to see, and hear, Shoogle in action visit the microsite:
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~jhw/shoogle/index.html
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I’ve seen the future and it’s looking good
Its not often that my jaw literally (not metaphorically!) drops, but this video did the trick. It’s a demonstration of mind blowing new technology that assembles online photos of real places (Notre dame cathedral in the example) and uses their metadata to create stunning multidimensional models that you can navigate and zoom in and out of… Oh, and the technology could also completely change the way we navigate web pages and kill off pop ups too.
Watch it – it’s incredible.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=s-DqZ8jAmv0
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Fun with maps
Google have had “new” against their Maps link on the uk home page for some time now. So what’s new - well there are a few things but you may have to look for them.
Firstly when you plan a route you can now drag the suggested route around a little - this makes planning routes that are a little more realistic as Google Maps doesn’t seem to be aware of major road works when planning my route, but I will get to that later.
Secondly “My Maps” is the most obvious change. In My Maps you can add your own icons, text bubbles and even lines and polygons. This is quite cool - I suppose it is a glorified bookmark, but on a maps.
Where it gets interesting is with the directory of maps and overlays you can add to your maps. Popular ones include distance calculators, elevation contours and realtime earth quakes just to mention a few. It was at this point I noticed a link - developer tools and led me to look at how to create these maps. Within a very short space of time I had created my own mapplet of a few National trust locations near to where I live. Now I have this as an overlay on my Google maps so that when I plan trips I can see when I will be driving past a National Trust garden. - Have a look at the National Trust Mapplet if you like…. Of course places like the National Trust could offer this as a service. It could be another way to direct people to the amazing places while they are planning a trip to a nearby town. Picture, overlays, video and narrative could be added to these mapplet to make them very interesting indeed! - maybe something like Google Street View - well we will see what happens with this and how many business’ and organisations look down this route.
Another direction Google Maps have gone is in the integration with in-car GPS systems - well one at the moment “Mercedes-Benz” (Yahoo have also gone down this direction). A service called “Search & Send” allows you to plan your route on your computer then send the route to your navigation system…. however - as usual this is only available in the US and only if you have a Mercedes-Benz - so most of us will have to wait a bit before we all see the wonders of this technology.
So where can this go? Well one possibility is maybe all the above could be combined. And in-car navigation systems maybe powered by web based systems like Google maps or more importantly data from the web can be fed live into the your system, and I don’t mean the data selected by GPS manufacturers - but data provided by users like the National Trust mapplet I created, or any of they other mapplets in the Google Maps directory. Maybe a decent mapplet with live traffic updates (a US live traffic example can be found here) and possibly some kind of integration with social networking - as usual the possibilities are limitless - but we will have to wait and see how this develops.
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‘Guard dog poodle’ – art or eye sore?
Graffiti is usually seen as an anti-social eye sore – which of course it is – in many cases! It’s illegal and is something that connects a small percentage of society…
That is until Banksy hit London. No one supposedly knows who he is - yet his graffiti is now considered works of art – the most expensive selling recently for £288,000.
So, why is this being mentioned on our blog? I had lunch in a Shoreditch restaurant where Banksy had his work ‘exhibited’ – both the ‘Moona Lisa’ and ‘Guard dog poodle’*. I mentioned this to a friend of mine in Detroit and within seconds he had identified what restaurant I’d had lunch.
I found that an incredible use of the internet. The fact that it’s possible to identify one’s location with just a description of some graffiti – not just this – but that the internet has spread his work worldwide – of course he has also spread his work in places such as Israel – but his most prolific work is around the corner from our office.
I noticed yesterday that various walls near the Barbican had a couple of Banksy rats. The council had recently done a paint job – but painted around the rats. Probably as a result of the outcry that occurred when graffiti clean up services painting over one of his more favourite pieces (the Pulp Fiction characters with bananas instead of guns).
What makes Banksy’s work an art piece and other graffiti artists work mostly seen as an eye sore? Is it the fact his work has been photographed and passed around the world via the internet? Such as can be seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy.
Is the example of Banksy’s fame proof that through the use of the internet anyone can spread ‘their art’ without the need for traditional marketing routes. Through the internet he has shown that old fashioned word of mouth – or the more modern click of the mouse – his message can be seen and heard throughout the world. Messages from the ‘people’ is not simply limited to an area by a poster or sandwich board man in the town square as seen in days of old. Equally a message from big business that can be spread world-wide through big spending can also be spread for little cost via the internet. The internet has opened up the world of art to everyone – we are seeing it with the likes of Banksy with his graffiti art and Lilly Allen and Sandy Thom with their music…. But that’s a whole other story.
*http://www.artofthestate.co.uk/Banksy/Banksy_guard_dog.htm
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Pulp your fiction
Let’s face it, the concept of the paperless office was one that was never
going to work. Despite a plethora of techno gadgets and wizadry, we all shove a paper note or two in our pockets when we’re on the
move. What’s more, traditionalists everywhere bury their head into paperback books in the comforting knowledge that staring at backlit screens for long periods of time is really bad for your eyes (even though we all do this every day at work).Today (15 May 2007), however, LG Philips LCD announced the development of the
world’s first A4-sized colour electronic paper - that doesn’t rely on backlighting and conserves energy by ’sleeping’ when not in use. Measuring only 0.3
millimetres thick, the paper-thin, bendable viewing panel, has the
ability to display 4,096 colours. This is an exciting development as it takes
portable access to online information to a new level - roll-up laptops,
books, presentations, ipost-its… the list is endless.If e-paper takes off it will be interesting to see how it affects the mobile phone market, which is slowly adapting itself as a platform for web content. A roll-up mobile to fit any pocket possibly? The capacity to hold a large quantity of content on a small portable unit made the ipod, e-paper has the potential to bring these factors to the book market and even web content.
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A hug online…
I’ve just seen a fantastic example of the power of the internet today - when reading about the ‘Free Hugs Guy’ - Juan Mann. Mr Mann who keeps his identity secret started the free hugs campaign in Sydney in 2004.
He has since become a very huggable stranger - offering anyone who wants one - a free hug. Since then, he has hugged over 500,000 people.
What does this have to do with the power of the internet I hear you ask? Mann had thought about travelling to spread his hugging campaign to each country and territory in the world - however this has not been required as the internet has done the job for him. YouTube have a video of his antics which has since spread throughout the world. As of now 14,193,171 have watched the clip.
As Mann himself says: “The internet has changed the way it happens. Now it happens online. I spend four hours a day answering emails.” If it weren’t for the internet it would not be possible to spread the ‘hug’ without a huge amount of time and money. It’s a great example of how a good strong message can spread rapidly from the idea of one man to millions around the world.
There are now ‘Free Hug’ campaigns across the globe, from Hollywood, Tel Aviv, Amsterdam, Peru, Milan to Tokyo. I counted 13 different countries who are taking part in the campaign. It sounds corny, but just watching the free hugs, made me want to give/receive a hug! I never thought the internet would make me want to get up and give someone a hug!… but it did…
So when you have the time, watch the ‘Free Hugs Guy’ and give someone a hug today!
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Customer service, virtually
When is a website not a website? When it’s a virtual world. Already, the 6 million citizens of Second Life
already know the benefits of having an alter ego in the form of an avatar in a
virtual world. The site, which is largely used as a social networking site is beginning to develop more and more
into a business tool. Having already created its first millionaire last year (a
Japanese woman who bought and sold land in the virtual world’s currency – the
Linden – that can be converted into real US dollars), major names such as
Adidas and Oxfam have built up a parallel business in this online universe.Raising
money in this virtual world is not the only benefit to be had by business, a
new use has been developed by Sun Systems who have taken the virtual world to a
new level – that of the virtual office with the help of its MPK20 business tool. As well as having eight building locations in
the real world, they have now added a ninth – in the virtual world called
Wonderland – where colleagues can view online presentations or hold meetings. Any
problems commuting or catching a flight to make it to an important presentation
could soon be a thing of the past. Perhaps next, interacting in this way could be
how more companies of the future deal with their customers online – an
unnerving thought that this could be seen as adding a more ‘personal touch’ to
interacting with consumers online.See how other businesses are using the virtual world for their business
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Video to kill the TV star?
Despite the
recent rapid burst of YouTube onto our monitor screens, I can’t help thinking
the use of streaming video is still in its infancy. As more and more websites
embrace the multimedia capabilities that an online presence offers over
traditional media, featuring the odd streaming video or video download, it
still feels like we have a long way to go in terms of integration and benefits
to the user and organisation.It is true media has become more fractured, illustrated by some of the mainstream TV channels
offering us video on demand (Vod) as a way of reaching us when the TV set is turned off. YouTube has also created a few limited entertainment channels (see left). However, what is there to prevent us, in our new world of user-generated and bespoke content, going one step further and syndicating relevant video ‘programmes’ on our websites to create
our own ‘channel’ specific to our needs and interests? RSS news feeds give
us grouped information on issues we are interested in but if, say, the fashion
or construction industry, adopted a video news channel housed on their website
it would surely give the site the edge over competitors. By hosting a niche
online channel, specific to an industry sector for example, using news agency feeds,
perhaps we could all soon broadcast our own online video channel (perhaps called a V channel?) embedded in our websites.
