Communications 2.0

Once again, I am going to highlight an example from my previous agency experience as it relates to Agriculture and reaching farmers. My agency experience has been a great way to build my career and provides great examples for this blog!

Farmers and ag professionals are an example of one group that really embraces their cell phone technology. Most of the farmers and retailers I spoke with on field travel have two things with them in the truck, combine or other piece of machinery – their radio and their cell phone. It is the easiest way to get in touch with them rather then calling their house at 6 am before they start their day or after 7 pm, and they really enjoy the connectivity.

A few years ago we started playing around with the idea of sending text messages to alert farmers and retailers about new product offerings they may be interested in. We had to consider the response and reaction of the recipient of the text message, because they would essentially be paying to receive an advertisement. The way around it? We piggybacked on a subscription weather report service, running a banner ad along the bottom of the report. They received the information they needed on their phone, and we we able to help push our message and product to our target audience.

As the lecture states: Brand = the promise, Reputation = delivery on that promise.

With so many people turning to others’ recommendations and reviews it is important to recognize your audience and monitor what they are saying about you to ensure you are delivering on your brand promise. And if you aren’t, you need to be able to address the issue and acknowledge the issue with you customers.

One blog I read is a perfect example of this. www.thebloggess.com The author is funny, quirky and has thousands of followers. She is a columnist for the Houston Chronicle, keeps her blog and writes a sex column. She recently wrote about the numerous pitches she gets from various Public Relations professionals and the response the sends when it is obvious they don’t research the type of writer she is or the audience she caters to.  Specifically she targeted an email pitch she received from Chevy, and basically blasted them for not researching who she was and who they are as a company. While her blog is not a customer service network, she does have thousands of followers. To help remedy the situation the Chevy Director recognized the blog was negative against their brand and sent her the following email:

“I’m sorry we sent you that pitch. I’m embarrassed, too — not only because that’s not how we like for Chevrolet to represent itself or how we like  to talk with people, but because I agree with you 100% that this kind of  ”marketing” doesn’t work at all. It’s cheesy, it’s impersonal, and it belies a complete misunderstanding of how the social web works.   Frankly, I’m glad you blasted us on your blog — because we had it coming for  that pitch, and because I’m going to send your post to everyone in GM communications and marketing (not just Chevrolet) as a reminder and an instruction on how NOT to talk to people (whether they’re bloggers or Twitterers or not). We don’t usually talk with people that way, but on this occasion we did and it makes my entire program seem clueless; I want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. So in a weird way, thank you for the rather unpleasant medicine.”

A great example of monitoring what people are saying about your brand, identifying and acknowledging the situation and changes that need to be made, and working towards repairing your brand reputation.

The lecture about wikis this week and the example of sharing information and content with clients really hit home for me. As I have mentioned before, I have worked for numerous agencies, and was involved with a pitch for new business that we landed. The part of the pitch that was my responsibility was outlining the project management and collaboration opportunities between the client and agency and within the client communication groups internally. The client we pitched was a global group, they had individuals in Switzerland, the United States and throughout other European countries. It was very important for them to have a constant location available to them that they could log on to, securely, and comment on the material we were developing for them. The solution I presented was Microsoft Sharepoint, but after watching the lecture I think  a Wiki would have been very helpful. As part of the pitch we compiled research information about the market, conducted interviews across the globe and developed what we felt would be helpful background information as we moved forward with the development of marketing materials. All of this information could have been shared on the Wiki, and those that worked for the organization would have had the opportunity to edit, comment and add additional information as they saw fit. In addition, we could have posted drafts of material and the communications managers that were living all across the world and working in different time zones could have logged on and made their comments as it was convenient to them.

Moving forward I will try the wiki route, I can see the benefits of having information available in a central local where people can log on and make comments when and wherever they are.