ChasNote

The crew at Business Week’s Blogspotting isn’t convinced that Chevy’s Best of the Green Web sponsored site is conversational enough:

“Chevy says on the site that it wants to start a conversation. But if that’s the case, I would expect the site to be all about the technologies that will make cars more fuel efficient and less damaging in terms of resources used and carbon dioxide emitted. And I would expect Chevy’s folks to be contributing their own news about what they’re doing.”

I don’t think Blogspotting spent enough time at the site. Here’s the comment I posted to the original story:

“I agree with your critique of conversational marketing where marketing brands don’t have a voice in the discussion. In the case of Chevy’s sponsorship of the Best of the Green Web site, however, they do have a voice. Chevy is providing its own news and updates on its fuel-solutions technologies — see the left column, just below the Recent Comments. The idea is to take consumer feedback, and to addressed it issue by issue. Even tough questions like ‘Aren’t you the guys who killed the electric car?’ Creating authentic media — whether it’s editorial media or media connected to a marketing project — is hard work, and success is defined by each reader or viewer. Based on traffic and repeat traffic to this site, and engagement with the content provided by Chevy, this experience is working for a fair number of green-minded consumers. At the very least, it’s a move by Chevy in the right direction, a move towards a more fluid two-way dialog with customers.”

In a piece for Business Week Jeff Jarvis, author of BuzzMachine (among other things), profiles Starbucks’s MyStarbucksIdea.com concept — an initiative Jeff calls a foray into corporate democracy. The site allows Starbucks customers to offer advice on improving its customer service, products or business practices. Starbucks (the retail chain) benefits from good ideas it may soon implement, and Starbucks (the brand) benefits by connecting with customers at higher, more emotional level — through a conversation in which customers have a voice, and Starbucks listens and responds.

“‘If [an idea] fails,” says [Starbucks CTO] Bruzzo, “our customers who are on MyStarbucksIdea ought to participate in being accountable for it.’ Whether an idea is accepted or not, customers get only the satisfaction of participating; there are no payments or other tangible rewards.”

What an excellent example of a brand-as-conversation, or what we at FM call (and Jeff often criticizes!) conversational marketing.

Jon Fine, Fine on Media columist and blogger at BusinessWeek, on Yahoo and Microsoft:

“Ah, Microsoft-Yahoo. It’s truly touching to me how companies are forever believing that if you mate two dogs, you can make a pony.”

Ouch.

Despite the belated timing for such a proclamation, I appreciate Business Week’s validation of conversational marketing in Ted Shelton’s January 18, 2008, Viewpoint column:

“Dove and a growing number of brands are finding that the kind of marketing the 20th century perfected is becoming less effective in the 21st. A recent McKinsey report predicts that, ‘Traditional TV advertising will be one-third as effective in 2010 as it was in 1990.’ Other advertising media aren’t working as well as they once did either. Not as many people are dialing the 800 number, clicking the banner ad, or remembering the tagline, regardless of whether it’s a radio spot on a CBS broadcast, an ad in The New York Times, or even a banner on Yahoo!. In fact, marketing that seeks to control has become an annoyance in a media environment of virtually unlimited choice. In a 2006 study, researchers found that only 53% of consumers said they believed ads were a good way to learn about new products. That was down from a 78% response in 2002….

Shelton goes on to argue that advertising can and will change (and I agree), but his notion that conversational marketing is limited to consumers, experts and competitors literally talking about brands and commercial services misses the broader implications of the internet — brands need to join their customers in whatever conversation those customers are having, not just the ones about buying stuff.

“Before you entirely discard the notion of advertising, however, it is worth noting that it can and will change. Companies will recognize that there is a conversation going on in the marketplace that they should join, not dominate. Consumers, experts, and competitors are all talking about your company, its products, and the competition’s products. Joining that conversation means providing information, answering questions, and responding to concerns instead of just broadcasting one-way messages. Participating allows a company to correct misinformation, offer insights, develop a reputation, and create a relationship with the most influential people in a given market.

“Once a company has become a part of the conversation, conventional one-way advertising can serve a meaningful purpose. It can draw attention to the conversation and to the company’s participation. It can alert a market to change. It can be a form of information that is valuable again—information about where and when the market is operating and how to engage with it.”

I’ll make sure Shelton gets an invitation to our next Conversational Marketing Summit!

BusinessWeek’s Blogs section now features content feeds from several FM business sites, such as Fractals of Change, Duct Tape Marketing, Dane Carlson’s Business Opportunities Weblog, Springwise, Small Business Trends, LifeClever, Alarm:Clock, VentureBeat, Techdirt, Guy Kawasaki’s How to Change the World, and GigaOM. They’re on the right side, under “Featured Partner Blogs.”

Nice to see that block in the upper right hand corner on Business Week’s business blog section is now featuring some of the FM sites!