ChasNote

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.

Two years ago, I was on a Web 2.0 panel hosted by Jeff Jarvis and I said something along the lines of, “While we all work to build great new ad-serving and ad-buying platforms to facilitate small, targeted transactions for long-tail marketers, let’s not ignore the needs of ‘big butt’ advertisers.”

And here we are, still talking about rear ends.

Apparently some BuzzMachine readers are giving Jeff a hard time over an ad on his site for high-end Washlet toilet seats. The ads feature the image of woman’s naked behind with a smiley face drawn across it. His post, About That Butt, offers the backstory.

“I’ve been meaning to mention the elephant in the room: that naked butt to the right, the happy ass…. I’m proud of the ad, not because I’m a customer for $1,000 toilet seats (not made for the Navy) but because it represents my return to Blogads, where you should feel free to buy an ad and replace that ass. Hint, hint…. “

(The post also explains why Jeff parted ways with FM — partly because BlogAds works better financially for BuzzMachine, and partly because Jeff doesn’t like some of the stuff we call Conversatonal Marketing. Our original motto at FM was “Author Driven.” That means we try very hard to put each author’s needs and wants above all else, and it means we sometimes part ways with people we like and respect very much, like Jeff.)

Back to that ad with the butt on it. If a company runs an honest business and pays a fair price to advertise on a publication like BuzzMachine, what’s the problem? I’ve been selling advertising for 15 years, and I haven’t loved the creative concepts submitted for every campaign. But I appreciate the financial support provided by every single one, and I do my best to keep my aesthetic judgments to myself. I’m also thankful for all the high-quality content I read and watch every day — for free.

Jeff, Henry and nice folks at Washlet: Keep up the good work!