What Do You Think?
Corporate America Slowly Opening Up
Lately, I've seen more and more corporations embracing the online dialogue (rather than fighting it) that customers are having with your brands.
First it was Dell 's Ideastorm and most recently Fox launched an online community to gather thoughts and opinions for it's marketing. Although the site is private to only a select group, at least the company is empowering individuals to be heard and their ideas considered. The community is an attempt at improving programming and users can even interact with some of the network producers.
On the opposite side of the spectrum; the most open, well designed and admired example of this is probably still Starbucks' My Starbucks Idea. The site houses voting, discussions and follow-through on what ideas the company will take action with. This site remains a powerful model in how corporations can utilize the social Web to improve their brands, but also involve customers on several levels.
Brands that embrace social Web will quickly see that people will be talking about their products online regardless, so why not provide a platform and controlled experience? I suspect that the majority of corporations are still very uneducated on how the social stratosphere works and how they can use to their advantage. Lets hope we can all expect that more companies will see the power that lies in these opportunities so we can improve from both the shareholder's and the customer's perspective.
Lately, I've seen more and more corporations embracing the online dialogue (rather than fighting it) that customers are having with your brands.
First it was Dell 's Ideastorm and most recently Fox launched an online community to gather thoughts and opinions for it's marketing. Although the site is private to only a select group, at least the company is empowering individuals to be heard and their ideas considered. The community is an attempt at improving programming and users can even interact with some of the network producers.
On the opposite side of the spectrum; the most open, well designed and admired example of this is probably still Starbucks' My Starbucks Idea. The site houses voting, discussions and follow-through on what ideas the company will take action with. This site remains a powerful model in how corporations can utilize the social Web to improve their brands, but also involve customers on several levels.
Brands that embrace social Web will quickly see that people will be talking about their products online regardless, so why not provide a platform and controlled experience? I suspect that the majority of corporations are still very uneducated on how the social stratosphere works and how they can use to their advantage. Lets hope we can all expect that more companies will see the power that lies in these opportunities so we can improve from both the shareholder's and the customer's perspective.
Labels: Brand, Marketing, Strategy
This entry was posted by cam, on
6/24/2008.
