Remember the 'Sony No Baloney' slogan? This is the kind of promise Sony Electronics will try to deliver within its brand new corporate blog. Charlene Li is welcoming the initiative. She'll be watching closely how Sony will deal with it in the coming weeks. And we all should be. RSSit.
oops, almost forgot: bravo! welcome!
Have a look at the Passoa Tent-xperience blog.
A very good example of 'NOT TO DO '
No nothing...I'm disappointed and really surprised. Yesterday I registered to the BuzzParadise program (shortly put: bloggers register to spread the world about brands' campaigns). BuzzParadise is one of the leading buzz, blog & viral marketing in France, part of the Vanksen group. They have a nice blog, Culture Buzz and I guess I expected them to be amongst the 'best practices' as far as implementation is concerned.
I was quite excited to see this morning my first invitation by mail (I hardly noticed the fact they don't check on Mac mail software before sending their mail - speaking about targeting influentials, that would be a point to consider. My subject line looked like this: Passoã: Êtes-Vous prêt a passer un=?UTF-8?Q?=20Et=C3=A9=20frais, =20fruit=C3=A9=20et=20exotique=3F?= ). Anyway, I felt ready.. and I still am as I want to understand how they can screw this up... I know sometimes clients want it their way but there's no chance this client will ever want to go further or do it again after this flop... and jammer genoeg, the blog targets the Belgian market :-(
Take a look at 'Vous et nous' - vous being the brands, and nous being the bloggers- reminds me faintly of something here :-) French initiative whose objective is to explain brands how they should engage with bloggers- i love the 'La France parle aux Français' sounds of their motto. Buzz seedings or other concepts described and listed by agency. Great insights for marketers. Go and learn .
Would be great to have the same kind of listing for Belgium. To be discussed with blogging experts fellows :-)
If some of you feel like sending your songs to Sony (BMG), get rid of the old CDs; instead the company offers since April to create a blog where its executive team will review your music (primary focus is UK to start with then Europe). It's now their one and onely channel to do so for two of their labels (RCA & Columbia).
Far more complete service for the artists than can now make up a complete profile with photos, videos, shows' agendas, etc. And connect with others bands.
Sony will be using the power of the community to check out the blogs: the more friends and comments on your site, the more likely you are to be visited by one their managers. As they put it, the bottom line is "if you get a lot of buzz on your blog we’ll be there to check you out! Your task is to make the buzz."
1,000 artists have already signed up. Great example of community building, product development, social marketing and environmental caring :-)
I liked their last FAQ: 'Wikipedia, what is a blog?"
I know and read only one of the Forrester's blogs, their social technologies specialist's, Miss Charlene Li's. Why only this one? because right know, it fulfills all my needs, and even more. Charlene uses her blog in a perfect way:
1- She connects with Forrester's clients, but more, with Forrester's potential clients,
2- She's the human face of this research-faced company,
3- She spreads the word about what they are doing/studying,
4- She engages people to participate by sending her thoughts, experiences about a particular subject
5- She uses the feedback she gets to integrate in her study, to find new possible orientations,
6- She gives back, provinding her readers with new findings and even full reports, for free - well at least if you're small as Rolling Talks.
I just received her new 'Social Technographics' trends report. I found a reference of it at I-merge blog, while doing research over the blog ROI and asked to receive it. Simple as that. I'll post about it, but if you want the great stuff now, it's here. Courtesy of Tracy Sullivan, Forrester's senior PR specialist.
Thanks Tracy, thanks Charlene & yes, thanks Forrester
If you're interested in word of mouth marketing -funnily enough i wrote at first worth of mouth marketing-, i highly recommend you click here .You'll find all the WOMMA pdfs presentations. A few titles to make your mouth water: Joining online conversation about your brand/ Using community outreach to build buzz/Online WOM: how it works and how it can be measured/Using blogs to speak With- not at - your consumers
!!!!!!!!!!!!!go go go!!!!!!!!!!I'm diving into it! See you in a couple of days...
One exception to my thematic posts to welcome my dear friend Alex and her brand new blog (before you click be sure to have your speaker on and keep your foot light :-). I had no idea when i met her that she would one day become one of my 'eye opener' as she put it. I just knew quickly that she is so much fun to be with, from hamman sessions to Amsterdam wandellings. I love to drop by her place after a workday -nothing to do with the fact she always makes sure to have some Blue Chimay to welcome me :-)- or on an early Sunday morning to go and have breakfast at the marché du midi. To start her blog, Alex asked people who know her best how they would describe the person she is; you can find some answers on her blog- as for me, there's one word i think sump her up on the button. This word is fabulous.
I can't wait to read all her posts to keep learning opening my eye. If you feel like opening yours, if you are curious, open and passionate, if you sometimes can do with lighter foot, be sure to rss her !
After thought note : it's no exception to my thematic; she' s already a successfull coach now starting a blog and she's based in Brussels! And i'm pretty sure she will turn it into a worldwide brand. Lang zal je leven Alex chérie :-)
If the objective of the Cardinal Séan is to make people feel closer to Church then i guess Church can be seen as a brand and Cardinal Séan's blog as a marketing tool answering this proximity objective. Far better, at least for me, than the 'proximity' created by attending church. On this quiet Sunday morning, i enjoyed the experience on reading about a man sharing his Church life and i even learned about Padre Pio :-) Thumbs up for Séan :-)
Here's Rolling Talks' "raison d'être" ! (see about me if you want the whole story and my thanks to everybody). The article can be read here in French (and Part2 ) or in Dutch (Part1 and Part2 ) - thanks to Bart Lombaerts from Media Marketing for this.
Nothing new but relevant examples of :
- what can happen when companies 1) don't read what's being said on blogs 2) don't participate to the talks 3) deliberatly ignore blogs talks
- how brands can use blogs to create new market opportunities
Links which are referred to are the following:
- For entire story about Dell, i suggest you read further on Buzmachine: writer Jeff Jarvis is the unhappy client who started the buzz about the company's bad customer service. More on this on http://www.buzzmachine.com/index.php/2005/08/17/dear-mr-dell/. And have a look at Dell's brand new corporate blog, object of criticism by the geek community at its beginning.
- Here's for the video on the Mentos-Coca light experiment and Mentos' video contest site
- If you don't know it yet, go and see what social community means on La Fraise and read the community reaction upon the departure of her beloved boss
And here two more inspiring exemples who were not published in the magazine: Manolos' the 6 figure blogger and the most famous English tailor.
McDonald's has come under fire for distributing 42 million toy Hummers as the prize in a Happy Meal promotion with GM this summer. Environmentalists were not pleased.
Good thing McDonald's has a "corporate responsibility blog" to discuss such topics. The blog's name is "Open for Discussion," except that it apparently is not. Source Church of the Customer Blog
