Archive for April, 2006

WSJ has a nice peice on Starwood’s blogging efforts. (no link to WSJ as you need a sub – just search it, it’ll pop)

The effort is a professionally written and frequently updated Web log open to the public but aimed specifically at members of the “Starwood Preferred Guest” loyalty program. Many of the blog’s posts advertise happenings at specific hotels in the company’s portfolio of brands that include Westin, Sheraton, St. Regis and W. It also promotes ways that travelers can earn loyalty points through special promotions, for example.

… Starwood has contracted with one of the bloggers it is trying to compete with: Mark Johnson, owner of SFO Media and publisher of the popular hotel-industry blog HotelChatter.com, is a consultant.

Thanks to Angela at Southwest for flagging.

Technorati : Blogs, PR

Coop’s thoughts on why Bootcamp is a gimmick hit the mark.

It’s a pretty smart gimmick though for another sector of the market – the SME user in a Windows world. MS Office for the Mac – especially .ppt – isn’t as compatible with the Windows world as either vendor makes out. So, not having to own and maintain two machines makes it worth suffering through the dual boot idea. As much as I love my Mac, it’s a nightmare sitting with a customer and watching a .ppt presentation not work across the platforms. And, there are some Apps I like and use – like MS Money – that aren’t available for the Mac. And dare I say it, Internet Explorer is just better for accessing Outlook via the web.

So, for me it’s less of a gimmick and more of a practical work-around to a real issue that those of us that love and use the Mac have had to suffer through for a long time – incompatability and application availability. And yes, I have looked at Virtual Office – it turned an already tripped-out Powerbook (which is comparatively shockingly slow alongside my Dell desktop) into a slug.

Another minor point. While Apple’s marketshare might only be 2.3 percent, it’s value in terms of loyalty is tremendous – and this is where Apple’s announcement is interesting – it reinforces what a great decision it was to buy a Mac and extends my commitment to Apple. Moreover, Dell and others won’t tolerate loosing even a half point of share. So this move shouldn’t be dismissed in terms of the likely marketshare impact. I’m certain dual boot is going to push users sitting on the fence into Apple’s camp. And Vista delays should only give them an incentive to make the leap.

And Coop is right – once you own and use an Apple – it’s very hard to even look at anything else.

Technorati : Apple

There has been a surge in companies and products in the blog measurement and monitoring space. While the two are necessarily linked (you really can’t measure what you can’t see) there is a clear need for monitoring services that aggregate content from across participatory media – including ecosystems such as MySpace, ITConversations and Wikis. In these spaces we aren’t just interested in what is being said but also what is being done – links created, lists joined, podcasts delivered…

The BBC reports today that more and more firms are paying greater attention to what blogs are saying about them – and even trying to meet the bloggers halfway.

Sooner, rather than later, I hope we will also see non-rules-based tools emerge. I can monitor what I need to monitor – but what about emerging conversations, brands and people? How do I know about them as they are emerging? Measurement systems tend to be only useful in the context of what we tell them to measure.

Hugh touches on this in the BBC pieice when he speaks to “micro-brands” –

“What I’m interested in is what I call the global micro-brand,” says Mr Macleod.

“Now with the internet, creating global micro-brands is cheaper and easier than ever before. You can start off and have a product and market it on a global level much more easily than even 10 years ago.”

Micro-brands are going to have an increasing impact on “macro-barnds” – so tracking them and then correlating their impact on business and marketing outcomes will be crtical. This is where we move from monitoring to measurement and on to correlation. Correlation of buzz and impact will be one of the new fronteirs in measurement.

Thanks to Steve for the link to the BBC story.

Technorati : PR
Del.icio.us : PR