Participatory Product Reviews…
One upon a time the only way you could get a product review was through a print rag or through an analyst firm. James pointed me at this review of Sun vs. Dell. This is an end-user giving a pretty technical view of performance and the like.
Reviews like this are all part of the participatory movement – they differ from the conventional recommendation found on Amazon in that they are far more authentic and detailed. In some respects the person doing the review is passing their intellectual property back into the community.
The Coke Side Of Life
Consistency and creativity are the two magic ingredients to any successful marketing message or tag-line. They go hand-in-hand. Think Nike’s “Just Do It” or BMW’s “Ultimate Driving Machine”. I’ve long argued that one of Coke’s problems is that it hasn’t maintained any diligence in its taglines – or at least to the same degree that they have in packaging.
The WSJ captures this today in reporting on Coke’s new Ads. The inconsistency looks like this:
At what point do they get consistent? And does it matter when you’ve got that much money to sway opinion? I’d love to hear your thoughts. AdAdge had this to say:
The new work “understands that Coke trade dress — the red color, the ribbon, the contour glass, the logos — are magical icons with immeasurable power,” wrote Advertising Age’s Bob Garfield. “It understands that the fizzing, bubbling sound of a soft-drink pour is one of the most fetching, evocative and appetizing sounds on earth.
So, I thought I’d take a quick look at how Coke is living the ”Coke Side Of Life“. Their site is pretty much a conventional corporate site and if I want to learn more it directs me to a press kit. Yawn. No wonder kids are switching to Pepsi. In fact, something called ”Make Every Drop Count“ figures more prominently. My Coke is even more confusing and certainly doesn’t directly help bring this to life – take a look at the wallpapers. Nothing there.
Change is confusing enough. Poorly executed change is devastating. And here I was enjoying my Black Cherry Vanilla Diet Coke…
If your going to create a new tagline – which does amount to a value proposition – you’d better make sure your communities and customers can experience and live it. And for it to work, it has to be able to live freely across all your mediums, unencumbered by other slogans, taglines, ideas… Just look at Nike.
Tom Pirko, of consulting firm Bevmark said it all the the WSJ piece: ”Marketing magic cannot be re-created. It has to be created with an original thought that is breakthrough.“
As a complete aside, it’s this kind of reporting that causes me to keep my print subscription. I totally missed this story online. But in the print edition, on the front page of the second section, it screamed at me. That’s why the FT and WSJ thump onto my driveway each morning, and are accompanied by the NYTimes on weekends…
Should PR be about selling a product at the expense of the truth?
That’s the question psed by the Gaurdianas it looks at Edelman (registration required, but worth it). Again, I think Richard’s comments are being quite agressively misconstrued:
According to Edelman, we – the PR fraternity – don’t have to worry about journos picking apart our press releases and checking our facts any more. We can counteract negative stories in the press simply by posting the real story on a blog.
What I think Richard meant – or at least what I heard – was that transparency is now available to us in real-time (rather than requiring mediators) – and that we can correct what the media chooses not to check, or correct. This is a pretty cynical piece – pretty much reflecting the tone between PR and Media: “No one has a monopoly on truth and nor should they. As we all know, the truth is relative – even in PR. And the truth is that PRs, just like the journalists who sit on the other side of that information superhighway, are obsessed not so much with The Truth as The Power.” I suspect this is the case more for Media than PR – especially those on the Agency side.
Holmes has a good analysis of the piece:
But more to the point, Borkowski seems to completely misunderstand the blogosphere, which actually does the fact checking job the mainstream media has abandoned. It’s far more difficult to get spin or deception into the blogosphere than it is to get it into the mainstream media. That’s the attraction for someone like Edelman: a medium where everyone gets to ask his or her own questions and make up his or her own mind, rather than being fed a story that a journalist has decided is the absolute truth.
I grew up with the notion of the fouth estate firmly embeded in my mind. 20 years in PR has pretty much eroded any view of the media as 100% independent, 100% professional – think unwavering committment to truth. There are some exceptions – people you’ve got to respect. I’ve equally seen some horrors in th PR side.
What the “fifth estate” – the blogosphere – brings to the table is a balancing of these two competing forces by enabling immediate dialog and distribution of the stuff that matters. It shift power back in favor of the people that care to be informed.
If The News Release Is Dead…
Why did Warren Buffett and Business Wire’s Cathy Baron Tamraz ring NYSE’s opening bell to signal the start of trading on the world’s largest equities exchange? Both were “celebrating” Business Wire’s recent acquisition by Berkshire Hathaway. Warren’s no slouch.
Participate!
It’s all about participation. Mary has some interesting delineations between what was and what is:
What’s the difference between the static web and the live web?
Participation.
What’s the difference between consumers and users/amateurs?
Participation.
What’s the difference between attention and eyeballs?
Participation.
Thanks to the Pinko Marketing Manifesto for the pointer. And to Deb for the pointer to them.
