Tuesday, November 13, 2007

creating Fansumers

My blogreads this AM started with "PR is useless...when actions create the real story." Real PR = Real WOM if it's 'generated at the roots'. Frontline employees tell the greatest and most authentic stories when it comes to what's really going on with a brand. After spending two years in customer-service, I definitely support deploying more of a brand's budget in creating advocates out of these people. Ben McConnell says "Campaigns are designed. Movements are born." Love it! It's just another notch in the brands-need-to-be-honest belt.

Then I hopped over to Interactive Marketing Trends where I read "Google defined the market as a 'when' and not a 'who'. Demography means little when someone is actively searching for your brand or product." The post is titled "Facebook ad model - the new Google?" While I agree that it's important to be "hanging out" in the consumers environment, I'm not sure how I feel about behavioral targeting. It makes sense, but if we're taking the brand-as-person model as an example: who lets their friends use them? That doesn't feel cool at all.

At Unit Structures, Fred Stutzman says, Project Beacon (as the Facebook app is called) is "trying to turn us all into lifestyle marketers. It might be breaking the user-experience."
My planner ears are perked.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi Erin. Nice post. I followed you thread to the original post and found it quite interesting. I'm not totally settled on my attitude towards behavioral targeting, but It is difficult. I love the thought of having the choice to share personal info in exchange for les, but more targeted ads, but I hate services sneaking it into the apps not notifing the users. But the dilemma is; does the users understand this profoundly enough to be able to choose. And are there consequences? nyway a good discussion which I think we will be talking a lot about in the years to come...