« Hey Schwarzeneger, We Need You to Terminate (Veto) Bill 484 | Main | Martha’s Celebrity Dish »

September 17, 2005

Public Relations To The New Consumer (Consumer Practice)

Reaching people and being serious about word of mouth. We’ve been discussing this topic for months in our weekly strategy meetings, so I felt immediately unified with Andy Sernovitz’s post on three new realities for todays marketer. “Positive word of mouth was always a nice thing for companies to have, but it was never a big deal. What has changed that suddenly makes this a pressing concern for us?“

* Consumer opinions have big distribution
* Consumers are now publishers
* Everything lives forever on the internet

New reality #1: People are already talking about you. Are you going to join the conversation? There's no choice here. Ignore word of mouth and take the hits, or engage and turn it in your favor. The train has left the station.

New reality #2: Advertising can't cover for bad products and services. People talk about you because they like or don't like what you do. You used to be able to cover your mistakes with a bombardment of high-power advertising. But the balance has tipped. The weight of consumer-shared opinion is greater than our advertising power. You need to make sure that customer opinion is positive.

New reality #3: Talk to your customers. Respond to their concerns. Participate in the conversation. Keep people happy (something you should be doing anyway).

Posted by Steve Hultgren at September 17, 2005 12:09 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.piercemattie.com/cgi-bin/moveabletype/mt-tb.cgi/494