The debate continues
So it seems as if the debate over character blogs just won't die down. The discussion kicked up again today over on AdRant's when Steve Hall posted about our "blog". Love to hear your thoughts? Are we marketing devils for putting the site up? Or are we just following a consumer is boss approach? And if you fall in the middle, what do you think we need to change to make it better?
posted by Dave Knox @ 12:57 PM
5 Comments:
Dave --
All that really matters is what the consumer thinks. He/she will decide if character blogs "work" or not (my guess is that some will and some won't just like other marketing efforts). A bunch of "we know better than you do" bloggers who have a pre-defined view of what a blog is and isn't really don't matter in this discussion.
BTW, I LOVED the quote: "But please, will someone from the agency sector please help these clueless marketers do it right? Writing tripe is not doing it right."
Oh, yeah, there's a group based in reality -- agencies! Ha! It was one of the funniest (unintentionally) lines I'd seen in a long time.
John
Come on, "blogging" ain't the medium. It's just the Web, and this concept isn't exactly new (you've even got women placed in drugstores "just mentioning" to shopping women that these sprays are on sale).
Less-than-brilliant idea, very poorly executed. My guess is most see right through it -- if not, well done! You've made it across the uncanny valley.
Dave:
I showed the P&G blog to my 13-year-old daughter, and asked her to read several entries.
She said she thought it was aimed at a younger audience, perhaps 10-year-olds, but that the information and links it presented were interesting.
She also said it sounded very real, like a blog her friends would write.
Finally, I asked if it made a difference that it wasn't a real person's voice in the blog. She said no. I asked if it would be more interesting to her if it were a real person, and again she said no.
Of course, that's a focus group of one. But I think the point is that the blog seems to work with the audience it's aimed at.
And that's the important thing, right?
Dave,
I think it's pretty obvious that you worked on this project - based on the fact that your Blog entry in which you talk about "working with" the guys at My Space via links to a NYT Secret article. Why don't YOU tell us why you chose a blog for this campaign? C'mon, that's what makes Blogs work! True honesty with your audience.
As for my opinion, I don't find the Secret idea very compelling. What works for blogs is the fact that you are connecting with an individual. This fits better with relationship marketing, and I can't see building a relationship with a character that will disappear in 3 months.
Not that brand "characters" can't work. I love the Captain Morgan's blog - where you are seeing how a well known/loved brand icon comes to life.
Well in response to the above, you must not have read my archive because I've talked plenty about why I/we decided to use a blog for Secret. It's meant to be a promotional vehicle that allows our teen consumers a fun way to interact with our body sprays. For me, blogs are a technology that can be leveraged in a variety of ways. For some, it could be a way to gain feedback from consumers and create a dialogue with executives (think Scoble, Fast Lane, etc). For Secret on the other hand, it was a way to to use a technology that teens are extremely familiar with and talk to them about Body Spray. We could have easily done a plain site and used buttons and banner ads to talk about promotions. But we found teens would have a lot more fun and come back a lot more often if we use the blogging technology for the structure of the site. It's as simple as that...we listened to the consumers and this is what they wanted.
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