The relationship between brands and the blogosphere has generally been characterised by failure. Failure to understand the nature of the dialogues that happen within online communities. Failure to respect the cultural attitudes of said communities. And failure to realise what relationship building really means within the online world.

So how can the likes of Walmart¹and McDonald’s,² with their huge PR and marketing budgets, lack the insight and strategy to effectively cope with something as straight-forward as blogging? It boils down to aims, culture and a growing consumer resistance to brand communications³ Bloggers, like most web users, want to discuss and share authentic content. Brands want to sell and promote. The two aims aren’t mutually exclusive but brands struggle to reconcile the difference because of the second reason: business and marketing culture.

Traditional offline brand management thinks in terms of media buys, sales funnels and the sort of advertorialising that ensures a brand message is repeated as many times as possible. This approach has given rise to a multitude of semi-successful-at-best corporate blogs: seldom discussed and often ignored. And if obvious promotion doesn’t work then there’s always “stealth marketing” to get around consumer resistance. The result? Well if Sony’s,⁴ Walmart’s, and Mazda’s⁵ experiences are anything to go by then it’s epic fail all the way. It’s all the more surprising since it goes against the very principles that good marketing communication is built on: Creatively synch your message to the needs and attitudes of your target market, speak the language of the consumer and you’re more likely to be listened to. But as soon as brands go online something almost always gets lost in translation.

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1. Retrieved August 5, 2009 http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=49505 [↩]
2. Retrieved August 5, 2009  http://www.blogherald.com/2005/02/07/mcdonalds-outed-for-fake-typepad-blog/ [↩]
3. Retrieved August 4, 2009 http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/116672977.html [↩]
4. Retrieved August 5, 2009 http://adage.com/smallagency/post?article_id=113945 [↩]
5. Retrieved August 5, 2009 http://www.marketingvox.com/mazdas_blogviral_campaign_falls_flat-017206/ [↩]

Earlier this year Burger King launched the Whopper Sacrifice on Facebook. Over a 10 day run around 23,000 FB users downloaded and interacted with the application¹. The popularity and innovation of the app garnered plaudits from both the mainstream and digital marketing press as well as from social media commentators and observers.

The response from Web 2.0 pundits was typically guarded: Whilst everyone agreed the campaign was innovative, concerns ranged from doubts about ROI and execution² to musings on how web 2.0 has “changed our ideas of what friendship really means”³. ROI aside, an FB application that causes grown adults to worry about the social fabric has to be doing something right. But what’s the real significance of BK’s Sacrifice? (more…)

1. Retrieved July 8, 2009 http://www.whoppersacrifice.com/ [↩]
2. Retrieved July 8, 2009 //www.ideablue.com/2009/01/09/whopper-sacrifice-social-media-marketing-roi-done-wrong-buzz-done-good/ [↩]
3. Retrieved July 8, 2009 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10211898-36.html [↩]

Using traditional channels, like TV and print, Ad men have attempted to engage consumers with brands for decades. As you can see from the above short¹ Web 2.0 differs from traditional comms in that the flow of information between individuals and organisations is extensively democratised: Communication becomes an interactive, continually evolving process. In traditional forms of marketing comms a consumer is a largely passive receiver of brand messages and is usually the final link in a top-down chain of communication. With digital, the consumer becomes a de facto partner in communication spread and acts as an agent in creating dialogue about brands. Of course due to the networked nature of new media this dialogue occurs whether an organisation wants it to or not, which sometimes results in everything from minor PR gaffes to widespread calls for brand boycotts.
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1. Retrieved June 28, 2009 Web 2.0 An Intro in 5 minutes by Prof. Wesch at KSU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE [↩]