Our Product Is Better Than Your Mother

James Governor points to Alex Barnett's Gillette rave and illustrates the power of referral from someone-like-me. "I can tell you no amount of David Beckham imagery would have got me using this new Gillette. I am mostly a luddite, and stick to old G2 Countour with lubrastrip. But I may have to try out this new electric baby." Quite often when I am talking to branding folk, they say that people don't want to talk about their products - especially if they are *just* FMCG goods. Despite spending gazillions on branding, it can raise a little snigger when I suggest...

...that there are people out there using distributed media to chat about their goods. It's a reaction which I think translates into something like, "We aren't interested in people who are crazy enough to actually blog about our products". It's all part of the strange mismatch of expectations and mutual suspicions between marketeers and customers. However, when writing my blog reports I find people having interesting, useful witty chats about all sorts of apparently trivial goods. And frequently someone will rave about a product in a way that a brand would find impossible to do. For instance, in one blog report we found someone who said they valued the client's product more than their mother. Put the right product into the right market, listen to the feedback and respect the people that are interested in you - not really that complicated, eh?

Comments

I agree. I would add that there are a number of web 2.0 companies that have positioned themselves to provide just such a service.

For example, lawyers are using www.LawRex.com to exchange legal referrals with other lawyers. Using their service lawyers can take a client who they know but can't help, and send them directly to another lawyer who can. This service is very powerful primarily becuase it relies on the reputation of the person making the referral.

Referrals that come via these means are more certain than a mere legal lead or relying on a website that promises to "match legal" cases to attorneys or where clients "post cases."

Hopefully these social networking type of sites will continue to flourish, so that we all end up getting the best of both worlds (we find the right business/product and the business/product producer/seller can reduce their advertising expenses -- making the cost of the services/goods go down)...

Am I too overly optimistic?

Posted by: Gary B | June 25, 2006 at 07:05 PM