Interesting post here via Seth Godin's blog about Johnson & Johnson attempting to avert negative publicity about their Splenda artificial sweetener by buying up lots of domains that might be used by campaigners against their product. Domains like "splendakills.net" and "splendasucks.net".
What misguided corporate PR advisor suggested they do this? Obviously they can't buy up every conceivable domain that might be used against them, so this strategy can surely only backfire? People hear about it (it is all over the blogosphere now) and some will assume that Johnson & Johnson / Tate & Lyle know something about the safety of the product which makes them expect people to campaign against it.
That's no way to manage your brand. If there is something genuinely wrong with the product they should fix it or withdraw it. If there is nothing wrong with it (and, without having done any proper research at all, my money would be on it being completely safe), then they should treat their consumers as adults and just explain the facts.
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Tuesday, 20 March 2007
Tuesday, 30 January 2007
Word of mouth marketing - not just about sitting back
Had a chat over a sandwich the other day with a chap who asked to pick my brains a bit about our marketing strategy. He runs a somewhat similar, but not competing, business, and is just starting out.
He had recently taken out a local ad campaign on the sides of buses. I told him that would almost certainly be a waste of money, above-the-line advertising is nearly always a waste of money in my book, word-of-mouth is where it's at.
He then said something that didn't really sink in at the time. Something like "so I should just sit back and wait for it to grow, rather than spend money on advertising?".
But it's not like that at all, is it? This word of mouth stuff? We rely massively on word-of-mouth to grow our business, but we don't just sit back and wait for it to happen. We work hard to first of all offer a good service that people will want to talk about, and then encourage, remind and sometimes cajoule (spelling?) them, at every turn, into telling people about it.
But there is so much more we could be doing. And this blog is part of that, I suppose.
He had recently taken out a local ad campaign on the sides of buses. I told him that would almost certainly be a waste of money, above-the-line advertising is nearly always a waste of money in my book, word-of-mouth is where it's at.
He then said something that didn't really sink in at the time. Something like "so I should just sit back and wait for it to grow, rather than spend money on advertising?".
But it's not like that at all, is it? This word of mouth stuff? We rely massively on word-of-mouth to grow our business, but we don't just sit back and wait for it to happen. We work hard to first of all offer a good service that people will want to talk about, and then encourage, remind and sometimes cajoule (spelling?) them, at every turn, into telling people about it.
But there is so much more we could be doing. And this blog is part of that, I suppose.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
