Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Who Cares About The Consumer?

On Vincent Thome's blog Chris Wood at Tribal said “Brands shouldn’t care what is said on community sites any more than they should care about what is said in the pub”.

Yikes. I think this is flawed in two ways:

1. Brands should care what people say about them in the pub because that is actually, much more than a brand architecture or a peice of advertising collateral, the definition of your brand.

This is exactly what are communications are supposed to stimulate as discussed on a previous post.

2. Since when did the bloke down your pub have a voice that could be heard by millions of people.

Example: man down pub bitches about lock being rubbish, man writes to lock company about lock being rubbish, man publishes article about lock being rubbish, man posts article online about lock being rubbish, every one knows locks are rubbish.

Krytonite didn't listen to the man down the pub either.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting topic indeed, then to maybe be more clear (as my english is sometimes not that good)

First it's not an answer in an open question, an open topic. To be more clear, I should have written: "Brands shouldn’t care what is said on community sites any more than they should care about what is said in the pub...What do you think?"

Then I somehow think that the idea behind this is that Brands should not be afraid of publishing community feedbacks on their website. As in the bar they don't control on this, it's the same online. So instead of ignore it brands should listen and analyse.

Anonymous said...

I am enjoying the blog too Giles ;) And by the way, it's a shame we didn't meet finally. Maybe one day around a drink.