Two Flavors of Corporate Blogging
In a June post, Business Week’s Bruce Nussbaum cites a couple of quotes about Web 2 from “two of the biggest marketers in the world”; GM and Procter & Gamble .
GM’s Michael Wiley declares that “The existing advertising paradigm sucks,” he said. “It’s woefully inefficient. We give consumers virtually no information.” adding that “We see the new social media space as a place we can become engaged.”
A little more reserved evaluation of social networking comes from brand giant Procter and Gamble’s Stan Joosten who sets a more cautious pace.
“We have to stay out of some places” where people don’t want to see ads…he says P&G wants to engage with customers wherever they are online. “People want to talk about things they care about and you give them a platform to do that.”
Always curious as to how corporate culture gets translated into the blogger medium, I compared their two efforts. GM conforms more closely to the blogger paradigm of engaged conversation and transparency. As Wiley’s remarks seems to suggest, GM set out to “engage” and to communicate. Judging by Fast Lane Blog and FYI Blog, they are doing an excellent job doing just that.
Proctor & Gamble’s Web 2 ventures, - Vocal Point, Tremors Teen and Capessa -seem to suggest a different model. While GM engages you in dialog, P&G observes you while you engage in dialog with other members. If you go through the hassle of signing up.
And that is the difference between the two approaches towards creating a community. P & G’s neighborhood is gated by virtue of an immediate membership request. And at this point, unless you are a woman or a teenager, P&G hasn’t built your community yet. Once inside the gates, you will visit the topics P&G has determined are of mutual interest . The interaction is between members, not between the corporate giant and their consumers.
Perhaps because I tend by nature to be a soloist, indeed, a very reluctant joiner, I found P&G’s tact a bit off putting. They have indeed provided a “platform” that will garner them a wealth of marketing data, but I think it falls short of the authenticity and ease of exchange that the more standard blog model offers.
