Blogs as corporate tools

The first time people get in touch with Blogs, may think that they are just another entertainment tool created to show our friends funny stuff as some platforms we already have as Fotolog, Facebook, Clickr...Although we can also use blogs to that purpose, the global trend is not that one. Blogs are being a successful way to connect profesional people all over the world to talk about serious and relevant topics. We can see this now in milliards of blogs over the Web; however, in today's post I want to talk about a blog created by the vice chairman of General Motors as a new way to communicate with the customers.

Two years ago, Bob Lutz, vice chairman of General Motors, when trying to find a way to have closer communication with customers, decided to rely on a new blog as an effective corporate tool. The corporate blog, called Fastlane (http://fastlane.gmblogs.com) enables Bob to start conversations with prospect customers about products, services or even the future of the company. Nowadays, this blog is not only one of Bob's passion, but also a trusted site in the Net. So, why did Bob Lutz decided to start this new adventure alone, without delegating the work to the communication department or any other worker? Some years ago, as we discused in class, corporate webpages were an effective and comonly used method to transmit the customer all the demanded information about the company. However, nowadays they are no more an appreciated communication channel by customers. While some companies trust in keeping track of the purchase data of their customers, others as Starbucks or Disney have realised that this may not be a definitive factor. The agility and precision that a Blog has to transmit the real needs of the customers made it one of the definitive channels for some multinationals to complement the other existing e-tools. In addition, it's necessary to point out that this is a powerful weapon to build product loyalty and generate product advocates, people who really feel the brand and have the willingness to spread a positive word-of-mouth.

The challenge of chosing your www.NAME.xxx

In one of our e-Marketing classes, some one month ago, we faced the challenge of chosing a new web adress for a ficticious product called Gogiberries. When trying to find an adequate name, every team thought in diverse variables and came with an original (and available in the Net) name. Some of the teams found appealing the idea of a name easy to recall as gogo.com; some others tried to link the name with the product itself with a name as gojiberries.com; and some other just try to find some original names Gojizilla.

We don't know what would be the most successful name if launching the product to the market. However, we are aware of the possibilities Internet allow us. For example, we can buy more than one domain and re-direct all them to the same Webpage. In this case, we could build only a webpage but try to attract young segment with Gojizilla.com and more care-about-benefits people through gojiberries.com. Some years ago, in the end of my high-school, I did a research about brands and I found that a lot of experts stated that most successfull brands must have between 4 and 6 letters (with as much vowels as possible); that's mainly because is easier for people both to say the name of the brand and also to recall it and store it into the brain. The most common example given by researchers is Adidas.

However, I ask a question to everybody: Do we have to care nowadays about how easy to write and to say is our Web Adress? With search engines and linked pages, is it still necessary to have short and easy-to-recall names?

Internet Generation

With the explosion of Internet around 1994, each day there are more people living together with Internet. A coming generation is growing up with a new technology and, as we have seen in class, new habits and behavior patterns are being created. This allows companies to change the strategy of approaching the audience. Now, they react easily and quickly to Web-oriented advertisement and to those commercials with a high level of technologic information. The selected audience realize that the company is talking to them, and the response to the ad is positive. As an example, above there's a commercial made to force people stop smoking; as said before, the advertiser knows who is the part of the audience they want to target: young people that have just started smoking or that want to try it. Because they know these people have grown up with Internet, they have chosen this kind of artistic approach to reach them..Well done!