Category Archives: marcom

Gronstedt Group “fika” offers a chance to explore Second Life

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If you haven’t started investigating Second Life yet, you might want to look into it. The sheer neatness of the environment notwithstanding, it’s starting to emerge as a viable business platform and it looks like the tipping point may be just around the corner (full Voice Over Internet Protocol integration is set to roll out in the coming weeks, and the guess here is that VOIP is going to blow the lid off the joint). Lots of companies and entrepreneurs are already using the 3D virtual environment for commerce (using it to buy and sell in-world goods and services and developing storefronts that allow you to buy “First Life” goods and services, as well).

In addition, 2L is gaining traction as an internal comm app and shows tremendous potential as a corporate training platform. One firm that’s early-in on the training front is e-learning and consulting shop Gronstedt Group. Continue reading →

QR codes: the next big thing?

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Odds are you’ve never heard of QR codes, but they may revolutionize how you interact with businesses, brands, even your own communities and social networks. Alan Schulman’s piece in iMedia Connection today does a great job of explaining what it is and how it works, and I can’t recommend the read highly enough.

Here’s a couple examples. Continue reading →

Customer service: the “desk jockey” past vs. the “service ranger” future

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I’m reading Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba’s Citizen Marketers on a friend’s recommendation. A lot of folks in his agency are starting to tweak on social media and this highly regarded (and extremely readable) examination of viral and customer-generated marketing activity is guiding a good bit of their thinking and questioning. Good on ’em – a lot more companies need to be exploring these issues, as well.

My only complaint so far really isn’t about the book, which is a very worthwhile read, so much as it is a general idea that all this online activity, and corresponding company attention to it, is a very new thing. To some extent this is true, of course – as I note above, it’s not like engaging the blogosphere and the “citizen marketer” is something that a lot of companies are doing, and even fewer are doing it effectively. I guess I’m frustrated because I’ve been carping on this for years and haven’t seen the kinds of uptake and results that I know are possible.

Here’s an example. Continue reading →

Show, don’t tell: of blogs and splash pages

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You may have noticed something a little different about the Black Dog page. It’s the landing spot for my business, but it’s also a blog. The blog isn’t hanging off a link – it’s the center of attention.

I’m not the first person to do this, but it’s extremely rare. I heard some reservations from people I asked to advise me, too. Landing pages are supposed to tell the visitor right away what you do. Landing pages can’t be cluttered. Never put your opinions up front. All sound advice from a traditional perspective. And it may turn out that this is a bad idea.

However, if the Black Dog brand is about innovation and unconventional, and if it’s going to have things like online PR and social media marketing as a centerpiece, it makes sense that I should show, not tell. Continue reading →

The death of message “control”

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For years I’ve been talking to anybody who would listen about the basic principles that make online communication efforts work – and the ways in which the Internet has completely altered the rules for successful PR in all arenas. When I talk about openness and transparency, though, the train often jumps the tracks because corp comm pros who have been around since the pre-Net days are obsessed with message control.

What they don’t always grasp is that everybody who encounters a corporate message today – be it advertising, marketing collateral, PR, whatever – instinctively smells the topspin. Continue reading →

Small event illustrates big-time lesson

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One of the most valuable lessons I learned from working with Anders Gronstedt of Gronstedt Group over the past several years is that the brand lives with the customer, not the brand group. Not to diminish to importance of traditional branding activities, but nothing that happens at corporate is as critical to the life of the brand as what happens across the various customer touchpoints. My call to customer service is the single most important factor in my understanding of your brand and is the single event that will determine what I tell my friends, family and co-workers about your company, products and services. If I was lured into trying your product or service by effective marketing on your part, then your failure to deliver might be interpreted as a betrayal, and the kind of word-of-mouth that drives is your worst nightmare.

Last weekend I tripped across an almost archetypal case study of what can happen when a business does everything right on the traditional branding front, but pays too little attention to the customer’s hands-on interaction with the brand.

My wife and I drove up to Raffaldini Vineyards in the heart of North Carolina’s emerging Yadkin Valley wine country for the winery’s Second Annual Italian Festival. Continue reading →