Ironically, I love this book - LoveMarks, The Future Beyond Brands. I mentioned it in a comment today about a recent Marcom blog item that became so lengthy that I decided it was worth more as a blog post. 
The original post (What Would You Do?) is about a small grocer’s encounter with a national animal rights organization that takes issue with the existence of a butcher shop in the grocery store. It seems their nice little grocery blog has be come a lightning rod for a debate about animal cruelty. I don’t have an opinion about the root of the debate, but I do have some ideas about shaping your brand in the blogosphere. Without giving away anything except obvious answers to Josh’s challenge for the students, let me offer some insights worthy of greater introspection.
Lots of company executives ask me why on earth any company would want to open themselves up to scrutiny in the blogosphere? My answer is simple…
- Your greatest advocates, enemies, customers, and competitors are in the blogosphere;
- They are freely and openly shaping your brand identity every minute of every day;
- You must ask yourself, do you want your brand identity and brand equity to be shaped without your influence?
No smart executive will ever say “no” when presented with these facts and follow-on question. When presented in this manner, companies are hard-pressed for reasons to avoid participating in the web of conversations (if you haven’t read the Cluetrain Manifesto, do so ASAP).
We are rapidly approaching a web of high-velocity conversation, based purely on dialog, not monologue. The blogosphere is ground-zero for “brand conversation” and the conversational topology of your brand is rapidly becoming a reflection based on interconnected machine-based processes involving instant syndication, news aggregation, and unimpeded flow of commentary, innuendo, half truths, and some facts. Indeed, Web 2.0 is upon us - everything points to Epic 2014 as a clear indicator of what’s to come.
Back to basics…
“How can this lone grocer take on a national advocacy group with thousands of networked members?”
By engaging thousands of networked people that like meat.
“What do you do?“
My advice to the grocer would be to…
Use the weblog as a listening post; not enough emphasis is placed on listening as a function of blogging. All too often, the PR function is concerned with the outbound message and little effort is given to the art of listening. Oddly enough, well crafted blog posts serve as a better listening post (pun intended) than a broadcast medium. Instead of telling your audience what you think - ask them questions - there’s nothing wrong with blog posts that solicit more feedback than they offer in terms of content.
Shape your business and your outbound PR message based on feedback from your blog - even the negative comments. While most comments here seem to suggest the local grocer has no problems with this sort of negative campaign - I disagree. The brand equity of this business is being affected because the brand identity itself is being tested and reshaped in the minds of their customers - locally and regionally. It’s important that blog and non-blog listening lead to new actionable steps that shape the brand identity in positive ways.
Address negative commentary about your brand. Transparent companies tend to absorb negative comments and transform negative events into positive outcomes. Blogging provides a great opportunity to fight fire with love (e.g., LoveMarks - the Future Beyond Brands)
While each of these items look like well-crafted answers to Josh’s questions, they aren’t; they’re merely new ways to look at how blogging can be effective in fighting fire with love. The true PR tasks are far more complex, and totally out of my expertise (I’m the RSS geek in the crowd incidentally).
I suspect the answers to this excellent challenge put forth by Josh are more along the axis of determining how to get people that love animals and a good steak to be comfortable with — perhaps love — the idea of buying products from a local butcher. That’s a real PR challenge…
p.s., I lied when I said I have no opinion concerning the root of the debate - I just didn’t want to confuse the point of the post by droning on that animals can never have rights if we all agree that rights are bound by contract. Rather than express my opinion in gory detail, I’ll ask another question…
Can animal rights activists accept medical treatment invented through animal testing?
The answer to this question is not important - the question, however, is the tip of the iceberg that may serve to help good PR strategists shape public opinion that animals - their protiens and lives - play an important part in the health and welfare of all mankind (hint hint…).
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