Mele’s Musings

Marketers Love Conversation, Unless the Consumer Starts It

Ain’t it the truth?  Everyone claims to want dialogue, but it is rare that resources are actually put against it.

Picture: Bootlegrobot.com

Article excerpt:   Listening Gets You More Than Complaints — You Get Positive Brand Association and Word of Mouth. If the consumer voice is so important these days, why are brand feedback, or “contact us,” forms so get-out-of-my-face unfriendly?  I dare you to find a feedback form that winks even a quasi-friendly smile. And if you find one that allows consumers to truly communicate in their native voices — complete with links, photos, audio clips or videos — I’ll eat my just-published book.  When I founded PlanetFeedback.com, we would consistently poll consumers about the type of “person” the typical marketer-feedback form personified. Rather than picking the more service-centric personality, “concierge” (the ideal state), most consumers likened the feedback form to a government “bureaucrat” — faceless, stiff, cold and uninterested.
The rest: Adage.com

Musing:  The article makes some good points, but, as I have found often lately with Ad  Age articles, misses some key pieces.  In this case in particular, the article goes to some lengths to blame media planners, agencies, and brand marketers for being either too ignorant or too greedy to really focus on consumer feedback mechanisms.  My experience – that is hardly the problem.  In fact, most brand marketers I know want to open the dialogue.  What is lacking is the infrastructure to make it a reality.  You can’t simply say: “let’s open up the site for conversation!”  Who is going to edit and/or monitor the conversation?  Who is responsible for responding to customers or making new content?  What happens too often is that companies know it is good for them to have direct conversation with their customers, but don’t put the resources and time against really doing it.  Your agency can’t do it for you – they can help you set up and facilitate – but for the conversation to happen, it requires the company being willing to do what it has to do to communicate.