Conversational Marketing Still Rare

A white paper released this week at the first Conversational Marketing Summit reports that those advertisers that truly engage in authentic two-way marketing are still dwarfed by those that don't.

The paper, presented by Technorati and Ogilvy, is titled "The Manifesto on Monday Morning: How to Put the Wisdom of Cluetrain into Action When You Get to Your Office." The authors intend the paper as a followup to their 1999 book, "The Cluetrain Manifesto," which predicted the end of one-way marketing messages in favor of "conversation marketing," or engaging customers primarily through dialogue.

"Brands that embrace what their customers and communities are saying and join in that conversation can learn from their audiences and build much tighter relationships with them," said Technorati chairman Peter Hirshberg. "As we move from a mass media era, where you distinguish yourself by waging campaigns and buying a lot of TV ads, into an era where an awful lot of customers are now on the Web and engaging in conversations about brands, you can build brand equity by showing a genuine fascination with that conversation and a willingness to learn from the community."

The paper cites several examples of effective conversational marketing efforts from recent years: the campaign for the 2006 documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," whose Web site (supported by Technorati) published daily highlights of online conversation about the film; the MySpace page for "Shut up and Sing," a 2006 documentary about the Dixie Chicks, which invited visitors to comment on whether free speech should be limited; and an effort by Sun Microsystems, also a client of Technorati, in which its Web site offered unfiltered conversations from customers on its product pages.

Hirshberg noted that film and technology companies were culturally predisposed to conversational marketing.

"The entertainment industry has understood for years that it lives and dies by reviews and word of mouth," he said. "The tech industry lives on the Internet, and they are the home of the open source movement."

But there is evidence that those in industries less conducive to ceding control over their brand messages are catching on as well.

Hirshberg cited Dove's Real Beauty campaign as one that engaged the online audience and invited critiques and criticism.

"Dove expressed its position, that it stands for the idea that women could be fabulous no matter how they looked, with a very clever print and outdoor ad campaign. Then they gave women a place to talk about that, and then learned from their audience," he said.

The paper also includes a proposal for a conversational marketing code of conduct. It urges transparency in everything--from the use of a publisher's content to the editorial process to influencing content creators.

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