Redefining “Communications” is a Branding Opportunity
July 31, 2007
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I’m struck today by just how hard it still is to find the right information, particularly when you’re dealing with corporations. They act like we’re still in the “surf” era.
I had a small problem with my Blackberry today. I’ve had the problem before, and the phone rep gave me a web page where I could quickly fix it. So when I had the problem again today, why was it impossible for me to find it again (until I remembered belatedly that I’d bookmarked it– someone write this down for me, will ya: http://www.mycingular.blackberry.com).
Corporations are spending jillions on advertising and zillions on call centers to handle all the calls (yes, that’s right: jillions and zillions…). But they’ve yet to figure out a meaningful way to take all this information they’re gathering from all the calls (I know there are lots of calls, why else would I wait on hold for 30 minutes?).
It seems to me that this is a classic opportunity for social media to solve a vexing business problem. A relatively small investment in low budget flash video, plus a decent effort taking their Q&A database and converting it into a well categorized blog would pay dividends. A blog, after all, is little more than a robust content management system.
(As an aside, Google has a great set of low budget videos I was looking at this weekend. They’re to learn their SketchUp product. Google has all the money in the world, but they realize that web video doesn’t have to be fancy.)
Maybe this is a soap-box rant, but it seems to me that there’s a tremendous opportunity to rethink what “communications” really means for a corporation. There’s a tremendous branding opportunity out there…
Anyone have examples of companies doing it really well?
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