The more progressive marketers keep telling us that we're in an Age of Conversation, but I would never see any real evidence of it. Sure, consumers (aka real people) were talking amongst themselves, using communication tools and social nets to spread their words and keep the ambient intimacy going strong. But I rarely see brands take part.
There's Zappos, they're obviously on board and down with the Twitter. Carnival Cruise Lines is getting its microblogging on. Obama is a web 2.0 force of nature. Anything else? I was hopeful that AMC's MadMen was taking a progressive step in the right direction, but that turned out to be the fans taking matters into their own hands and getting burned for it.
I usually see them talking but I rarely hear them answering. It has to be tough to answer the public directly. There's lots of them and one of you. Who speaks for the company anyway? Do you have a community manager? If you're a passion brand you should.
Recently I saw two good examples of brands using YouTube to talk back.
First there was Samsung with its parody unboxing video. Unboxing is a meme where people show pictures or videos of taking their soon to be beloved objects out of the carefully designed packaging they came in. Its usually interesting, but not terribly exciting. Until Samsung asked Viral Factory to make a video for the soon to be released Omnia smart phone:
Then W+K made a viral directly responding to a video made by a fan of the Tiger Woods EA video game revealing a glitch in the then current/now previous version of the game where Woods can walk on water. W+K's video shows that it's not a glitch, "he's just that good."
They also made a video responding to a guy who posts how-to videos on solving a Rubix Cube:
It seems like W+K is finally getting a handle on this whole internet thingamagig. Way to go! About damn time!
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