BlogWorks: How Do Customers Feel About You (and your blog)?

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July 11, 2005

How Do Customers Feel About You (and your blog)?

By David Binkowski

This morning's sessions at Ad:Tech in Chicago offers more food for thought than a buffet. In Las Vegas.

Much like the buffet, you have to either go all-in for the crab legs and prime rib, or sample one of each offering. I'm going the crab legs and prime rib route.

The first session I attended was "Brand Humanity: How Social Technologies Are Changing The Way We Do Business", hosted by Jennifer Rice of What's Your Brand Mantra? She discussed the psychological and social trends that are changing the way we market and interact with consumers, and in particular message boards and blogs.

One of her messages that businesses need to understand (and I think most companies could stand to download her presentation) is that these technologies are being used to revive brands, create products, boost customer loyalty, close sales, break down internal silos and manage crises.

The second session today was The Power of Emotive Advertising by Bruce Hall, partner at Howard, Merrell & Partners and CEO of AnswerStream. Now you're probably thinking, "Why would an online marketing and PR guy attend that session?"

The answer is easy. Hall says advertising does three things: engage interest, stimulate employment, and bring meaning to the consumer's own perception of your brand and how it fits in the consumer's life. His presentation showed several commercials and the human response, e.g. physiological impact that ads have and the power of emotive ads.

For example, the Bud Light "Wazzzup" ads triggered a high response rate because people could relate to the concept of drinking beer and acting stupid, whereas the Miller Lite "Play Beer" commercial where a father and son are flagged in their fishing boat didn't get a response anywhere in the ballpark of its predecessor.

How does this tie into blogging? Your blog should invoke feelings to your readers. If you aren't honest, then you aren't connecting. If people are able to read your blog and not get excited, mad, happy or sad, then you're not connecting. I would like to see AnswerStream's technology applied to blogs to see how many actually connect with their readers.

Posted by staff at July 11, 2005 03:31 PM