Last reading week 10....

As this quarter starts to wrap up, our readings in "The New Rules of Marketing and PR," "Citizen Marketers," and "New Influences" must come to an end as well. These last few readings really summed up the quarter, talking about the importance of blogging and loyalty of content. I really enjoyed reading the conclusion of "Citizen Marketers" and the story of Lonelygirl15 on YouTube. It's unbelievable that this girl made up a character and so many people believed her; however I'm sure I would have too if watched her video. The point of telling this story is to make people understand that blogging is about loyalty and not deception. Organizations need to make an investment or sacrifice to strengthen a relationship with its customers, as stated by Fred Reichheld.
However, what's hard for me to understand is how can a customer trust what they read on the Internet? Realistically, I find it hard to read what's on the Internet without some skepticism. Television is the same way and I feel that it will always be hard to trust what's on the Internet. This is where loyalty really comes into play. Customers need to know that they can trust what the organization is about. If they find out something is fake they will be offended and the organization will lose it's credibility and the customer's trust. Therefore, organizations can develop relationship through social media but they need to be loyal and responsible.

Viral media....week 7

I'm going to start out by quoting David Scott "create a number of campaigns and see what hits, then nurture the winners along." I like this quote a lot, but I also disagree with the statement. First, I believe that for viral media/marketing to truly work, a campaign must be extremely innovative and not forced as mentioned by Paul Gillin. If you look at the recent history of viral marketing campaigns such as the Diet Coke and Mentos experiment, you will notice the creativity it took to make the video. Plus the two men who created this video were not affiliated with either company. However, Mentos took advance of this video and pushed the viral excitement forward. This goes along with what David Scott said, where winners should be nurtured and pushed along. Nonetheless, I don't really think that a number of campaigns need to be created. Launching several campaigns can become costly. Also Paul Gillin states that the more campaigns launched, the more crowded the space becomes. Therefore, in my opinion, I don't think the quantity of campaigns matters, its the quality. A company must launch campaigns that are unique and creative, rather than multiple weak campaigns.