(1) Tybout, A. & Carpenter, G. (2001) Creating and managing Brands In: Iacobucci, D (ed.) (2001) Kellogg on Marketing (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)
(2) Dafermos, G (2003) Blogging the Market: How Weblogs are Turning Corporate Machines into Real Conversations See: http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/dafermos3.pdf
Aren’t employees’ weblogs sort of PR technology, just presented as “real conversantions”? (1) How “corporate blogs” increase customers’s interaction with certain brands and add to making them “experiential” brands? (2)
In the text G. Dafermos presents “Macromedia Inc.” employees’ weblogs as innovation which adds to organizations' management decentralization, reduces IT department’s hegemony, also breaks free from the standardized PR speech etc. I would call employee’s weblogs also one of the PR means and one more way to use on-line users' activities as labour. “Macromedia Inc.” explains: “Our intent was to get the information out to our customers as quickly as we could—that's why we did the blogs in the first place.”[i]
However, one should be aware that it’s also the part of company’s branding policy which doesn’t mean that the information in company’s employees’ blogs as honest an unbiased as the “word of mouth” from your friend, these blogs are kind of “word of mouth advertising” applied to the internet. I couldn’t find information how “Macromedia Inc.” pays for the employees, they just write that they “encourage” them to blog. Anyway I’m sure that blogging is one of the paragraph of their job contract. Informal speech, daily updates – it’s really convincing way of communication. And aren’t there hired people purposely for this activity?.. Dioesn't the writing-style of bloggers seem too much alike?
Even more, customers’ participation in blogs also increases the feeling of participation for themselves, the state even more active than “experiencing” the brand is created. They make you feel closer to the people who work there (or actually to company’s policy they represent), you influence even process of production…
Of course, it’s new means and is useful for customers themselves: businesses know your needs quickly and soon may satisfy them, these are new shifts in all fields on economics. Where’s the danger? No big danger. It’s just the reason why one may have more psychological ties with some brand (even though it doesn’t mark the best production), just advertising. And even though “Macromedia Inc.”is "one of the few companies to appreciate the new topography of the Web."[ii] their claims that weblogs is not strategy and they don’t have more purposes than to know customers’ opinions don’t persuade me.
“Blogs give us the fantastic opportunity to mass communicate directly and quickly with our customers, in an easy-to-read format, without going through slow corporate processes”[iii]. As customers we are really happy with it. But it’s better to be “new media literate”…
P.S. The process of becoming aware reminds me letter-writing to Santa Claus agency and waiting for the answer in childhood: first of all you believe that HE writes them; later a child decides that maybe some elves help him to write so many letters, and later you realize that this is just the business. Pleasurable, though, and that’s why increases somebody’s profits.
Nixon, S. Re-Imaging the Ad Agency: the Cultural Connotations of Economic Forms In: Gay, P. du; Pryke, M. (2002) Cultural Economy (
S. Nixon in the article speaks of the changes in ad companies’ remuneration as of the cultural shift. BBH agency is analyzed as an example of self-redefining company. Why globalization could be regarded as one of the most influential processes to this shift?
BBH emphasizes that 71% of company’s income is from work that runs internationally. This is one of many examples proving that more and more businesses seek for international performance and success. What is more, with the “esthetization” and “culturization” of economics ad agencies input becomes of greater than ever importance, or to say in BBH words, the "spirit of partnership" for fruitful relationship is important As a result international business companies often work with the same advertising companies in different regions.
Speaking of BBH again, they say that company “develops the advertising for Levi’s on a global basis, producing work from each of our offices”[v]. As for another example, DDB and McDonalds can be the case. I don’t know exact practices after agreement between McDonalds and DDB on “Worldwide French Fry Campaign”[iv]but I suppose they might have reached agreement on some sort of “salary”, not only on commissions. In diffrent regions the value of advertising in each sort of media differs. To apply unified commissions' shares would be too superficial, meanwhile discussions of commissions in every separate regionswould take more input than give rewards. I presume that e.g. for advertising campaign in Baltic States they might have agreed on one salary: then regional offices of DDB do the local job (as translating slogans etc.), but they share money which is distributed by DDB headquarters in Chicago. That means that DDB itself has only one agreement with McDonalds on a certain amount of money.
Long-term collaboration make companies know each other’s capabilities and is efficiently used in the development processes. Having in mind the context the growing ad industry importance we’d also speak of globalization which leads to the "salary model" agreements which most probably are more efficient than other ways of remuneration.