From Interruption to Engagement

Neville Hobson has a relevant and timely post on his blog. A conversation with Michael Wiley, Director New Media at GM. This caught our eye at SMLXL since we mention Bob Lutz Vice Chairman at General Motors - who Blogs in our book Communities Dominate Brands. However GM are being far more expansive in utilising digital channels to build far more effective communications with its stakeholders, than just a blogging Vice Chairman.

This is what Micahel Wiley has to say

Michael: To get beyond our old ways of communication with a new direct line of communication to all stakeholders. Typical communication is issuing press releases, talking to the media, who re-purpose your messages for you, and there's no way for customers to get their thoughts back to you. We've been wanting to create this direct line of communication so that our various stakeholders aren't going to message boards to talk about us - they have an opportunity to come and talk directly to us. We're big into getting feedback from our customers, employees and others, taking their comments to become a better company and develop better products. We're really getting some excellent feedback. Just about every discussion we have on the FastLane blog, we've had an excellent dialog

Neville and I are having an exchange of ideas this is what Neville had to say to one of my comments. I hope the big brands are listening?

Alan, when I first heard that GM had started an executive blog, my initial reaction was like that of many others in particular those in the communication profession: big traditional bricks-and-mortar business, nimble move, yet a most unexpected entrant into a communication channel that is unstructured, uncontrolled, dynamic, new, etc.

Yet the more you think about it, the more you ask: why be surprised? An executive blog is the perfect channel to do the things that Michael told us about in our conversation with him yesterday. So they went ahead and did it. As with their experiments with podcasting: try it out, see what happens. Learn, adapt, keep doing it. Build those connections. Building trust, as you say.

It's such a great approach, one I wish more companies would do. You don't necessarily need to analyze and plan and strategize for weeks - just do it. If GM can do it, why not Unilever, Shell, Nokia, Airbus, Novartis, Heineken, Repsol, etc, etc. Just a random list of names that comes to mind. All companies who say the customer is key.

I don't know if this is engagement marketing, cluetrain (or even Hughtrain), but whatever it's called, it's pretty powerful stuff.