In Maddie Grant's blog, Diary of a Reluctant Blogger, today is a great quote (thanks Maddie):
"Once you start these conversations, you have to keep them going. You have to be clever. You have to be engaging. Not too many brands have, what I call, the "intestinal fortitude" to deliver on that very real conversation. Brands tend to be great at busting out of the gates - engaging sites and some content to pique the interests of the consumers, but creating content is a marathon and not a sprint. It's the ripples that the conversations start, and not the splash-effect of a campaign," Mitch Joel, Six Pixels of Separation.
This got me to thinking. Here is why, I believe, so many brands are like shallow people. They come on initially with charm, energy and charisma but pretty soon it is clear the suit is empty, and it really is all about them. That's because brands listen too much to their ad agencies and not enough to their PR firms.
The ad agency folks pull out the glitter to decorate the ratty material. PR folks tell the brand they need to do something about the ratty material first. But that isn't as much fun, now is it?
So, instead of a long-term focus on content and conversation, they keep pulling out the same old shiny crap and plopping it online. Says Joseph Jaffe, president and "chief interrupter" of strategic advisory firm Crayon,
companies have largely missed that lesson, although they have spent the past few years moving media dollars online. What they have done is recreate online precisely the kind of interruptive advertising that they went online to avoid in the first place.
So, listen up brands: don't be so shallow. Like Dorothy in Oz, we consumers see through the illusion.