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Kraft Fumbles Potential Blogging Bonanza
By Mark Evans | December 12, 2007
Last week, the blogosphere was all abuzz about the creation of the very serious sounding The Blog Council where “where the people who run large companies’ blogs share best practices and new ideas”. Come on, we’re well into this blogging, let’s have a conversation, everyone has a voice thing - and there’s still a pressing need for businesses to talk the talk about blogging?
In any event, I hope Kraft is paying attention because it’s clear they don’t have a clue when it comes to working the blogosphere, or working with bloggers.
Case in point: About a month ago, my friend, Mike McDerment, did something truly extraordinary when he sent two boxes of Triscuits to Fiji after one of his clients, Oceanic, jokingly complained about how they were unavailable where he lived. Oceanic was impressed by the gesture, and Mike and his company, Freshbooks, gained a long-time customer and a lot of goodwill.
I was so impressed that I did two things: one, I sent an e-mail to Seth Godin because it struck me sending Triscuits to a customer in the middle of the Pacific is the kind of thing Godin talks and writes about. Godin promptly replied with a “that’s really interesting, thanks for sending the story along” e-mail. Nice.
I also sent a note about sending Triscuits to Fiji to Kraft Canada. Well, I filled out a form on the media page after spending a long time trying to figure out whether there was a person I could contact. Weeks go by without a peep from Kraft until an e-mail appeared in my inbox yesterday.
Thank you for visiting http://www.kraft.com/. (Note: Actually, it was kraft.ca)
We are flattered and delighted to hear that Kraft Foods became part of one your special family moments captured on camera or video.
We appreciate you wanting to share your images with us. As much as we would like to view your pictures or video, unfortunately, our system is not currently set up to accept e-mail attachments from our consumers.
Thank you again for contacting us and for your loyalty. We hope to continue to be part of special picture moments with you and your family for many years to come.
It was great hearing from you, and remember we’re always updating our site so visit us again soon!
Kim McMiller
Associate Director, Consumer Relations
It’s clear Kim sent me a Dear Triscuit Consumer letter - the same one that anyone gets when they write to Kraft about Triscuits.
And what really hurts is Kim didn’t even read my blog post because there was no pictures or video involved. And I didn’t send them an attachment because the form on Kraft Canada’s Web site doesn’t let you include attachments.
Finally, Kim didn’t use her own e-mail address. The e-mail came from from Onlineteam@casupport.com, which is just so warm and personal, don’t ya think!
Kraft, you blew it big time.
Not only did you let me and Freshbooks down, you dropped the ball on a major PR/media/blogosphere opportunity.
If Kraft really understood social media and blogging, they would have done something creative and conversational. They would have called Mike to ask about his story, and perhaps send a few cartons of Triscuits to Fiji. That would have been very cool.
But no; Kraft did nothing of the kind. For a company that spends 10s of millions of dollars a year on advertising and marketing to win customer loyalty, they had a huge chance to score enormous amounts of goodwill but they didn’t have the foresight, skills, interest and/or ability to take advantage of it.
If I were Kraft, I’d be calling Shel Israel, Robert Scoble or anyone who has some expertise in social media and blogging because the company needs all the help it can get.
Technorati Tags: Freshbooks, Kraft, The Blog Council, Triscuits
Topics: Blogs |
