Marketing to Communities – The Brand “US”

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By: Matt Clark

From the the Marketing & Online Communities Conference -

Marcien Jenckes of AOL and David Dunne of Edelman gave an overview of opportunities, issues, and best practices when marketers engage with online communities.

There is an obvious shift it the way that people are able to consumer media forcing marketers to change how they reach out to the consumer. Marcien Jenckes gave three tips to marketers.

1. Use the communities for leverage by getting the consumers to rally around the brand.
2. Don’t use transactional business model when dealing with online communities. It’s not a pitch and ditch atmosphere. Marketers have to make the relationship a long term engagement.
3. Organize around a cause that the community and the brand cares about. This way you can offer them tools and information that is valuable to the community. It shows your brand is giving a commitment to further the cause.

David Dunne spoke about how companies will loose their community and audience if they are not trust worthy and transparent. The old model (and current model for traditional media) aloud marketers to say when and where you will hear a brands message and what you will do when you hear it. But technology has allowed the consumer to block that out. With the shift in the way people are able to consume media, marketers need to understand that all media is multi media. There are four things all marketers must to:

1. Listen
2. Engage
3. Co-Create
4. Let go

Johnson & Johnson was the top example of best practices with their parentcenter community.

John Bell of Ogilvy also posted about this session on his blog The Digital Influence Mapping Project. Check out how he broke it down.