I never want to say things like “I told you so” or “You should have listened to us” .. but more and more our strategy appears to have been a bit ahead of its time regarding the STORIES campaign that we pitched to a client way back in early 2001.
A client at the time was a resort property that I won’t name, but had hired us to provide all of their marketing communications and design services, including a new web site. The web site was integrated with a newly developed online reservations system that would have benefited greatly from a well executed plan to convert site visitors into guests.
The concept was simple, we would focus on user generated content, which is the basis of sites such as You Tube, and every blog commenting system in use today. We wanted to drive traffic to the website that contained a collection of resort guest’s memories, photos and stories – A site rich with customer testimonials! These firsthand accounts of the experiences awaiting at the property would help to drive reservations from new visitors, as they established pseudo peer to peer relationships via the web site.
This is the backbone of all social media marketing tactics these days. The strategy of building a community of customers, brand champions, and actual users, and allowing them to interact directly is far superior to building a static site with corporate bulletins and polished prose. User Generated Content (UGC) is perceived as authentic and credible in the age of Web 2.0.
Hesitancy at the resort, and many entities currently considering opening up these channels, derives from a constant fear that someone might post something that is negative. Let them! It provides you with two things — an immediate and direct customer service focus group, and authenticity.
When something negative is exposed it allows for the opportunity to correct the issue (and respond appropriately to visitors via the web site) and in the mind of a site visitor it provides a subtle sense that you have not “scrubbed” the comments inappropriately and are displaying real experiences.
As and aside, user generated content tends to be very strong, keyword rich material that can be easily indexed by Search Engines and helps to drive site rankings.
Ultimately the Stories campaign was never fully executed. Our plan provided guests with a small journal as an offline tool to keep their memories while on the property, and to point them to the web site URL upon returning home. These tools were not dispensed at the resort and the site never recieved it’s flurry of content, which I guess is another lesson in itself.
Ideas are only as good as their execution … even if they are ahead of their time.
