Blog Marketing Gone Awry
I’m a huge fan of word of mouth marketing (WOMM). I dabbled in WOMM a bit while I was working for a tech company–we were selling enterprise blog solutions back then, and we used our own consumer-oriented blogging service to demonstrate the strong points of the software. And now that I write on and manage blogs for a living, word of mouth–or rather word of blog–marketing is still the game.
However, WOMM may not be as powerful a weapon if the wielder doesn’t know how to use it. It’s like a double edged sword. Use it properly and you have an efficient tool. If you don’t know how to work it, you might end up cutting yourself.
Last week, a local PR firm contact a handful of bloggers, which included myself. They were inviting everyone for a free breakfast Monday morning to celebrate the launching of the Power Breakfast line of Max’s restaurant. I gladly obliged–I got a couple of dozen free breakfast passes, which were shared among friends and family. We were regular Max’s patrons, anyway, so we were excited to be part of the marketing blitz. We planned to review the food and the experience on our blogs.
But when the day came, we were quite disappointed because the service sucked. At the branch we visited, we felt discriminated upon because we used free coupons. We saw paying clients served pronto, while we had to wait an hour just to get our food–and that was after we complained to the manager.
Apparently, it was only in the branch we visited where those of us who ate for free were given low priority. Someone’s going to be in hot water for that.
We did blog about our experiences, and boy did we give a bad review. Now people–or at least those who know and trust me and my blogger mom–would probably think twice about eating at that particular Max’s branch. Talk about word of blog marketing backfiring.
how do you know that that is the only max’s that is going to treat you all with such bias?
broc said this on March 24, 2007 12:22 pm
Hmm. You got me there, Broc. Actually, I don’t. But most other reviews I’ve read on blogs were positive. Some even said they were treated like royalty. Perhaps I should have qualified my statement–so far, most other reviewers said the service was a bit slow, but not to the extent that they were treated badly.
jangelo said this on March 24, 2007 1:42 pm