« Lance Armstrong is Podcasting | Main | Get on Board the Podcasting Bullet Train »

Friday, July 01, 2005

Vespa Launches Vespaway Customer Blog

Vespaway5

Regular readers of my blog know that I am a big believer in empowering customer evangelists to act as a voice for your company. It's not right for every organization. However, if you have a product or service that people just love, you can give your marketing an extra boost by putting your customers front and center  - whether it be through advertising, PR or online through blogging. It works really well when you can synergize it with a traditional PR campaign. This is our model for the Vespa PR program.

With this in mind, today the Micro Persuasion practice at CooperKatz is taking the wraps off Vespaway. Heather Green at BusinessWeek interviews our two customer bloggers - Jonathan Ogilvy and Neil Barton - on their Blogspotting blog. Like she says, we were fortunate to find four great customers to blog for Vespa. Here are the blogging guidelines (PDF) our bloggers all agreed to abide by.

Vespaway is the first of two customer-written weblogs we are rolling out for Vespa USA, a unit of Piaggio USA. The second will launch later this month. For background see my previous blog post as well as this article in the Wall Street Journal and the FAQ at Vespablogs.com.

Tags: , , , ,

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2748009

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Vespa Launches Vespaway Customer Blog:

» Vespa Launches Customer-Written Weblog from Adrants
Back in May, we reported PR firm CooperKatz would be launching two customer-written weblogs designed to encourage Americans to take up scootering. Steve Rubel of CooperKatz tell us the first of the two blogs, Vespaway, has launched today and... [Read More]

» Vespaway from New Persuasion
Vespa's new consumer-written blog, Vespaway, is off and running today. [Read More]

» Il vespablog è tra noi from Blogs4biz
Il conto alla rovescia è finito: come Steve Rubel ci aveva promesso, il primo blog ufficiale dedicato alla Vespa ha visto oggi la luce negli Stati Uniti. Si chiama Vespaway, è curato da due blogger scelti tra i clienti della Piaggio Usa e presto sarà i... [Read More]

» Animal Farm for bloggers from Musings from POP! PR
Animal Farm was right: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. [Read More]

» Customer blogs. from random notes
We all may have run into a corporate blog of some kind before, but Vespa has now ventured into the realm of getting customers blogs to evangelize about their scooters. Of course, to maintain 'blog cred', the blogging customers don't... [Read More]

» Customer blogs. from random notes
We all may have run into a corporate blog of some kind before, but Vespa has now ventured into the realm of getting customers blogs to evangelize about their scooters. Of course, to maintain 'blog cred', the blogging customers don't... [Read More]

» Vespa Blog On from Modern Marketing - Collaborate Marketing Services
Vespa (a company for which I have a particular affinity) has started a blog as part of its US marketing effort. It features a couple of keen Vespa riders both of whom have been interviewed in Business Week. It was [Read More]

Comments

Customer evangelism or A-lister evangelism?

Hey Steve, Congrats on the launch!

I understand what's appealing about a customer evangelist blog from the corporate perspective, but would someone be so kind as to explain again why anyone would be interested in reading an evangelist blog? I'm sure it will be interesting for existing Vespa fans but will it attract new customers? Or is that not the intent? Strengthening the brand is a legitimate goal, but isn't the endgame of all this to eventually drive sales?

Brent, I think it will drive sales. A Vespa is not an impulse buy. A prospective customer will probably go online to research other people's experiences with the Vespa. And voila! They will find the Vespaway blog. They can read about the bloggers' experience with the Vespa and perhaps even ask questions.

This is especially important for women buyers as they are research hounds when it comes to buying a product like this. The blog becomes one of the research tools to aid prospective customers in their decision to purchase.

That makes a great deal of sense. Thanks!

Congrats on Podcating launch, very good.

The customer evangelist blog can be an important sales tool, I think, if it comes across as an even handed look at the product.

Evangelizing for a product isn't inherently "rah-rah" -- it often requires harsh, but constructive criticism to help the makers of the product understand what works and doesn't and create a better "vNext".

We're working on our own customer evangelist-type blog. Rather than having it solely driven by our customers, we're trying to mix in our own posts, posts of speakers/coaches/presenters. Basically anyone who touches the product in anyway. The goal is to offer a 360 degree look at the product. If our product is as good as we think it is, it should help people make that decision to buy. If our product is flawed, we hope to figure out why and how to fix it.

Post a comment

If you have a TypeKey or TypePad account, please Sign In

My Photo

Search

Subscribe

Contact Me

Edelman Blogs

Technorati Tools




  • Add this blog to my Technorati Favorites!

Edelman Careers



Visitor Map


  • Check out our Frappr!

Miscellany


  • Proud member of

    Marketing and Advertising

    a FeedBurner Network


    Subscribe to this network




  • BlogBurst.com

  • Steve Rubel works at Edelman. Everything posted on this blog is his personal opinion and does not necessarily represent the views of his employer or its clients.
  • A Member of the Web 2.0 Workgroup





  • Creative Commons License
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

Flickr Photos


  • www.flickr.com
    Steve Rubel's photos More of Steve Rubel's photos