Vespa Launches Vespaway Customer Blog

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: vespa, blogs, marketing, micropersuasion, cooperkatz
Customer evangelism or A-lister evangelism?
Posted by: Jeremy Pepper | Friday, July 01, 2005 at 10:04 AM
Hey Steve, Congrats on the launch!
Posted by: Laura Paglione | Friday, July 01, 2005 at 12:56 PM
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?
Posted by: Brent | Friday, July 01, 2005 at 01:03 PM
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.
Posted by: Jackie Huba | Friday, July 01, 2005 at 02:33 PM
That makes a great deal of sense. Thanks!
Posted by: Brent | Friday, July 01, 2005 at 04:05 PM
Congrats on Podcating launch, very good.
Posted by: Prakash | Sunday, July 03, 2005 at 09:40 AM
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.
Posted by: Ryan Toohil | Tuesday, July 05, 2005 at 01:57 PM