'1 for 10' Volvic campaign

When reading Heat Magazine today, yes it can be very useful and not just a waste of time, I came across a very interesting add for Volvic mineral water. The headline was that "1L of water here means 10L in Africa", and says that for every 1L of water bought in the UK 10L of water will be generated in Africa as Volvic has set up a partnership with World Vision to build new wells in Africa to provide the people with fresh water.

I went online and the '1 for 10' website is a very interactive website with lots of information about the campaign. There are nine different sections where you can, for example, find out more about the campaign and world vision, get more information about the countries where the project is being carried out and find out how you easily can get involved.

Under the 'Get involved' section it encourages visitors to tell their friends and set up groups on Facebook to inform about the campaign. This special reference to Facebook shows how incredibly powerful social networks have become and is a commonly used tool event for large corporations. Another thing the site encourages visitors to do to help is to put up their posters, which you can download from the website.

The '1 for 10' campaign has also got some third party celebrity endorsement through Thandie Newton who hasa gotten involved with the project and is a very important part of the website. Online there is a 'Thandie's story' part with photos and videos from Thandie's visits to Africa. Furthermore tehre is also a personal letter from her and some general information about her career so far.

I really like this website as it is simple to use, it has lots of videos and photos to make the information more visiual and thereby personal, and there is a '1 for 10 Totaliser' constatly updating how much water have been generated so far. The only thing that is missing is some kind of a forum for supporters and maybe some blogs from the team in Africa. At the moment there is a lot of videos and individual profiles of the different stakeholders, i.e. the World Vision and Volvic team, local kids and Thandie Newton, which is really good but a blog that's updated at least a few times a month would be good to show how the project is getting on.

A somewhat synical point may be that no matter how well the project goes, it will be very good PR for Volvic.

I don't buy bottled water very often, but will probably choose Volvic in the future; it's for a good cause..!!

And the award for best blog goes to...

I've been browsing through the blogger choice awards' website and found many funny and interesting blogs. They have awards for blogs in many different categories, like for example 'best celebrity blogger', 'best corporate blog' and 'best gossip blog'.

The best celebrity blogger award went to Rosie O'Donell and her blog on rosie.com. The blog is really just general updates about what happens in her life, for example exhibitions she's seen or concerts she's gone to. On the rest of the website there's pictures, videos, links and an "ask Rosie section", where visitors can ask her questions, some very personal. I think this site is good since it gives us a glimpse into her personal life, and also since she's actually interacting with her fans and tries to answer all their questions. Rosie O'Donell may not be a major Hollywood A-lister, but despite this it is funny to get an idea of what her day-to-day life consists of. Just imagine if a much more famous person like Angelina Jolie or Cameron Diaz would keep a blog like this giving some more insight into their everyday life... The fact that Rosie is keeping a blog like this does render her lots of free and much needed publicity, and is a way for her to somewhat stay in the spotlight.

The best gossip blog naturally went to PEREZHILTON.com with his devilishly honest blog about the Hollywood celebrities. According to alexa.com Mr. Hilton has had a very steady continuum of visitors and continues to be incredibly popular. This blog has also been listed as number six on the Guardian's ranking of the world's 50 most powerful blogs. He's the number one celebrity fear, but does at the same time give them lots of attention and coverage, maybe just not on the things their PR people would like them to be in the spotlight for.

The award for the best corporate blog went to Scott Ragsdale CEO for the company Naseba. When first accessing the site a picture of a mafia-like bold man smoking a huge cigar appears, and the hopes for a good CEO blogs weakens slightly. However once you start reading his posts it's actually very entertaining and insightful reading. he also allows for all kind of comments and replies to them, even the negative ones. This makes the site very interactive, which is most certainly very beneficial to the company. It is not just a traditional CEO blog talking about the company and its employees. Scott incorporates happening from his daily life as well as company happenings, which makes it more personal and interesting to read.

I've just chosen some of all the blogs from the awards website, but by presenting awards to successful bloggers the interest for blogging is heightened and blogs are becoming more professional and interactive. We all like to be able to give feedback and have opinions about what we read, and overall it certainly looks like the big winners at these awards are the ones who allows for comments, critique and ideas and actually do reply to them!

Interactivity?

Having interactive and conversational website is crucial for any company today. They all need to establish online tools with which customers can discuss its performance, ideas and also give critique about business behaviour. Shutting the general public out and work behind closed doors no longer works..

Most companies still are struggling with becoming more accessible and conversational with the public and do still have website that pushes information onto customers in a very propagandist fashion. A good example of this is the killer coke campaign that my group work with for our presentation. Their website is a very good example of an organisation that providers visitors with a lot of information, news, pictures, articles and other things, but no opportunity for visitor feedback or a place to discuss the issues. You'd think that an organisation that works soo hard to gain support for their cause would be a bit more conversational and interactive, and not just attack people visiting the website.

But of course there are companies that are trying to adapt a more conversational tone towards the public, Starbucks for example, have developed a My Starbucks Idea where people can come with suggestions and discuss the ones given. What is strange though is the fact that on the Starbucks website there is no links or anything advertising this new site, which makes me question how keen Starbucks actually is for customers to leave suggestions, or if it is more of a PR stunt to appear more accessible.

I think ideas like Starbucks' are really good, since it feels more that the company is actually listening to and caring about what their customers think, and are also using their ideas to develop the products to even better fit the taste of the consumers. Another example of a company like this is Dell, with its Idea storm. Here people can blog, post ideas for new products, discuss current ones, and also get a preview about what the company is currently working on.

Companies that do invest some money in making their online communication more conversational, and strives to invite customers to have opinions about their bussiness' performance will win on this in the long run. I think consumers are tired of being bombarded with information and never being able to ask questions to the people that are making the decisions. In order to keep customers happy and expand, management needs to become more visible and start talking to customers!!