Wiki Marketing And Your Brand – Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing

Coke Gets Slammed On Wikipedia read the title of Ryan Mahoney’s article for the Atlanta Business Chronicle.
During presentations, I bring up a slide with two words on it: Know Control. We live in a no control world and if brands, marketers and agencies don’t start waking up and understanding what it means to know control in a no control world – stuff like this will happen much more often and the results could get dire.
“As recently as June 7, more than half of the free online encyclopedia’s article about the beverage giant, as well as a large portion of a separate entry on Coke the brand, was devoted to criticism.
That’s a real concern for Coke, and adds fuel to the argument that in an era of blogs and user-generated content, companies may be losing control of what is said about them.”
Mahoney flowers over the challenge with words like “may be losing control.” Obviously, he has not heard about the Chevy Tahoe fiasco.
So what’s a marketer to do?
First off, pay attention. As Marketers we need to become a little more like Sherlock Holmes. Our jobs are not to just investigate what people’s wants and needs are. Our jobs have also become knowing all about what they’re saying… and they’re saying it (a lot) online.
It’s become a full-time job. Sniffing around Google, playing on Technorati and listening to Podcasts.
We live in a no control social media tornado where consumer generated content is the marketing channel du jour.
What does Wikipedia say about you? Your clients? The competition?