The Vichy Blog Case

Some background for the non IMBA readers:
In April 2005, Vichy, a derma-cosmetic brand in the L’Oreal portfolio, launched a blog in France to promote a new anti-aging product. The blog was prepared, styled and edited by the advertising company responsible for the launch campaign of the new product. Although it appeared to be a real blog, the blogger, Claire, was a paid model. Her blogs were crafted by the advertising agency and were intended to reflect Vichy’s strategy for the product. Soon after the launch of the blog, visitors started becoming suspicious of Claire, of her photo, posts and language used; they became convinced that she was not a real person but rather a fictitious character, created to promote Vichy’s new product. The blog itself and Vichy were criticized heavily for trying to deceive the public and the credibility and effectiveness of the product were questioned. Blogging is very popular in France and soon the situation made national news. Vichy was in a delicate position and had to come up with a response. Delphine, the brand’s product manager issued an apology on the blog and tried to explain the thought process behind creating the blog, while at the same time inviting people to submit their comments about the blog and/or the product with the promise that she would review them, try to answer and take into consideration in deciding the future of the blog. Apparently the blog users also became suspicious of Delphine as she had not provided a photo or more information that would identify her as a real Vichy employee. Delphine had to decide what to do next.

France Vichy Cosmetics: To Blog or not to Blog?

Questions: if I was in Delphine's place, what type of advice would I give the brand in order to deal with the PR disaster and would I recommend using a blog for this type of commercial purposes.

Response:

Once it had became clear that Vichy had a PR problem in their hands, it was necessary to come up with a strategy to deal with it. If I were in Delphine’s position, I would have gone through the following thought process:

a) Problem cause
-We did not fully understand the rules of blogging prior to venturing into the blogosphere
-We violated some basic blogging principles such as transparency, openness, no censorship
-We intended to use the blog solely as a one direction method of communication whereas blogs are fundamentally bi-directional
-As a consequence of the previous point, we used the blog purely as a marketing mechanism and tried to convey our marketing and sales messages through a fictitious character to give them more credibility

b) Current situation
-Our blog strategy has come under attack by bloggers, internet users and traditional media
-Due to articles in magazines, newspapers and on the internet, this criticism is well known and is not contained to only a small portion of the population
-Even after my post on the blog, there continues to be skepticism as to whether or not I am another fictitious character created by Vichy to appease the blog community
-The credibility of the product has suffered
-There is a potentially wider credibility and reputational risk relating to the Vichy brand as a whole

c) Alternatives
-Take no further action and wait until the situation dies down
-Take down the blog; redirect the link to the Vichy website
-Issue further apology with more information about my role, position, etc so that there are no concerns regarding whether I am a real character or not
-Seek advice from consultancy firm on possible further action, especially with regard to potential brand issues
-Try to learn more about the issues that lead to this problem (as described in section a) and try to address them by creating a new blog to succeed the current one
-Seek advice from experienced bloggers on what would be an effective way to apologize to the blogosphere and to start fresh

After having been through these steps, I would have chosen a combination of alternatives, primarily consulting with experienced bloggers on what response might be viewed positively by the community and what pitfalls to make sure we should avoid going forward. I would then have created a new, real blog, applying the advice received and I would have made it open to all comments. In my initial welcome post I would also have explained why the new blog was created and how we were planning to address the mistakes we had made before. Finally, this time I would have put the focus on the product as viewed by consumers, without any customization of the message by Vichy.

In terms of whether I would recommend the use of a blog for such commercial purposes, my answer is yes. In today’s world of high internet use, extensive availability and use of online shopping, familiarity with blogs and other online feedback mechanisms, I believe it has become a necessity. Comments about the product and the brand would have existed regardless of whether Vichy had sponsored a blog; by doing so, Vichy could at least have a platform to put forward the complete product information, usage methods, etc, while also being able to benefit from customer feedback and showing responsiveness by addressing concerns of the public.

Cars, Kabul and Banks

An interesting article by Thomas Friedman on the three pressing issues facing the 44th President of the United States.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/opinion/14friedman.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

What do you search for?

On the internet I mean...I was thinking the other day that my searches are probably very limited compared to the average internet user's searches. To be honest, most of the time I don't even search, I tend to go to my bookmarks and only slightly deviate for practical items such as the store hours of my local Corte Ingles on a 'festivo' (does anybody else hate the Spanish store hour system as much as I do?) or train schedules, etc.
I came across this entry in the official Google blog and found it pretty interesting so I thought I'd share it with you; the second link has the results of their 'Global Zeitgeist'.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/global-zeitgeist.html

http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2008/#top