Paul Gillin takes General Mills to task for its branded community. Begs the question of who does a decent job with a branded community — aside from the usual product support forums, etc. — I can see some reasons for stumbling, but begs the question: who joins a community about bad yogurt?
“I just signed up for General Mills’ Pssst… membership club because I was interested in seeing how a big consumer products company assimilates all that we’ve learned about online communities and applies it to a super-brand site (plus, I love Lucky Charms!). It’s still early, but this site is off to a very weak start.
Pssst… is intended to bring fans of General Mills products closer to the company by inviting them into a members-only space where they can receive inside information, get coupons and samples and share their opinions about the company’s products. This is all the stuff that I preach organizations should do with branded communities. The site is produced in collaboration with GlobalPark, a company that manages online panels.
Pssst… is good in concept but bad in execution. I would not have launched the site in its current condition:
General Mills’ Pssst… is a Weak Stab at Branded Community | paulgillin.com.
I wonder how many “communities’ consumers can handle. The person that buys yogurt may also be a huge fan of the detroit pistons while a die hard best buy shopper and a frequent flyer on southwest airlines. Perhaps it is still to early to tell but i wonder if we will approach a community saturation point, much like the one we are seeing with traditional media. Eventually, if everyone moves to communities won’t we be just as quick to ignore them? It’s probably more of a hypothetical question but I’m curious to hear your opinion.
Jacob
Nike+ would be one branded community that succeeded. However it took over 2 years to develop.
I’ve posted with several examples of niche community sponsorship we have done recently at NameMedia that allowed us to get the companies and their brands working with targeted demographic users almost right away.
http://www.allthingscahill.com/2008/12/branded-community-or-sponsoring-niche-communities/