Posts under ‘Business Uses’

I criticized JetBlue yesterday for missing an opportunity in its customer-relations debacle of recent days. The company’s failure to use its website smartly, I said, was a missed opportunity. Today, JetBlue has posted a video by its CEO, David Neeleman, apologizing again for the mess — and offering a “Customer Bill of Rights” that will […]

The New York Times, running an interview with David G. Neeleman, the beleaguered chief executive of airline JetBlue, reports that “JetBlue’s C.E.O. Is ‘Mortified’ After Fliers Are Stranded” in last week’s snowstorms. Neeleman’s words to the Times are indeed abject in their regret, and forceful in his intention to turn around a situation that may […]

The Consumerist’s readers have ruled: ‘All I Want For Xmas Is A PSP’ Wins Best Flog 2006.

You might think that corporations are the most top-down oriented institutions when it comes to communications. I suspect that tendency is widely shared — and that unions are among the more reluctant when it comes to embracing conversational media. This seemed clear this morning during a speech and subsequent workshop this morning with PR people […]

MediaPost: HP’s Bermel ‘Scared To Death’ Of User-Generated Content. User-generated content brings “huge additional pressure,” (Hewlett-Packard interactive director Mary) Bermel said. “We want our brand in the marketplace presented in a certain way. Our advertising teams are used to push marketing–now we’re asking them to create pull marketing, things that will attract people to our […]

Over at the MozillaWiki, they’re asking users for ideas about what features to put in upcoming versions: We are currently in the early development stage for Firefox 3, and would like to collect all the ideas for feature enhancements in a single place. Our goal is to create a single index that lists what sorts […]

Floyd Landis, who won the Tour de France bicycle marathon, was charged with doping violations. He’s put up his defense on floydlandis.com, replete with documentation and detail. This is an excellent example of how to use the Web to amplify one’s own case in a complex situation. News coverage of the case has been, by […]

UPDATED Business Week: Wal-Mart’s Jim and Laura: The Real Story. So are Laura and Jim real people? Or part of an elaborate publicity stunt? It turns out they are for real. However, their story, told in full, with certain financial payments disclosed, does not reflect as well on Wal-Mart as perhaps the company would like. […]

WikiPatents – Community Patent Review says it contributes to the US patent system by commenting on issued patents and, soon, pending patent applications. OK, but what does the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office say? They’ll decide whether the overworked examiners — this is the charitable explanation for the garbage patents being issued all the time […]

(Here’s an op-ed column I wrote for PR Week, on the issue of buzz marketing.) When I was in my 20s, I rented an upstairs apartment from a middle-aged couple. Not long after I moved in, they invited me down for a beer. After a brief chat, they launched into a pitch to a) sell […]