Better branding through blogging. Steve Rubel aims to change marketing one voice at a time.
On his blog, Micro Persuasion, Steve Rubel looks and sounds just like the consummate public relations professional he is: slightly nerdy, somewhat balding, and supremely confident that corporate blogging is the key to the future of consumer marketing.
In person, Rubel sounds (and looks) no different—“I want to help change the world,” he says—but he does look a little startled, as if, after more than a decade at the top PR boutiques and media companies, he’s surprised to be sitting just a few chairs from the CEO of global PR powerhouse Edelman with its mighty client roster including GE, Microsoft, Pfizer, Starbucks, and (full disclosure) Samsung. Of course, Rubel has every right to look a little startled. As the chief protagonist of me2revolution, Edelman’s new social media practice, he’s the most visible face of corporate blogging—a position that has occasionally landed him in hot water.
“My goal is to get as many companies as I can to embrace the reality that today consumers are in control of their brands,” he says. “Traditional brands have no choice but to give consumers more control. You can guide and inform them, but you can’t control them any more. You need to embrace the fact that a single tech blogger can be big an influencer as CNET or that a single consumer goods blogger can be as big as Glamour.”
Not that Rubel thinks “micropersuasion”—an apt term given the outsized power blogs can have over brands—is the only way to deal with the blogosphere. Since Rubel arrived at Edelman, the firm has been hired to create social media campaigns for Avent (moms find out what other moms say about Avent bottles on its website); Unilever’s Axe deodorant (Christina Dolce, aka ForBiddeN, a buxom blonde with 900,000 MySpace “friends” hosts an interactive dating tip game that draws 75,000 males); and Wal-Mart (two Wal-Mart “fans” take a road trip to visit each Wal-Mart store across the U.S.) Only one problem: once it was discovered that the two “fans” had Wal-Mart backing, the blogosphere’s collective temperature rose a couple of degrees, resulting in full disclosure of the oversight. “We got a black eye for it,” says a somewhat abashed Rubel. “But you have to understand that blogging is an echo-chamber. It’s a little like throwing a ball in an empty room—it can bounce around.”
Still, Rubel says, it’s worth the risk to promote brands through social media. “It really is all about dialogue,” he says. “The days of companies coming off the mountaintop and offering their brand up to consumers is gone.” No wonder he looks a little edgy. —Craig Bromberg
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