Opening Up
I’m following Rob Katz on Twitter.
I don’t know how I found out he was using the service. Maybe from the "Vail Daily" or Vail Mountain itself. But I was interested in what Vail Resorts’ CEO had to say.
He’s clueless. He’s read about Twitter, decided to jump in and forgot to realize that if nobody’s paying attention, his tweets are meaningless. He’s got only 500 followers. I told him to utilize giveaways, to put a link in e-mails to all passholders. But I never heard back. So I dropped out, stopped responding, but I’m still reading.
And I’ve learned that he’s got a wife who is involved in food and he went with her to some mommy blogging conference in San Francisco. I immediately wondered whether Barbara Jones was attending. After numerous marketing jobs in the industry, Barbara’s started her own business in the mommysphere.
Then realizing that the conference in SF was only about food, and that Barbara wasn’t there based on her tweets, Rob Katz started talking about his brother-in-law who lives in L.A. And I did a bit of research online and found out Rob worked for Apollo Partners, made a bundle and after 9/11 moved his family to Boulder, where he focused on riding his bicycle. Truly. That’s the right of the rich. And already sitting on Vail Resorts’ board, when they were unhappy with their present CEO, Rob got the job. A Jewish CEO of a ski resort, who manages 30 days on the hill? You bet I’m interested! Especially now that he’s forgoing his salary during the recession!
Then Rob flew to New York. And hung with Lindsey Vonn. Made a joke about flying by private jet, then let on he really meant New York taxi.
This all started with Rob asking for questions for the earnings call. He was going to answer the best ones. With few followers and little advance time, he got no questions. Which is why I responded to him, telling him how to do it.
Not that I know exactly how to do it.
All I do know is when there were constant explosions outside my house, and I was worried there was gang warfare, I started to do some research. Nothing on the L.A. "Times" site. Nothing in the Google News. But on Twitter, I found out from fellow Santa Monicans that it was the fireworks down at the pier, celebrating the structure’s anniversary.
So maybe Twitter’s a news service.
I’ve been using it to disseminate information, the articles I read that are not worth writing a whole post about.
But Rob’s making me think it’s about revealing your personality. Your travails. Bonding your customers to you.
I’m writing all this because on the front page of today’s "New York Times" there’s an article how elite colleges are employing unfiltered student blogs on their home pages in order to give prospective students a peek at what student life is truly like.
One MIT student felt she didn’t belong there, because she was bored at the "Star Wars" festival. Imagine an employee of Interscope saying that he wasn’t feeling Jimmy’s priority. That’d hook me. Or how about Jimmy himself, tweeting not only about Dr. Dre, but his divorce?
We live in an information society. And the audience, your customers, expect information. They have a relationship with you. Historically, it’s been one-sided. But now, they expect it to go both ways. Ignore this at your peril. The Internet is rife with companies that have not recovered from negative backlash. Google "Dell Hell". The computer manufacturer lost its vaunted number one position and has never recovered because their service, handled by people in India, was so damn bad.
Sure, bands are on Twitter. And record labels try to manipulate social media. But to see truth in action is fascinating.
You can ignore social media, say it’s not your primary business, but have you read the stories wherein patients don’t sue their doctors for malpractice when the physicians apologize for their mistakes? In other words, people would hate Ticketmaster less if the company was more open, connected with ticket buyers. As for the labels, it might be too late for them to successfully live in the twenty first century, but they can give it a shot!
