Ad Age wrote an interesting article about capitalizing on blog sites and search engines in the midst of a marketing crisis. It’s commonplace now to hear something on the news or in passing and to instantly head to the web to research it for yourself.
Ad Age very smartly pointed out that “marketers are missing a big opportunity to address nervous consumers”. If marketers were to cut us off at the pass by having the information that they wanted us to know posted the minute there was a concern, we’d be less apt to panic and they be less likely to lose our business. Many have taken advantage of that strategy. I certainly remember googling dog food during the whole dog food poisoning scare and finding tons of articles. I did a google search of the tomato scare just now and all I found was news articles that did little to quell my fears.
Now these marketers will be scrambling to convince us that tomatoes are safe again. And that will be a harder sell once we’ve all panicked and sworn off the fruit.