ON ADS WITH COMMENTS

WORD OF MOUTH AT POINT OF SALE

It's such an obvious insight in hindsight.  Listen to your customers...through your ads!
The web, specifically, web 2.0, with its tools for constructive customer feedback, is uniquely capable of providing this vs. most traditional media.

And I saw it implemented so simply with one of the humblest and earliest tools in online services: the reader comment!

What am I talking about?

Well, while reviewing Engadget, one of my favorite gadget blogs yesterday, I saw an ad presented in between the posts, as a post itself, ENABLED WITH COMMENTS.

The ad happened to be for Sonos, a wireless home music system that I had positive things to post about back in May.

I'm assuming Sonos approved Engadget enabling comments at the bottom of its ad, as seen here.

I wasn't the only one surprised it seems.  The first comment shows some surprise as well:

>>1. Posted Jun 14, 2005, 2:50 PM ET by Dirk Diggler

you can comment on the ads? That's freaky.<<

It is a risky move obviously, since it obviously allows existing customers to provide negative feedback right at the point where you're trying to pitch new customers to buy your product or service, while incurring the expense of the ad itself.

Especially if the comments were by folks who could be viewed as influencers.

The recent experience of Dell having to change its customer services policies due to loud and persistent negative blogging under the "Dell Hell" yell by Blogging A-lister Jeff Jarvis is a case in point.  Businessweek has a good story on it online (via BW/Blogspotting's Stephen Baker).  VC Fred Wilson is trying out the same approach with his "Amazon hell" post.

But so far, with 24 comments at the time of this post, the exercise seems to be working out for advertiser Sonos...early to make any conclusions, but definitely something to note.

While some of the comments are gushingly positive, a number of them provide VERY constructive feedback to the company on ways to improve the product, as seen by the second comment:

>>

2. Posted Jun 17, 2005, 2:37 AM ET by John Laur

Wow; ad comments; nice touch.

I commend sonos on a really nice product -- The thing that really makes this a nice product is that even though it does the same thing as a thousand other cheaper products out there -- it does it with such an elegance and simplicity that is hard to beat. However, as something of a tinkerer, I can't bring myself to dump the insane amounts of money for a sonos for a couple very simple reasons:

1) You can't add any kind of functionality to their fantastic remote controller. This is kind of a no-brainer guys. Give up the API. You don't even have to support developers. Just make it possible! This device isn't terribly proprietary. You have NOTHING TO LOSE!

2) Get the rhapsody integration right. Users appreciate very much that you added the support to play rhapsody tracks, but for the love of god, make the catalog browsable from the couch via the ZoneCommander. Again, this isn't an impossible engineering feat. In fact, if you handled #1, you'd have probably already had someone do this for you.

You have an innovative product, now use it to INNOVATE already. What's holding you back? A bunch of codgers on your board of directors probably think that you have something incredibly unique and innovative? You have a brand that is now based on quality and style (think Bose wave radio except without much you can patent to protect yourselves) Just wait until some company out of Taiwan clones everything you have going for you and sells it for $99. Sometimes you have to try to lead the pack before you have a pack to lead. If you do not do this, your company will fail.<<

Very detailed feedback indeed.

This is something that could easily be used by advertisers far beyond ads posted on a blog.  Paid-search ads like the ones you see on Google, could have links back to a site where comments could turn into robust discussion threads and even communities.  The same thing could be done with ads fed through RSS feeds. 

The question is not the technology or tool to use to do this.  The question is whether this is a net positive move for advertisers to take the risk. 

For it to work will require both advertisers and consumers to play fair.  Advertisers shouldn't try to game the system with PR-firm planted positive comments and/or editing and restriction of negative reviews, something that has been seen to occur on online retailing and ecommerce sites.  The Wall Street Journal had a relevant article on this recently.  As Slashdot summarized it:

>>Posted by Zonk on Thursday August 04, @11:38AM
from the not-quite-customer-reviews-then-are-they dept.
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Online retailers have a wide range of approaches to customer product reviews, with some struggling to balance candor with the desire to sell product.

The Wall Street Journal Online has an overview of sites' policies. Newegg 'says it has a team of eight people who monitor reviews and reject submissions if they are too vague, mention competitors or criticize a brand without specific product insight, among other reasons.

From July 1 to Aug. 2, the site received 18,188 reviews and rejected 15% of them, according to a Newegg spokesman.' Meanwhile, Overstock recently changed its policy: 'The Web retailer had been relying on its merchandising group -- the employees responsible for deciding which products to sell on the site -- to monitor reviews submitted by customers, but found that the group tended to approve only positive reviews.

In January, the Salt Lake City-based company changed the monitoring responsibilities to its marketing team. The company now says it posts both positive and negative comments, as long as they are constructive.'"<<

And consumers should play fair by not abusing this opportunity to express candid views on the advertiser's wares in a civil and responsible manner.

But hey, we're all human.

So we will see it evolve right in front of us on the web, on the ads that are presented to us in everyday surfing.  Definitely a trend to watch.