Adjusting as we go
Two days ago, I posted about Brands in Public.
The response from the brands we've shared it with has been terrific, but other people didn't like elements of it. And they were direct in letting me know.
The goal of the program is to invite brands into the conversation that's already going on around the web, to make it easy for them to do it on their terms. I talked with a brand manager yesterday who explained that this is exactly what he's been trying to do for his company, but the corporate website systems make that difficult for him. We want to open the door and to permit large brands a way to get started without having to roll their own solution.
One way we tried to encourage that was to build 200 sample pages, pages brands could adopt. Alas, some people felt that this was inappropriate, so we've recalibrated and we'll take those pages down before the end of the day.
When a brand wants a page, we'll build it, they'll run it and we'll both have achieved our goals.
Part of the magic of the web is that you can adjust as you go, particularly if you're willing to listen.
I apologize if anyone was confused by my original post, and we're looking forward to having major brands and non-profits using this tool the way we intended–to join in to the conversation that's already happening all around us. Thanks as always for reading.