TamTamy Blog

In the previous posts we saw the different possibilities a company has when facing the decision of using a blog to represent it.
There is the corporate blog where each post is signed simply by the brand (as in the case of TamTamy), the blog with more authors from the company, the blog managed by external PR Internet agencies, and finally the blog written directly by some important role of the company, such as the President, the CIO or the CEO.

But what happens when one or all the authors of the blog leave the company and start collaborating with other organizations? What is the blog’s destiny?

Going back to the Ducati case we talked about yesterday, let us see how Federico Minoli, the former CEO, behaved when he decided to go another way after a long and fruitful collaboration with the motorcycle company.

The relationship between Minoli and his readers/customers had reached such good terms that it would have been difficult to replace it in any case. It would be as if you are reading a book you love and, half the way, once you turn the page you find that the style, the plot and the characters have completely changed. We should not think that the situation is irreparable, but it is surely not a good idea to change out of the blue without warning your audience. This is exactly what Minoli and Ducati did.

With a “farewell post”, dating back to 21 May 2007, the CEO said goodbye to his “fans” in an affectionate and generous way, considering his choice to sell every antique collected in years and years of races at a charitable auction, open to all fans and blog readers.

A very hearty goodbye from both sides, if we take a look at the flood of comments that the post generated (over 270), where the readers expressed their liking for Minoli to the point of naming a Ducati motorcycle “Mino” in his honour.

Clearly, in this case it is not only a matter of a good author, but also of a leader who could very well manage the company to which he gave himself heart and soul, changing and renewing it completely. And it is through the blog that people could express their voice, giving their support and warmth because they felt important for the brand in which they already believed and for which their affection had grown more and more.

But what happened to Desmoblog afterwards?

The new CEO, Gabriele del Torchio, made his entrance with a post of introduction, in which more than 200 people welcomed him.
The passage was not painless, this is for sure, but even with some moments of faltering the blog still exists today and has a lot of fans.

So we can affirm that, when companies decide to use a blog in order to open a communication channel with their customers, they have to make sure that it is written with passion and real interest. The greater the author’s involvement, the more effective its catch on people. And who in the company can do this better than the president himself? You decide.

When we spoke about corporate blogs, we saw how valuable they can be for companies, conveying a message of novelty and revival but, above all, of openness towards the audience, which is at the basis of the enterprise 2.0 attitude.

As we have underlined, it is not only a matter of appearance. The corporate blog helps facilitate a biunique information flow, enriching both consumers and companies.

In this exchange, not only the single employees or those in charge of external relationships are the ones who play an active part. Going up at all levels, sometimes it is the CEO himself who creates a blog representing his own company.

Some of the first and most popular cases of blogs created and supervised directly by CEOs are those of Sun Microsystems and General Motors, both American. In Italy, even if it came a bit later – due also to the fact that the web developed earlier in the US – it is important to talk about Ducati.

The Ducati case

Federico Minoli, former CEO of Ducati for over 10 years, when he was still in charge in the motorcycle company, managed to perfectly understand the spirit and the importance of blogs, and he created Desmoblog.

Through this tool, first of all he managed to overcome all the filters that were at the time present between a role like his and the consumers. He didn’t need to rely only on what the marketing department or the other sectors of his structure reported to him.
Minoli got into direct contact with his customers and directly exchanged opinions and comments with them concretely, involving them so much that they collaborated in very important choices in which up to that point no consumers – or at least never through such channels – had ever been involved.

Two striking examples of how the blog readers had become a decisive part were the moment when they were asked their opinion about the selection of the pilot for the moto GP championship of the following season, or when through their comments and opinions – gathered and filtered by the technical team – they had the opportunity to participate in the choice of some components for a new model of GP motorcycle.

It is now difficult to define which of the two parts – the company and the consumers – gets the higher benefit from such a collaboration, because in fact both are satisfied: the objective has been achieved.