Talking with the Groundswell - Marketing 2.0

If you are thinking about getting something, a new laptop, a new phone, cosmetic, or even just a simple bookcase for example, with so many options available in the market, what's the first thing most people would do? The answer is exactly what I would probably do: go online and search and look at the reviews, or some people might just go ask their friends. Under the influence of social media, opinions of customers matter in today's market.  And thus understand groundswell is vital for marketers to survive and rise in Marketing era 2.0.

As Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff's Groundswell, winning in a world transformed by social technologies puts it, Groundswell is:

"A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations."

Of course, understanding the groundswell is the first step forward. After identifying your social media marketing objective and focus, you need to make your moves. And that is, talking with the groundswell.

Li and Bernoff's Groundswell caught my attention with Blendtec's Will It Blend campaign. I thought to myself, a $399 blender? WHAT?! That's ridiculous! So I YouTube it... 

And there are 132 more Will It Blend video, all having the funky nerdy funny style, and starred by Blendtec's CEO Tom Dickson, who always says "Don't smoke that." after the extreme blending experiments. 

But what really intrigued me after I went through some of these videos, its Facebook pages, and its website was that how Blendtec has used the groundswell to its benefit. Its least viewed video still gained 156,679 audiences and the most popular one that I show you earlier, has 16,236,899 views! And their Facebook pages for the Blendtec and Will It Blend, Twitter are really active and interactive. They are really listening and talking with the groundswell!

In the Groundswell, Li and Bernoff used the Will It Blend campaign as a good example of talking with the Groundswell by producing these videos and thus creating a brand out of it. They understand people's curiosity, people's need to engage, and people's desire for good quality product. As the result, the Will It Blend campaign serves them all. I consider listening and talking with the groundswell looping actions rather than single activities. And the Blendtec is defiantly a good model.

Blendtec and Will It Blend's Facebook page interact with their audiences by posting things that would be interested to blender users, such as smoothie recipes, breakfast recipes, and most important, Blendtec users' favorite, the Will It Blend videos. And they always use questions to forest conversation with the audience. With Twitter, it's even more obvious how they interact with the audiences.

According to Li and Bernoff, putting out a virtual video, engaging in social network and user generated content site, joining the blogsophere, and creating a community are the four good techniques for talking with the groundswell. When Tom Dickson says "You've asked us to blend ***, and now we are doing it!" in the Will It Blend videos, it makes people feel specially connected to the brand if your idea is taken. And being interactive with the audience on social network definitely forms a Blendtec community.

By talking to the audience and listening to what they want to see, Blendtec has without a doubt done a great job utilizing the groundswell to its benefit. How could you not like the funny 80s looking Will It Blend videos, or feel personally connected and important when you got a reply from them on social network? Or a better question should be, how could you not get hooked up when you see this:

Understanding and participate in the groundswell is, to most companies, beneficial and critical. Once done right, you will be astonished by the power of the groundswell and what it brings to the future of your market.