Not long after I blogged about my love for Costco and the fact that it had been only deepened by a robo-call I'd received from them informing me of the Clif Bar recall, I received an email from an MSNBC reporter named JoNel Aleccia asking me if I'd be available for a phone interview. The results of the interview can be found in her article Dial-a-recall? Stores use cards to warn buyers. She was quite nice and she got the parts of our conversation that she used right, except she has my age at 45 and I'm only a young 42. That's okay, because I look 55.
One thing she mentions is that I received a call about Zone Perfect Bars, which I didn't mention in my first post. That's because Costco followed up with a second call to inform us about the Zone Bar recall and I emailed that tidbit to the reporter last night. Of course I'm most appreciative of the call.
One thing I'll point out is that I think I gave Ms. Aleccia a term she used in the story. She mentions "relationship marketing" and I think she might have gleaned that from our conversation. She'd asked me if I was troubled at all about retailers collecting data about their customers and using it to track their purchases. I said I wasn't and that a big reason was I'd spent a good chunk of my career in direct marketing and had even founded and run a newsletter called "Relationship Marketing" that explored how companies use customer data to improve customer retention and profitability. I also told her I was surprised that more companies don't do this considering how long loyalty programs and customer databases have been around.
Of course I'm going to use this as a case study when I talk to clients about the influence of blogs. I asked Ms. Aleccia how she came across my blog and she said she'd done a search on a term like "loyalty card recall" and my post popped right up. She also said that she finds bloggers to be good sources for human anecdotes because they write about their lives in such detail. Knowing that blogs are grist for the media mill I'd advise company's to pay close attention to them.
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You got the lead paragraph and the tail end paragraph in the article. That is very good to get.
National exposure … the dream of every local blogger.
Now, will you get that spike in web traffic?
It’s so cool that you’re bringing local attention to this issue resulted in you being the lead quote in an article bringing national attention to the issue.
I’m sure this excited everyone in your house (and your mom!). So cool!!!
“Your bringing” — typos in comments which can’t be edited are so annoying.
Given that you’re more literate than 99% of humanity I wouldn’t worry about it
Sent from my iPod
Thanks Arron. It’s definitely fun for me, but I think my kids might be embarassed. My wife just wants to know if I’ll ever make money doing this blog thing:)
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Hi Brian, it’s definitely cool but I don’t think I’ll get much traffic from it because there’s no mention of my blog in the story or a link to it. Still being interviewed was fun.
Sent from my iPod
Good job Jon. Last summer I did a five minute interview segment on the BBC for a show. Explanation is too long for this space.
Nice get. Congrats.
Wow! that’s awesome. Nice to see your voice getting some national attention.
I just posted a funny joke about waiting in line at COSTCO. Read it here:
http://soyouwanttobeabanquetmanager.blogspot.com/2009/08/my-trip-to-costco.html