Interview mit Keith Childs von GM Europe

Letzte Woche hatte ich Keith Childs von GM Europe als Interview-Partner:

Nils: Tell us who you are?

Keith: I work in Web & New Media at GM Europe. I’m a Brit living in Switzerland and have worked in marketing communications, issues communications, B2B, corporate communications and media relations. Presently I concentrate on media and corporate audiences, though I question whether this type of segmentation is still meaningful. Lines are blurred. If a journalist blogs is he a blogger or a journalist? If a customer writes about what he likes and dislikes about his new car, is he a reporter?

Nils: From your Xing-Profile I can see that you came from traditional marketing to New Media. How would you describe the improtance of New Media to a company such as GM?

Keith: I’m not quite sure why we separate new from traditional. There will always be something new. When TV came along that was new media, when the web arrived that was new media and the same with blogs. If you look back over time there are not many media that have been eliminated by something new. TV did not kill radio. Web video won’t replace TV. The fax machine is still around. Newspapers are still important. What’s changed is the speed of introduction and speed of adoption. It’s vitally important for GM – and in Europe this means the Opel, Vauxhall & Chevrolet brands- to embrace new media and see where it meets communications objectives that our current media can’t deliver. But just doing something because it’s the next shiny thing or flavour of the month is not that smart. Just because you can, does not mean you should.

Nils: What about the importance of Social Media?

Keith: All of new media is not social, but a lot is. GM & its brands recognized that its audiences were embracing new media – it’s only natural to want to be a part of
this. Consumers no longer tolerate being simply communicated at. They are more likely to tune out than ever before and to consume content that they want, when they want. New media is important not as a channel but as a better way to connect with audiences. More two-way, based on dialogue. A recognition that we are part of the conversation and the most effective way of influencing that conversation is by active participation.

Nils: Do you see social media only in B2C context or also in B2B?

Keith: It’s B2B, B2C and B2E. You can’t just take what works with B2C and simply copy paste that into a B2B environment. You need think about how your audience interacts and what drives them.

Nils: Tell us a little more about GM and your social media activities in general and in Europe? Blogs, Twitter, community, Video, etc.?

Keith: My colleagues in the US have been doing some great things. I guess it all started with the FastLane blog which had to be one of the earliest examples of a corporate blog. It was a bold move for a Fortune 500 company. What our executives appreciated was getting direct feedback directly from people who cared about our products. This was not filtered, nor was it consolidated into some research report. It was direct. Some of our strongest advocates can be our harshest critics – especially if they think we are falling short of the standards they expect from us. Some criticism was hard to accept, but it was mostly constructive and our executives took note. GM started to use Twitter extensively at the time when the auto industry was severely hit by the world economic crisis. There was much misinformation being tweeted and retweeted an it was time to set the record straight on some of the myths that were being spread.

In Europe we started sometime ago with a social media newsroom, flickr & YouTube pages- we recognized that people wanted to share our photography and video we needed to make it easier for them to do this. We embraced Creative Commons licensing. We introduced an executive blog and we have a German blog from engineers who have been testing the Opel Astra. We are watching twitter very closely in Europe. Europe is not one country one language and opening up a conversational channel has consequences that you need to understand. Like publishing a telephone number on your website and nobody answers it when you call. You need to think these things through.

Nils: Which social media tool would you describe as the most important one?
That’s not easy to answer. It really depends on what you are trying to achieve. You can’t say a blog is more important than a Facebook group or vice versa. The most important one is the one that meets your objective. Blogs are still important in the way they accelerate cultural change inside an organisation from simply broadcast communication to dialogue.

Nils: Many people talk about Twitter lately. What do you think of twitter?

Keith: Twitter is so easy which means that it will continue to grow rapidly in countries where it has not yet taken off properly. There are many dimensions to Twitter and at the very least companies need to pay attention. You see breaking news, your next crisis will be reported here – maybe before you know about it yourself. It’s got a customer service dimension, a research dimension, a reputation management dimension and of course makes it easy to be a part of the conversation – if your company is ready for this.

Ok, thanks a lot Keith!

Für jeden der Keith kontaktieren möchte twitter.com/keithchilds

Tags: GM Europe

This entry was posted on Mittwoch, September 9th, 2009 at 10:41 and is filed under Interview. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.