"The only thing I'm a bit hesitant about is that nowhere on the blog that I can see does the blogger identify who he (or she) is. [...] So, Landrover.HaveYourSay?.com, let's have a little clue... [UPDATE] More than a clue, now we know who the blogger is - he left a comment to this post with a link to a new post on his 'war blog' which links to his main blog. Thanks, Adrian, for coming out! Best of luck with this campaign. I hope your news gets picked up by more bloggers (and a journalist or two). Equally, I hope someone at Harrison-Cowley and Land Rover starts paying attention."
"Land Rover's service and quality problems are nothing new. But blogging alone will not get this argument into the court of public opinion. The national press will - assuming they pick it up. Jeremy Clarkson, are you listening to this? Isn't this your cup of tea?"
"For an individual consumer to seek relief for a faulty product is reasonable - and I do that myself with shoddy products - but where I believe Adrian crossed the line was with "I want Land Rover to admit publicly". He then follows up with what only can be called a public humiliation campaign against the corporation. Why, after all, did he think of contacting Harrison-Cowley, Land Rover's PR agency, rather than a consumer advocacy group or automotive publication? It's blackmail, pure and simple. And in the public eye."
"Check out this tussle between an angry blogger and the customer service at Land Rover. [...] To some , it looks like blackmail. Whatever it is, companies would do well to look at this as a cautionary case study for customer relations in the age of blogs."
The campaign "leave open a number of extremely interesting issues from the overall communication and customer relationship points of view. For instance, the role blogs can play in forcing a poor customer service issue into the public eye. How some others see what you're doing and raise an equally-interesting argument that this is nothing more than citizen journalism blackmail. Or what if an individual or group uses blogs as part of a non-legitimate campaign of attack on an organization's reputation."
"1. Although not explicitly stated, it seems Landrover shares a problem common to many brands. How do we respond to a firestorm without making it worse? They knew what was happening and didn't or maybe couldn't do anything about it. 2. Adrian mentioned process. This is an incredibly sticky issue for large organizations. In an unstructured, self-regulated platform such as this, it is nigh on impossible to get any control over events if you're on the sharp end. And by control I mean share of mind. Not share of PR spin. 3. He suggests using the site as a platform for Landrover. I agree with Neville Hobson on this. It is an interesting if risky idea but the old maxim holds true: "A turned around customer is your best advocate."
"Neville has written about a blogger waging war and about a war on a support problems. OK, when it is all true, again no problem. But what if people have bad or untruth ideas....? Just wondering. Do you have an idea? Just wondering."
"The 700 visitors a day Adrian Melrose’s blog was getting represented (according to the calculations of our search optimisation partner Weboptimiser that 25% of the total Land Rover traffic via search engines and more than 100% of the “Land Rover Discovery” traffic. Proof, if proof were needed that, as our white paper points out, a blogger with a tiny budget but a big grievance can out market a very big brand in very little time."
"Customer dialogue...have a great customer experience, publicize it. Have a negative one, make a very public showing of how you fixed the problem and create an evangelical following amongst your customers. Bloggers do not represent the sum total of your customers, but they do represent the most vocal ones...the ones who take the time to write and tell their friends about their experiences. They are early adopters, get in touch with them."
