The SM Group of Companies has always been, in my opinion, one of the more traditional and conservative corporate institutions to have inculcated itself as a strong part of Philippine culture and mass consumerism. Which is why I was surprised to have been invited as a resource speaker a few weeks ago to help shed some light to the Hypermarket staff on the business aspect of blogging. Sounds crazy right?
Here was my proposition: SM doesn’t need to concern itself much with online marketing as they don’t have any “controversial” products and services such as broadband Internet service that tend to lean towards more colorful discussion online.
So why bother?
I began listening to Mr. Robert Kwee (“RK”) and his objectives to take SM to the next level. From the way people describe him, RK seems to be very progressive in his methods, not wanting to be left behind in the information age. It was the bloggers that excited him and he wanted to make use of blogging as an effective PR and communications tool not just for the consumers, but also internally.
What Mr. Kwee is looking for is a proposition built around Jeremy Wright’s Blog Marketing book:
The challenge for companies who invest in ideas is often that the best ideas don’t get to the top, don’t get reviewed, or don’t even get considered. This idea barrier could be killing your company. A truly open and internally viewable idea blog, or even individual employee blogs that allow people to float new ideas for peer review, should allow the best ideas to rise to the surface for selection and review.
Jeremy Wright is the founder of b5media, the network which I proudly work for as channel editor for technology.
SM Hypermarket does have a blog set up. Although most of the posts by far deal with contest mechanics I am truly enjoying the ghostblogger’s tone. He or she really brings a very casual face to a very traditional company as you can read from this post:
Believe it or not, the event was hatched and planned only in 2 weeks and 2 meetings. Who would’ve thought that the original targeted hundred bloggers would balloon to almost 200? That’s why we were so excited to hold this event. We have to admit that we are newbie bloggers too, but all these are just really exciting! [source]
Congratulations, SM ghost blogger, whoever you are!
Going back to the initial question of why should corporations bother with the whole blogging gig, I will try to answer it:
Regardless of whether your company’s core competence is found online or not, what people should be concerned with is reaching new and broader markets through creative means. Blogging is one way, but blogging is not an end in itself. It is merely a very efficient platform that can be used to deliver information about campaigns, advocacies, and serve as an effective communication tool to facilitate dialogue between consumers and the service providers.
Is this a challenge to the “more forward” companies in the Philippines to take on progressive ideas such as these? SM is one big corporate giant, but they’re starting. Congratulations to them!
Here’s some trivia for you. The SM Hypermarket and the Supermarket are two different business units. SM Hypermarket is supposed to be the one stop shop for everything, which is why they sell clothing and electronics apart from groceries. The Supermarket on the other hand is really the more traditional grocery we’ve all come to grow up with. To the foreign readers, SM Shoemart can be closely alluded to our version of Walmart.
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