Harry Rosen's Blog & Understanding the Dynamics of Slow Social Media

Mondoville linked to an article today talking about the #FAIL of Harry Rosen's blog efforts. As part of an overall campaign urging Canadian men during these difficult economic times to have confidence, Harry Rosen started a blog. The blog had a few videos by prominent Canadians (Rob Guenette of Taxi, and Porter Airlines CEO Robert Deluce).

I had actually gone to the site myself but apparently, I was only 1 of 1000 people leading Harry Rosen's Director of Marketing Sandra Kennedy to say:

"Only about 1,000 people had visited the blog by the end of the campaign, making it an embarrassing and expensive flop."

I have to say, I don't think the tactic here is to blame. I think the bigger challenge that many marketers are going to have to face is the fact that you can't build a Social Media presence (whether that is a blog, Twitter presence or Faceook fan group) quickly enough to employ a Social strategy for a short term campaign.

I wrote a post a while back about how "Slow and Steady Wins the Marketing Race" and Mitch Joel has a post called "In Praise of Slow" that I've linked to before.

The concept is simple. Meaningful marketing isn't a sprint anymore. It's a marathon.

Both posts essentially have the same theme. There are some types of marketing that require time (like utilizing Social Media). Why?

- Because it's about getting to know each other
- Because it's about providing value over time
- Because you are not the star and I'm not your fan
- Because my participation contributes to your success
- Because Social Media is not a broadcast channel and the dynamics are different
- Because ecosystems are organic and relationships can't be created they have to emerge over time

Community is about curation and that doesn't happen over night regardless of your new campaign and a communications calendar time line.

So did Harry Rosen's blog fail? Maybe it did. But maybe it didn't have to. And while their lesson learned was "that their customers are too busy running the world to stop and read blogs" I don't buy that. The real lesson here should be in the effort required for Social and the underlying dynamics of Slow Social Media.