Response and Responsiveness

My belief is that two simple words will play an integral role in shaping "Brands 2.0" i.e. the nature, health and relevancy of the next generation of brands. They are "response" and "responsiveness"

Responsiveness: The ability or propensity for brands to engage their consumers, measured in time i.e. the length of time that elapses between consumer comment and brand response.

NOT Autoresponse: Your comment is important to us. We will get back to you in the order your comment was received etc.

BUT Humanresponse:Thank you so much for taking the time to contribute. We heard you.

Response: The nature and quality of that response

We heard you and here's what we did about it...

Segue to Virtual Thirst - the initiative crayon worked with The Coca-Cola Company to help launch in Second Life.

To date, we've got plenty of feedback from the blogosphere and beyond. I'm proud to say that the vast majority of it has been consistently positive. I'm even prouder of the fact, both our clients and crayonistas have responded to almost every post personally.

That's almost unprecedented in today's times.

Now with that said, we've also received some criticism - most of it constructive, but criticism nonetheless. Some people believed that the prize was not substantial enough.

One eligible grand prize winner will win a trip for 2 to San Francisco, California USA, for a visit to the offices of Millions of Us to participate in the creation of a video documenting the creation of the winning design as a Second Life object.

Others had concerns with the rules/T's & C's which were visibly posted on the Virtual Thirst website.

And then Coca-Cola's Michael Donnelly responded, with this video on YouTube, directly (or as best as he could) addressing the concerns and in places, providing a solution e.g. upping the prize to L$500,000.

We've even received our first video response from Christopher Penn

I don't know about you, but where else have you ever seen this kind of response or responsiveness? I think it speaks volumes in terms of how things are changing and if this is any indication of the new direction, I'm certainly encouraged by it and humbled to play a small part in the process.

I wonder if anyone will pick up on this. The mainstream media certainly has been quiet so far.