An opportunity for Land Rover

It looks like all's well for Adrian Melrose that ends well. Adrian's the blogger who's been waging war on Land Rover.

In a post this morning on his war blog, Adrian says that he struck a deal with Land Rover yesterday on a replacement Discovery.

While the main point in all this - Adrian's desire for a working vehicle - has now been resolved, it does 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.

Then there's the very interesting point in Adrian's post today that raises the idea of converting his anti-Land Rover blog into a platform for open discussion about Land Rover products, and involving Land Rover the company.

Now there's a great opportunity for Land Rover to enter into a direct and open conversation with their customers. It could be a rocky ride to start with, but what an opportunity if they grasp it. If Adrian falls totally in love with his replacement Discovery, you have the beginnings of a true customer evangelist who has a blog.

Great discussion points.

Comments

[Richard Jones]

Neville,
I am now starting to get the hang of cyberspace and I have had three emails from Adrian re Landrover

If a Dell (or any other computer) fails, about the worse case scenario is a few thousand Dollars or Pounds and frustration of personal or business process.
If a motor vehicle fails due to design fault, incompetant repair or a corporate culture based on "just get it out of the workshop quick", then not only is the cost huge (in my case $120,000 plus)and the need to purchase alternate transport) but the potential death or serious injury of one or more people - as in my case.

I acknowledge your point re 'blackmail' and unjustified attacks on corporate behaviour and I avoided even threatening such action, until I had exhausted every effort to communicate with the CEO of Landrover Australia (including Ford Corporation - current owners) and correspondence from solicitors.
The CEO still refuses to deal with the issue.
I agree that in the 'world economy' and the availability of mass publication, there needs to be some ethics but big corporations have abused their might with dubious ethics, for a long time and some backlash in the other direction may take some time to balance the equation.
Appreciate your thoughts.
Richard