Why Kmart is Wrong to use Chris Brogan

Note: Upon further reflection, I have changed the title of this post to better reflect the message of the post. My beef is less with Chris Brogan than witk Kmart. If Chris wants to accept a $500 gift card in exchange for writing about his Kmart shopping experience, I have no problem with that. My issue is that I believe Kmart is incorrectly using the social-networking medium. Rather than letting its customers advocate on the store’s behalf, Kmart is using a well-respected social-media expert to improve its image.

This post is about a blog post from social media expert Chris Brogan, on behalf of Kmart.

Kmart gave Chris a $500 gift card and asked him to blog about what he bought. Chris wrote a straightforward article, which was clearly identified as a “sponsored post”.

His post is a first-hand account of his family’s shopping trip:

My six year old daughter came through the front doors, and the girls clothes was to the right. She looked over and said, “These are beautiful,” and sunk into a rack of winter coats.

It is evenhanded, such as this:

Dad note: I don’t know that I saw clothes I’d wear as a grown up. I mean, if you’re not very stylish, which I am not, there were some items.

This far into the story, I give Kmart high marks for entering into the jungle that is social media and for hiring someone as creative and smart as Chris Brogan. And I want to emphasize how much respect and admiration I have for Chris Brogan. He is one of the foremost strategic thinkers in the social-media space today.

But here’s where I disagree with what Chris and Kmart have done.

Rather than take advantage of the power of social media, they have tried to use this forum with traditional top-down marketing tactics.

They are saying, in effect, “WE will tell YOU what’s good about Kmart.”

Here’s what I think they should have done.

Kmart should have started a peer-to-peer marketing campaign, encouraging customers to tell each other why they shop at Kmart.

Let the customers take center stage. Turn customers into brand evangelists.

I have no doubt that, especially in a recession, there are many people who are grateful for Kmart’s prices. I bet there are customers who would be eager and able to write a post similar to Chris’. Not to mention the $500 gift card.

What gives social media the potential to become a marketing force is that it levels the playing field. Now nearly anyone can create and publish content. So why not at Kmart?

Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang recently wrote about how many people mistrust corporate blogs. He listed 8 reasons, including:

5. Customer Inclusion:
Do corporate blogs allow their customers to partake? or are they only second class citizens

Good: Allows for customers to guest blog, or includes snippets of their experiences
Bad: Content is only published by employees

In my view, Kmart is making this mistake. Customers come after the corporate voice. They can respond to Chris, but they compete with the hundreds of other comments.

Hubspot‘s Brian Halligan recently described the new model of marketing as a tradeoff between spending financial capital on the one hand versus spending intellectual capital on the other. (He was contrasting pay-click advertising and social media, not referring to Kmart).

Unfortunately, Kmart has decided it has more money than brains.