Helping Wal-Mart Get Interactive

Kenny Tomlin of Rockfish Interactive chats with us about the company’s work with Wal-Mart and the social media forecast:

eMarketer: Let’s talk about Wal-Mart and the Your Zone home furnishing site.

Mr. Tomlin: Your Zone is an example of taking a brand and creating an online brand experience for teens and tweens. Site users can select different room types and design the room to look like theirs, in terms of wall and floor coloring. We created all the 3D models of the Your Zone furniture options. When the room is built to the way users like it, they can actually order everything in that room. It gives them an opportunity to visualize what the furniture looks like and mix and match different options.

There are lots of applications for this type of functionality. There could be opportunities to do this with patio and outdoor furniture or furniture targeted at other age groups. Companies can gain a lot of insight in terms of most popular items and how rooms are being configured, so there really are many purposes beyond just selling the products.

eMarketer: You’ve also worked on the Elevenmoms program.

Mr. Tomlin: Yes. Wal-Mart was one of the first large brands that really became active in building relationships with moms online. They reached out to eleven moms who were already blogging, Twittering and using social media platforms to talk about the things that were very much on board with what Wal-Mart is about—their “Save money. Live better.” brand message. It was very organic.

Elevenmoms wasn’t about having these bloggers help sell products—it’s really been more about the relationship and the opportunity to build a one-to-one conversation with customers who are passionate about the brand message. A lot of great ideas have come from the moms who are working with us. Now there are over 20 moms in the space.

eMarketer: Any thoughts on the FTC regulating blog content and enforcing that bloggers be more transparent about paid editorial placement?

Mr. Tomlin: If a brand contacts a blogger and says, “I want to send you my product to try,” the brand is thinking of it as an advertising opportunity.

The blogger needs to fully disclose that the product is provided to them for free and then the reader can decide how credible the review is. Because if I received a free car to drive for a month, am I going to write a negative review about it? Maybe I love the car, but a lot of people who read a positive review may be skeptical if the car was provided for free.

Some bloggers do product reviews on their own as a value and a service. What’s been disappointing, from my perspective, is many of these moms are interested in blogging simply because they think they can create a business out of it, but aren’t transparent. If that’s why you’re creating a blog, just disclose it.

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