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This week's readings emphasized on the importance of interactive marketing. The Citizen Marketers book emphasized that to have a good social media relationship with your client you must first pay attention to their needs. Chapter 5 of the Citizen Marketer's book talks about a Web site developer by the name of Eric Karkovack who launched a website to revive a drink by the name of Surge. Karkovack's website was titled SaveSurge.org; this website depicted Karkovack's great interest of Surge. As time progressed SaveSurege.org began to grow and the popularity of the site increased dramatically. As Surge activists were increasing in popularity; Coca Cola began to launch a new beverage to the market called Vault. Vault was a test beverage that was particularly similar to Surge. Karkovack became interested in the test beverage and decided to drive 4 hours to obtain the Vault drink. After he obtains some Vault, Karkovack begins to blog about it. As he begins to blog more and more people began to link Vault with Surge and see the new beverage as a reincarnation of the Surge beverage. After several months of Karkovack's attempt to revive the Surge product he decides to built a new fan site called VaultKicks.org. This site was launched to promote the success of Vault and to launch the product worldwide. The site became a huge success but had no recognition from the Coca Cola company. Google entries in 2006 showed that VaultKicks.org had more recognition than Coca Cola's official Vault's site. Korkovack concludes by stating that the Coca Cola needs a lot of enhancement on the issue of interactive marketing. He states that their marketing techniques are descent but still need adjustments on their websites.
I believe that Korkovack is right; companies such as Coca Cola need to pay attention to their customer's and acknowledge their work. Korkovack's websites are a perfect example of what the average person can do for a company. His drive to revive Surge and promote Vault played a huge part in the company's prospects. The book concludes Karkovack's story by stating that companies should be more customer friendly and should really listen to their customers. I do agree with the Citizen Marketer's authors when they state that without customer satisfaction a company will not last. Customer's input is a huge asset to a company's future.
