The Inovis UK Blog

Blogging – everyone’s doing it, it seems. I am for a start – based at Inovis in Guildford I am now a fully fledged member of the Inovis Blog team for EMEA, Stephen Fry seems to pop up as a top choice on Google for blogging and of course facebook.

It is the latter (sorry Mr. Fry) that I am interested in. Peter Jordan, chair of Global Commerce Initiative highlighted at the UK Inovis Customer Advisory Board Meeting (May of two thousand eight) how social networking sites such as facebook, youtube, myspace and blogging are not only becoming a major part of our lives (ever updated your status on your mobile phone, anyone?) but it is also affecting the supply chain by becoming the voice of the consumer.

Cadbury’s Dairy Milk – the drumming gorilla, 90 second ad – had 500,000 page views on youtube in the first week of the launch and British polling company YouGov reported public perception of the brand had noticeably improved in the period following the launch, reversing the decline experienced in the first half of 2007 caused by a series of crises and Product recalls. Using youtube essentially provided Cadbury with free ad space to an audience of millions, viral marketing at its best – and as we will never hear ‘In the air tonight’ and think of Phil Collins in the same way again. The campaign sparked blogs aplenty, got the nation talking both on and off-line, gave Brand Republic a great debate, and sent Dairy Milk sales through the roof!

Students gave HSCB a run for their money using facebook as their voice to spread the word and made the national news.

Technology has given power to the consumer to communicate so the supply chain needs to follow suit by embracing a new generation of integrated solutions that will improve the flow of information across the supply chain. At Inovis we like to call this Business Community Management and I will leave you with Simon Holloway, analyst from Bloor Research with his thoughts.