Hill+Knowlton Strategies

Sometimes Google is just too clever for its own good. I’ve blogged before about Google’s predictive search and the sometimes strange assumptions that it makes about your searching intentions.

I received an unusual email today from someone calling me a ‘dingle‘, which I believe is a reference to my footballing allegiances. Keen to see if I was being insulted or not, I did a quick Google for a ‘dingle’. Ever the clever clogs, the predictive search result came back ‘See results for house of fraser‘. Eh?

More digging quickly unearthed that the House of Fraser had acquired Dingles back in the 70s. Now this could be an obscure reference to my fashion sense, but footballing insults are rarely that sophisticated.

Another scan down the results brought up Emmerdale’s Dingle family (bad eggs in a UK countryside soap opera). Bingo! Southampton is not a major metropolis (it’s a city though), therefore I am a (London-based) country boy.

Back to the drawing board, Google. Unless of course Dingles do shop at the House of Fraser after all.

No, not a misty-eyed post about Badly Drawn Boy’s songwriting genius, but instead the launch of a new blogging portal, 2TalkAbout.

Its first incarnation is a Honda-sponsored site where customers and in theory Honda engineers get to mix and talk about Honda. Consumers can sign up and post their thoughts into the portal for others to comment on and respond to.

At the time of writing, there is an interesting mix of branding, praise and criticism. Branding through the Honda logo and an ad for the Honda Civic; praise on the likes of fuel efficiency; criticism on topics such as the blog itself and of car defects like the Civic ES fuel flap (no sign of the engineers just yet though).

All in all a promising start for a community conversation and there is certainly an active community of Honda advocates online to tap into. The question remains the level to which Honda themselves will actively participate in the conversation and act upon requests made by their customers. It’s good to listen, but also important for customers to feel that they are being heard.

In the interests of transparency, I am an active follower of Honda’s moves in the digital world, having worked on the Honda account for a number of years at my previous digital agency. I was interested to read the thoughts of my old client John Goodbody on the portal: “We like people talking about our cars. And now there’s a blog site where you can discuss your Honda experiences with others or get a useful insight into Honda ownership. We encourage our customers to interact, and this is a great medium for doing just that.” It certainly is, John.