Either people in the company lack the proper awareness of the net buzz, or simply ignorant. How saddening for such a good campaign to fail in carrying its momentum on-line.

I hesitate to give advice to a company that knows a lot more about what it’s trying to do then I do, but (you knew there was a “but” coming) in this case I think it would be worthwhile for a social media play based on Erin Esurance to be attempted.

Certainly, posting videos on YouTube seems relatively safe. I can see where social networks (in a highly regulated industry) might give pause, but I think it might be worthwhile to experiment here, too.

In the early days of blogging, I sometimes advised companies to find bloggers already successfully attracting an audience on the subjects their customers care about–and hire them. The bloggers were happy and the company got someone who understood blogging and the community.

Perhaps that would be an option for Erin Esurance’s social network. If the fans are doing a better job creating this presence than the company, perhaps hiring the most successful fan is an option. Granted, the company will need to ensure that the things the fan does reflects well on the company, but it might be easier to do that than to have someone at the company figure out how to attract a social network following.

Regardless, the resources required are small–you can have one person work on this for a few months, and if it doesn’t work out, oh well. I suspect that’s a small part of the marketing budget.

Again, I won’t claim to be sure that I am right about this. I just think it’s an ide worth exploring, because it is rather low-risk and low-cost to be wrong. (That’s what “do it wrong quickly” is about, in the end.)

Kristin – great insights on where you are coming from in looking at navigating the corporate line on engagement here – it is really a challenge to get larger organizations moving into this level of participation and it is clear you have a grasp of the real issues here. Will be looking forward to seeing how this evolves over time…

I’m Kristin Brewe, Director of Brand & Public Relations at Esurance. I got your email asking for a comment. The topic of social networking makes for a great discussion, and is definitely relevant to a whole lot of marketers and advertisers these days.

You are absolutely right that there is very little created by us in cyberspace, other than on our site which is clearly owned by Esurance, with the exception of MySpace, which was an error in your posting.

To correct the record, there are multiple entries in MySpace that are “Erin Esurance,” and one of them is created by us:

FAN- http://www.myspace.com/erinesurance FAN – http://www.myspace.com/eesurance
US – http://www.myspace.com/erin_esurance

The other Erins are friends, however.

But back to social networking…

Our approach is a bit different than what you would like to see for Esurance for 3 important reasons (and they’re slightly inter-related too):

1) fan commitment
2) category constraint
3) our views on corporate and social

In terms of fans, we’re generally pretty happy when people make tributes to the character we’ve created and developed. (Admittedly, there’s some weird stuff out there, but with the Internet, that would happen no matter how many friends we have on MySpace. To any marketers who think they’re in control of a brand once you’ve launched a related meme in the public sphere in the Internet age, “Forget about it.”) The countless people who submit storylines, make art, write songs, create mash-ups, dress up as Erin, and contribute their creativity are what our brand’s all about. So making sure that we inspire public creativity is our main job, in terms of the social network side of things. (And that’s in addition to other important jobs, like sales.)

Within our category, we are more constrained than other businesses as a financial services provider, even though we have pushed the boundary a bit on the standard financial services image. For example: We can’t necessarily do auto-adds on MySpace, without vetting our friends personally. (e.g., Does any company want to find out that their company was friends with someone featured on “To Catch a Predator?” Doubtful.) Personally vetting friends on an app like MySpace takes time, and as one of the comments pointed out, that’s a resource, which can be hard to come by in any environment, but particularly a high growth one. I saw some great ideas above about being an expert on insurance, and also about having Erin engage in experiential marketing. Unfortunately on the first count, giving insurance advice is tough, as the product’s regulated, with strict rules about what can and cannot be said by whom. And, if we just went the experiential route without the insurance, it might be a dialogue that was slightly inappropriate for an auto insurance company to engage in. Those would obviously both be very doable if we were in cosmetics, however.

Which brings me to point #3– the appropriate factor for corporate/social. What’s appropriate in a social setting may not be appropriate in a corporate context, and vice versa. One of the reasons people have created social networks is to escape advertisers and mass messages. Though an anti-corporate vibe permeates our culture, it is more concentrated in online communities. People want to have dialogues with the circles they define, rather than have that intruded upon. Companies relentlessly pursue consumers (a word I hate, as it’s so passive!), and they perpetually invent ways to hide from us advertisers. Rather than continuing to push, shout, and chase, perhaps we advertisers should listen to that message and back off a bit, providing people with content that they can choose to peruse and adapt and mold so that, if and when they do decide to contribute to a brand’s meaning, that’s authentic, rather than merely something we paid for (an inauthentic connection). To us, that’s a social network, in the truest meaning of both words.

At any rate, thanks for asking for our comment. I wish everyone all the best as they navigate this space, as it’s truly different for every category and every company.

Kristin

There’s plenty of “black hat” going on all over the internet. I wouldn’t doubt that a competitor would be happy to “black hat” a brand via not so nice social interaction.

Chris