PowerReviews Insider

We at PowerReviews don’t spend a ton of time shouting from the mountain tops but we did want to take a moment to celebrate an old idea that is being taken up in a new way. The old idea is for brands to expand their footprint in their retail channels to influence the consumer’s choice at that critical point of decision. Brands have done this in retailers’ physical stores with in-store merchandisers and point of sale displays, and they are looking for the same kind of opportunities in the e-commerce world.

On August 19th 2007, we launched “Brand Publishing”, where brands could publish their reviews with retailers that carry their products. The first brand to use this was Trek Bikes, who published their reviews on the “Trek Bicycle Store” – Schererville – on the SmartEtailing bike store network. It wasn’t a man on the moon, but it was pretty cool to see a system that we had dreamed of in 2006 to go live. After over a year of review sharing, 154 Trek products have pushed PowerReviews-generated reviews to their retailers in the SmartEtailing group. The mechanics of the system are fairly easy for us since we work with product data all the time on our portal Buzzillions. In addition, our standard tool set allows the recipients of the reviews to moderate the reviews that are coming from brands if they chose to.

As with any agreement or dance, it takes two to tango. While brands are interested in publishing this information to retailers, retailers are just starting to warm up to the idea of publishing consumer content that did not originate on their site. Their concern is understandable as it is critical that the reader have transparency as content might be coming from one of many sources:

• A retailer staff member
• A manufacturer employee
• An unconfirmed reviewer
• A consumer who has verified to have purchased the product

Your consumer’s trust cannot be valued highly enough, and brands or retailers who try to game the system will feel a strong backlash when the users sniff them out. How many top reviewers can really review more than one dishwasher? (another post for another day).

I predict 3 positive things are going to happen in 2009:

1. Brands that already embrace what people are really saying will look to leverage that content by publishing it to trusted partners
2. Brands that have not embraced the consumer voice will move in that direction because consumers expect it and they are missing out on valuable feedback
3. Retailers will see this new digital version for in-store displays and want to get plugged into their best brands. The best thing about this version is that it is automatic and nobody has to set up a cardboard display in the aisle

We all know at the end of the day customers will ignore how loud you shout from the mountain top or who had it first when they have a great selection. The biggest things they will care about is whether they trust the product really works and does what it is supposed to do at a reasonable price. This is as true from us as a company, as it is for any brand or physical product they produce.