Will real time search turn marketing into customer service?

With the popularity of Twitter's real time search, and some Very Large companies like @Comcastcares, @Jetblue, @Wholefoods and @Ford being very vocal about the importance of maintaining a two-way dialogue with their consumers, it follows that the next stage of marketing may feature company reps reaching out via Twitter Search to real consumers and offering product deals, offers, or advice. 

This has already happened in some instances, but it hasn't happened on a grand scale...yet. Marketing as customer service seems the obvious next step in online marketing to me. But I haven't really heard many tech pundits kicking it around in convo or posts much. There was this post by my fave search expert, John Battelle, that sticks out in my mind. It was posted last year. 

The main idea of the post is that Google may feel to us like it's immediate, but it's really an archival system. Battelle writes, "Google represents a remarkable achievement: the ability to query the static web." What Google hasn't done yet is show us what query searches in real time. 

But guess who has done that? Twitter. Ahhhh...Twitter. The darling of the community sites just can't do anything wrong it seems. But it may have some competition lurking in Sunnyvale.

In a more recent post by Battelle, the omnipresence of real time search appears inevitable when Battelle quotes Google co-founder Larry Page as admitting that "People really want to do stuff in real time and they [Twitter] have done a great job about it...we will do a good job of things now that we have these examples."

So have we reached the moment when your search coughs up what people are saying about your query that very second? And if so, what does that mean to marketing? 

This is what's really interesting to me. And you better believe corporations and CMOs everywhere are similarly salivating over the idea of direct, one-to-one sales and marketing via real time queries. I mean, it's the ultimate opt-in, right? The consumer is actually requesting information and is probably near the end of the buying cycle. Plus, the corporation rep can snag that lead and convert it into a sale, immediately.

I can even visualize what the day-to-day job would require: some kind of marketing/customer service/account person hybrid, sitting in front of a multi-panel listening platform, where they monitor certain key word mentions online and entice influencers with micro blog outreach moments. Do you see it too? What do you see?

un-PC tweet gets dude in hot water

So many of you may have read this article about how James Andrews, a Ketchum PR employee, wrote a tweet that got into the hands of his FedEx client and eventually lost him and Ketchum some business. Here's what happened: James arrives in Memphis and tweets: "True confession but I'm in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say 'I would die if I had to live here!'"
Meanwhile, one of the biggest clients at Ketchum is straight outta Mempis, and did not find the tweet complimentary.

In fact, he was pissy. You can read the full response Andrews' slip up elicited from the FedEx client in a posting by Jeremiah Owyang, but suffice to say it wasn't pretty. The FedEx client had hometown pride, and just didn't see the need to use Andrews' services anymore.

When I've heard people talk about this incident, it seems that most feel that the moral of this story is BOLDFACED--Watch your words when you're tweeting. Someone might not like what you're about to say.

But I can't be fully comfortable with that take-away. I agree that it's never good to hurt someone's feelings (in-person or online); but is it actually purposely hurting someone's feelings to tweet about your lack of love for a particular city? I'm not sure.

I mean, maybe I'm being too subjective. I've only just recently come into my own enough as a grown-up and a writer to be open about my opinions. I remember when I was younger and would write lyrics or articles; they were just devoid of the rawness that I was attempting to convey with my words because I was so damn hyper-aware of my (eventual) audience. Now that I'm older and more experienced, I feel it would be false for me to hold back my true thoughts and feelings. And on a loftier note, I believe that living consciously means living truthfully.

I mean, I'm not saying that due to these personal beliefs I will use Twitter as my own personal Hater Portal. I'm just saying that if we're acting as the PC police, we have to be VERY CAREFUL to avoid fostering a world of disingenuous and fear-based posts/tweets. That's all...