Category: Social Media

Jon and his team at Petro-Canada recently launched Pump Talk, a blog where they can engage with customers and other key audiences to discuss issues around gas prices and fuel efficiency. One Degree sat down with Jon to discuss what led up to Pump Talk, how success will be measured and the lessons that Jon and his team have learned about corporate blogging.

One Degree: You had some success with posting videos about gas prices on YouTube last year. Why was a blog the next step for Petro-Canada?

I believe much of the original buzz from last years videos came from people being shocked that a big oil and gas company not only knew what YouTube was, but had posted videos on it. We weren’t sure what to expect, but we recieved a lot of feedback – good and bad – on our effort. Aside from a number of “You Suck”‘s and other angry comments, we heard from people engaged in and enthused about Social Media who told us we needed to be interactive and much more relaxed. In other words, we were welcomed to the party, but told to lose the bow-tie and our parents couldn’t stay. Faced with the choice of just doing more videos, or taking it to the next level, we decided to step it up and launch a blog.

Read the rest of the interview after the break …