Vespa Blogs to Shine the Spotlight on Customers

Today I am very proud to write here that CooperKatz's Micro Persuasion practice has secured a new corporate blogging engagement, and it's a big one - Vespa scooters. You can read all about the Vespa blogging initiative in today's Wall Street Journal and at VespaBlogs.com.

Vespa USA is a unit of the Piaggio Group - Europe's leader in the two-wheel sector. It re-entered the U.S. market in 2000 and now has dealerships in 85 markets, 15 of which opened in the last year. Vespa USA has contracted CooperKatz and Company, my employer, not only for blogging but for its comprehensive US public relations effort as well. Our goal is simple - to encourage more Americans to embrace scootering.

At CooperKatz we believe one of the most effective forms of marketing is peer-to-peer/citizen marketing. What better way to evangelize the benefits of scootering than empowering existing customers to tell prospective scooterati why Vespa rocks?

Vespa is in the fortunate position of having thousands of very expressive online customer evangelists. Given this, CooperKatz and Piaggio USA decided to try something unique. In the spirit of Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell's breakthrough book, Creating Customer Evangelists, we're going to give four lucky Vespa owners a voice. Together we're launching two lifestyle blogs this summer that will be written by Vespa customers. One will focus on urban mobility, while the other will be on the journey we call life - how to get from point A to point B. More details are in the call for Vespa bloggers.

It is also worth noting that Vespa and CooperKatz believe in complete transparency, which is why we announced this now when we posted the FAQ/call for bloggers. Also, as an open process we are very interested in hearing the community's feedback as well, so please do share.