The Affari Blog

We at Affari Edge believe that companies can benefit from blogging, which is why I signed up for Blog Business Summit’s Fortune 500 Blog Project, an independent volunteer effort to study public-facing corporate blogs by Fortune 500 companies.

The first company I reviwed is Publix, #104 on the 2006 Fortune 500 list, and top business in the state of Florida. Based in Lakeland, Floria, Publix is a privately held corporation, operating almost 900 supermarkets in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina and Tennessee. They are the 6th ranked grocery/drug store with almost $21 billion in revenue. Publix is known for its philosophy of pleasing the customer; the Publix guarantee to never knowingly disappoint our customers is legendary in the industry. (Sources: Publix website, CNN/Money Magazine).

After searching their site, and not finding any obvious links to a blog (and the search for the word ‘blog’ on their site returned zero results), I made a call to Maria Brous, Director of Media & Community Relations. She explained that Publix does not have the current resources to devote to a public-facing blog. Rather, they are dedicated to serving their customers through direct interaction in the stores with friendly, knowledgeable associates and management, as well as a dedicated Consumer Relations Line with both telephone and email interaction. She did indicate that Publix can not monitor the blogosphere simply because of the volume of bloggers out there — a Technorati search on Publix found more than 31,000 entries and 13 blogs - mostly on MySpace. However, Publix customers themselves keep the company informed about what is being said about Publix.

We at Affari Edge recognize the time and manpower a public facing blog can take. Publix is a great company, and their lack of a blog does not detract from the great customer service they offer. Still, in the future, I would expect if customers start asking for a blog, Publix will start one — they are known for making sure their customers get what they want.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 11:33 am and is filed under Public Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.