Here’s a tale of the brave new world of the web, the collaborative, open, participatory one. It starts harmlessly. Vodafone Germany did something new: a new image, a new target group, a new PR format… The formal pointer was the full integration of Arcor, which it took over about a year ago.

There was more to it though, on the image side. Now, Vodafone did its homework (or so it thought) and thought of something fairly revolutionary: it announced its new initiative in a “Live PK” where they allowed everyone (!) to contribute comments via web (as they said: “contribute, ask!” (as an aside: PK is to stand for “press conference”; they may have overlooked the fact that the abbreviation is [was?] also used to describe a runny form of stool). Anyhow, lots of puns possible but let’s move on as it would otherwise unduly overshadow the fairly impressive way with which the story unfolds:

Now, a little bit of background:

Vodafone announced in good German their latest campaign aimed at “Generation Upload”. This is, so they tell us in a blog (!) entry, the opposite of the only consuming download generation. Download was yesterday. Now is the Upload folks who “is full of energy”, “do not let themselves be constrained by conventions” and “lets everyone else participate in their excitement”. “It uses communication technologies not as a means in itself” (did anyone ever?) but as “a tool for realizing their own dreams” (or something like that; there was a lot more of PR blurb of course; German version here).

But then it came: “With Vodafone this generation wins a partner that provides the tools for this.”

Ah. Do they now? Well… What was your data tariff? ā‚¬35 per month you say? Um…

And so disaster struck – somewhat… The invitation to contribute and ask led to 2,100 (!) comments during the press conference alone, way too much to handle of course. Also, it transpired that the Vodafone data pricing might not actually be fully in sync with the message it wanted to communicate, namely that the uploaders are being appropriately embraced by Vodafone (a partner… tools…).

But then came the somewhat revolutionary bit: today, in a blog post (and when did any carrier ever announce something like this via a blog?) they a) admitted having misjudged the whole thing and b) promised to work on their tariff structures: “if we really want to become the partner of the upload generation, then we must provide the respective tools in terms of hardware and rates. We will be measured by this.”

This, for a carrier, is revolutionary indeed. And it is a sign that they might actually have “got it”. The web as it has emerged is a different one, simpler but also infinitely more complex. Be sincere, be transparent, be honest. In the new digital society, attempts to cover mistakes up by misguided PR-BS almost certainly fail. They seem to have understood that. Will they act on it? Ah, brave new world!

Vodafone: hats off to you!!! And now: deliver… šŸ˜‰