Welcome to Blue Shirt Nation

Another project Judge has written about is the company’s “open” testing of a new logo and brand identity at its Mall of America store. The store name is in a softer font, punctuated with a smaller, subtler price tag outline. Judge has asked for reaction to the fonts, the feel, and the uniforms as Best Buy considers whether to move forward with a new brand identity.

Other Best Buy employees throughout the company are finding ways to use Twitter. Store managers are setting up accounts to stay in touch with local customers. One employee maintains a Twitter feed for discussion of Best Buy exclusives, such as last fall’s Guns N’ Roses album, Chinese Democracy. Customer care employees are scanning Twitter and trying to resolve complaints by being responsive.

Much of Twitter’s usefulness has been keeping employees in the loop with other employees. Meetings are spawning open, real-time parallel discussion on Twitter, where employees who aren’t attending can chime in with questions; curious outsiders can read along, too. (Twitter allows users to keep their messages private, but most users at Best Buy are tweeting in public.)

In a sign of Best Buy’s increasing comfort with social networking, the communication department recently created a Web page (bestbuyinc.com/connect/) where customers can go to follow all the blogs, tweets, and other employee chatter coming out of the company.

Brand, Humanized

These are turbulent times for Best Buy and its industry. Since the holidays, Best Buy has seen its competitor Circuit City go under. The Richfield company has announced buyouts and layoffs of its own. Adding to the uncertainty: Brad Anderson, the company’s CEO since 2002, will be retiring in June. (However, his successor is a company insider who has been with the company for 23 years—COO Brian Dunn, who met with Pfeifer.)

The uncertainty carries over into Best Buy’s internal social-networking initiative. “I’m not sure how it’s all going to work,” Koelling admits. “These are uncommon times. Ideally, an open, social approach would give the company that believes in it an advantage both internally and with its customers. Best Buy leaders seems to believe that this is a long-term and sustainable strategy. But like I said, uncommon times.”