When one thinks of companies that would be extremely successful reaching thier targets with new media Altria Group probably does not spring to mind. There website shows no corporate blog or endless message boards where people can voice their concerns about the evil tobacco industry. But if you look a little bit deeper you will find that the company has been forced to show a bit of its softer side. On their homepage Altria.com there are two tabs relating to this topic, there is a media tab, and a responsibility tab. The media tab shows people where they can gain access to media contacts at the company, b-roll for those in television, and logos for those in print. Under responsibility however Altria specifically frames its image as a responsible company who more important than making cigarettes make a lot of money. Under the responsibility tab there are some glimpses of new media. There is an RSS news feed and also and email list sign up. These are both corporate information gathering tools. I believe the prospect of new media is not something as beneficial for a company like Altria as it would be for a company like Jet Blue when they were trying to break their negative image. Jet Blue could have used blogs, feeds, executive openness etc. to improve their bad standing at the time. The bad standing Altria has for being a virtual front company to Philip Morris and John Middleton is not something thats going away so they don't tend to be overactive in battles for new media.
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