Blogs are important for PR people

July 29, 2003

I gotta rant about blogs today. I am astounded at the resistance to change exhibited by several posters who refuse to accept the fact that blogs are important for PR people to incorporate into their media campaigns. You gotta get over yourselves! Their posts remind me of a Bette Midler standup routine called Why bother?

It doesn't matter if you like blogs. It doesn't matter if you agree with the opinions of the people who write them. What matters is that there are now more than 2 million blogs worldwide according to blogcount.com. And some of those have become quite influential - meaning that journalists read them and write about what is in them. Not all blogs are rantings or diaries. For PR people, the ones that count are business, media and marketing blogs, particularly those like Up2Speed and Boing Boing which digest the contest of other blogs and traditional media worldwide and comment on the content.

Bloggers delight in scooping traditional media outlets with news, rumors and opinions. That's one place where PR opportunity can be. There are a growing number of influential blogs that have a huge number of readers (For example Boing Boing has in excess of 350,000 unique readers per month) and offer some opportunities in terms of promoting your client's ideas or products.

One case that illustrates the wrong way to approach bloggers is the ill-fated recent PR campaign of Dr. Pepper/Seven Up who launched a blog called "Pasteurize This" which follows the adventures of a fictitious cow to promote its flavored milk drink, "Raging Cow". The PR firm, Richards Interactive, flew half a dozen well-read 18 to 24 year-old bloggers and their parents to an all-expenses-paid tasting event. The bloggers were given samples of the drink, T-shirts, hats and Amazon.com gift certificates, then sent them home to start pumping Raging Cow to their friends on the Web ˜ without disclosing that the company had put them up to it.

Some of the bloggers wrote about Dr. Pepper's attempt and called it a scam. Word flew around the globe and pretty soon bloggers were calling for a product boycott. A message on the British site bloggerheads.com www.bloggerheads.com raged, "The people who make the cash decisions need to know that charging into our arena expecting it all for nothing is a very bad idea. If people want to reach us, they need to know that it's going to be on our terms, and that we will not be insulted by offers of cheap freebies."

Max Valiquette, president of the Toronto marketing firm Youthography, told the Globe & Mail "The inherent problem is that we're living in such an unbelievably media-savvy age where young people are so incredibly media-literate that eventually they find out," if anyone tries to deceive them. Dr. Pepper's real problem, he maintained, is that they were not up front about their intentions.

Frankly, I think the wrong marketers handled the project because they didn't understand the online non-affiliated journalist (NAJ) atmosphere. The same campaign in the hands of more savvy marketers might have been regarded as campy and funny instead of missing the mark. It's time to stop bitching about blogging. It's here and we need to deal with it, not whine about how hard it is to learn one more thing.

JOURNALIST'S REQUEST: I'm writing a business article about how managers can argue successfully with a senior manager they report to and win the argument because they presented their case well. I'd like to hear from you if you accomplish this. Please email: writer53978@yahoo.com

What we need now is YOUR opinion. Jump in.

Til Thursday,
B.L. Ochman, President
http://www.whatsnextonline.com/

Source: Marketing Wonk I-PR Discussion List
http://www.marketingwonk.com/lists/ipr/

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