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First green shoots of New PR innovation


Stuart Bruce bashfully adds his praise to a host of others for the Nokia N70 N90 "blog relations" approach.

Basically Nokia has done two things to woo bloggers:

1. Given a few choice blog scribes an N70 N90 of their own to test…
2. Set up its own blog that aggregates reviews of the product – regardless of whether they are good or bad…

How refreshing. And clever.

It’s all very cluetrain-like for marketers to admit that they won’t be able to control the messages so they may as well join in the conversation themselves in an open way.

As you can see from Stuart Bruce’s post, this approach is also devilishly clever as people who write blogs are often going to be the sort of techno-obsessives who are going to want a phone that’s a slightly more powerful computer than than the last one they had sitting on their desk-top.

For instance, Neville Hobson, the mighty PR Euro-blogger, has bought one and is also very excited indeed (see here).

Mr Bruce has called Andy Abramsom, of Communicano a genius for coming up with this approach That may be over-egging it, but in terms of evolving strategies for connected media its a brilliant breakthrough, that’s for sure.

Expect more campaigns like this in 2006.

Antony Mayfield

3 responses to “First green shoots of New PR innovation”

  1. Stephen Davies Avatar
    Stephen Davies

    Agreed. It is indeed a good breakthrough. In fact some bloggers are taking it a step further and are actually video blogging with the N90. Loic Le Meur being one of them.
    http://www.loiclemeur.com/france/videoblogs/index.html

    I can’t help wonder though – will only tech products be used in blogging campaigns?

    **Side note** Neville bought the N70 model, as opposed to the N90 blog campaign :)

  2. Antony Mayfield Avatar
    Antony Mayfield

    Eventually, as the saying goes, all cconsumer campaigns will be this way. For now, there are certain audiences where “blog relations” is a priority because you have a lot of your target audience reading and writing them. Technology devices is one, for sure. Video games is another “here and now” category where they matter a lot.

    To see where campaigns like this are going to be immediately useful you need to look at the online communities that are talking about a market or subject.

    For instance, there’s a big “foodie” community out there. If you’re looking at launching a new, serious cook book, or a online specialist cookshop, you’d do well to create content and opportunities for conversation there.

    Also cult TV shows tend to attract dedicated scribes and debaters on blogs and boards. It would be worth thinking about tools.

    They are just two, top-of-me-head examples, but you get my drift, I hope.

    Thanks for the comment, Stephen – and the link and the correction.

  3. Mary Schmidt Avatar
    Mary Schmidt

    This sort of “new thinking” applies all across the board – consumer as well as B2B. People buy from people, not logos. And, we’ve all become very cynical (immune to) the usual marketing fluff speak.

    Personally I love that communications are becoming so much more open and people are willing to be more “out there.” Makes it exponentially more interesting for me to do marketing, for both me and my clients. I don’t have to put the “corporate drone” filter on my thinking.

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