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Re: Connectory- a Blogger Relations Campaign with Whitepages.com

David Berkowitz — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:04:04 -0000

Thanks for your insights here, and also the kind remarks mid-way through.

I'll admit I was puzzled too at times, as you could undoubtedly tell from my haphazard coverage, starting with the review of the blog outreach setup, then shifting to live event coverage of Lunch 2.0 and then WhitePages updates, and then the postmortem where I admitted I wasn't sure why the day itself went as it did.

I was one of few bloggers there too, for the pitch at least. It did help get a company that wasn't on my radar at all at the very least in my field of familiarity, and this may pay off for them. But there are clearly other ways it could have been done, as you point out well here.

I'm happy to continue the conversation more anytime.

Re: Connectory- a Blogger Relations Campaign with Whitepages.com

Barry Hurd — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:33:52 -0000

Edelman seems to have a knack for being “transparent” only in certain regards. It changes the way a social group works when it is contaminated by paid elements.

Imagine that ten people were wearing “I was paid $2k to be here” on a t-shirt at the event. When compensation comes into the mix from a PR company, it means a free / friendly / social event is attempting to be manipulated by a PR firm.

Not having been there- I am sure that the conversation was good on other points, Mike and the items being talked about are good discussion items. I’m sure his presence drew in a bigger crowd.

I am very interested why Edelman decided to spend money flying out celebrity bloggers, when they could have promoted the event here and drawn a much bigger crowd (including many local celebrity bloggers) who live in the Puget Sound area. Even if you just had an intern call around and invite the top 100 industry relevant bloggers here… it would have been attended by a bunch who didn’t know it was happening.

Re: Connectory- a Blogger Relations Campaign with Whitepages.com

Dave Schappell — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:10:29 -0000

Funny, but I didn't think of the event as being a PR-stage at all, so on that front, they probably won in a pretty big way. Having the celebrity effect (Mike Arrington) probably helped pull the larger crowd, but the topic was timely, and the discussion as a lot more lively than you get at most panel events, probably because so many of the folks in the crowd knew several people in the room.

Now that I know that there were several paid bloggers in the room, it makes me wonder a little, but really, I don't have a major problem with it -- at the end of the day, their coverage has to be based on the quality of the product and the perceived impact on customers.

Onward...