Blogo Ad, The From New York Times - 12/12/2004 (387 words) By SETH STEVENSON
Blogs are known for their brutal honesty, independence of spirit and genuine emotional conviction. None of these attributes play much of a role in corporate advertising, of course, but they are values that corporate advertisers strive to imitate -- and, where possible, co-opt. So it wasn't all that shocking when Nike launched a blog this June. As a brand, Nike is youthful and forward-looking, and blogs are a great way to reach the young, hip and carefully shod -- those who bristle when products get pitched at them but enjoy discovering cool new things on their own. Nike's blogo ad, titled ''Art of Speed,'' ran for 20 days, posting short films, speed-related trivia, inspirational athlete stories and so forth. So far so good, until October saw a blog launched by . . . General Motors. Not your father's Oldsmobile, indeed. Why would an earnest corporate dinosaur like G.M. get involved with an upstart medium like the blog? ''It's a different attitude from our corporate Web site,'' says Michael Wiley, G.M.'s director of new media and the man behind its blog operation. ''It's more grass roots.'' The G.M. blog, which Wiley describes as a cautious experiment, focuses on the 50th anniversary of the G.M. small-block V-8 engine -- a touchstone for hot-rod enthusiasts. Entries feature some legendary small-block-powered sports cars of the past and are sprinkled with posts from G.M. engineers touting horsepower and torque levels. Readers chime in with their own small-block stories and post questions on the future of small-block technology. It's clearly blogging by car geeks, for car geeks. But it turns out that geek to geek, informal and honest, is a pretty good model for the blogo ad. From a marketing perspective, blogs make perfect sense. They are cheap to produce, immersive and interactive. It's easy to measure their readership and response rates. For small companies, blogs are a quick and dirty promotional tool that cuts out the middleman; for big companies, blogs are a tool of humanization -- an informal, chatty, down-to-earth voice amid the din of bland corporate-speak. ''It's a dream come true,'' says Bob Cargill, senior creative director for Yellowfin Direct Marketing. ''You can embed yourself smack-dab in the middle of your customers, form an ongoing relationship with them and hear exactly what they think of your brand.''
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
Date: 12/12/2004
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