Pierce Mattie Public Relations New York

Bloggers have become a challenge and an opportunity for the advertising industry. Their spontaneous, unedited, sometimes emotional "first takes" on new products are substantially impacting business, according to Pete Blackshaw, chief marketing officer of Nielsen BuzzMetrics, a 100-person division which monitors the blogosphere. He calls bloggers "a kind of Fifth Estate or journalism."

Blackshaw says bloggers are everywhere, using laptops, video cameras, and digital recorders to publish their comments, reactions, and criticisms. Nowhere was this more evident than earlier this month when the Detroit Auto Show, the Consumer Electronics Show, and MacWorld were vying for attention.

Apple's iPhone was the clear winner, Blackshaw said. It was mentioned by more blogs than President Bush and McDonald's for 10 days. Wikipedia had an iPhone entry within minutes of Steve Jobs' announcement of the product, and YouTube had more iPhone-related clips than it did for Gucci or the Pope.

"Bloggers have become the ultimate news aggregators," Blackshaw said. Major media reporters monitor blogs for tips as well as informed perspective on product features. A swarm of bloggers posting about new products, often positively, ends up in search engines. "That comes back as search results when consumers do research; the bloggers enthusiasm turns into advertising," Blackshaw said.

Don't waste money on a Super Bowl ad unless you have these other pieces of the mix in place. You can't just buy media in a vacuum, Blackshaw said. "You have to think about how others pieces of the marketing mix reinforce, amplify and ultimately drive more return on that investment." MarketWatch

Pierce Mattie Public Relation has been blogging since late 2001. We've paid our "dues," made some mistakes, which is to be expected with any new "technology." Pioneers often pave the way forward without a clear road-map ahead, mapping as they go, we are excited to be partnered with such pioneers. What is exciting are the many success stories we've been apart of. It's been invigorating to work so closely with professional blogging networks and citizen journalists, even to the point where in 2006 we started to treat bloggers with the same respect as Tv producers and magazine editors. This year we are ramping up our education program to give citizen journalists a mini crash course in journalism to help bring the quality of blogging and the way bloggers report up to a higher standard.

We encourage you to keep blogging or contact us to see how we can help you integrate a blogging platform into your publicity (MARCOM) budget this year.