Today I’m glad I’m not based in Kentucky, because then I would be walking on very thin ice (because of our blawg). The Kentucky Attorney’s Advertising Commission has decided that each blog post is an ad, which in the Kentucky lawyers’ code requires a “A filing fee of $50.00 for each advertisement” and for every change in the advertisement. How ironic that the blawg who started it all is Ben Cowgill’s Legal Ethics Blog. Hopefully Ben will be able to continue with his blog eventually.
Year: 2005
Swedish corporates are pitching bloggers
Having spent three weeks in my summer house in July, I had to wade through hundreds of emails when I returned back to civilization. One of them was from one of largest companies in Sweden, I will spare you which one because I am a friend of their head of PR. I believe it is the first time I have been approached by the communications department of a large Swedish company in my role as a blogger. I’m glad that public relations professionals are aware that bloggers are influential and potentially a target for PR pitches. But when it is performed in such a clueless way, I’m baffled.
First of all, the PR person hasn’t read my blog. If she had, she would know that I never ever write about stuff from her company’s industry. Is it really so hard to figure out that I blog about PR and media? It is in the headline. I do not blog about your products.
Second, if you are in the process of sending out a mass mailing, please make sure that I don’t feel like I’m on the receiving end of a spam attack. The email I got had obviously been forwarded at least once, so it had the “>” sign before every line, and the second half of the first sentence had apparently been edited, because it had a different color than all the other lines, at least in my email program. Translated:
> Hello,
>
> You receive this email because you are one of the most frequently read and
noticed blogs in Sweden.
>
> We wonder if you are interested in subscribing to press releases from XYZ?
Now, I am not trying to be mean, rather show that if you are pitching bloggers, you need even more finesse and fingerspitzgefühl than if you are pitching journalists. Not the other way around because bloggers will tell everyone that you’re making a mistake. Besides, it would have been smarter to let people sign up to press release subscriptions via the online press room or via RSS, but of course you can’t.
Metro abandons Swedish correction style
Metro, the largest daily in the world outside Japan according to themselves, have decided to launch a daily correction column. Corrections in Swedish papers are normally few and not in a fixed column, rather they are published where the original article was published. This is often explained with a worry about the paper’s credibility if corrections were given too much space. The tradition in the US and UK is quite the opposite and Metro in Sweden now welcome feedback from readers so that mistakes can be corrected in “Dagens fel” (“Today’s errors”).
Editor-in-chief, Sakari Pitkänen about the previous practice:
“It is an oldfashioned way of reasoning. It was probably ok before the internet. Today the correct information is spread on blogs, mailing lists and media watchdogs on the web. There is a risk that the reader might find the correction to a mistake everywhere but in the paper that published it. That would really undermine the credibility of the paper.”
An offer we can’t refuse
Want a helping hand to come up with a marketing stunt that doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg? How about this one from BBDO, promoting the last season of the Sopranos on HBO? [Via The Hidden Persuader.]
Bonus link: Playboy cake (worksafe).
Not just another brick in the wall
There has been quite a few articles the last few days in Swedish press about graffiti artist Banksy and his latest “work” on the Israeli wall. The photos can be hard to find on Banksy’s site, but Protein has a series of photos online here. [Via Cool Hunting.]
Update: There are more than 900 photos at Flickr tagged “Banksy”.
Blogs are mental viruses?
In an unsigned article in Expressen, the signature “Ankan” (the duck) takes pole vault athlete Patrik Kristiansson in defense after overhearing some political editor gloating over his misfortunes. Couldn’t agree more, but why blame this act of schadenfreude on blogs? The journalist writes “Reality shows and blogs are mental viruses that are morally corrupting the brains of Sweden’s intellectual elite.”
“Nej, det är dokusåporna och bloggarna som är de mentala virus som håller på att moraliskt fördärva landets intellektuella elit. De är alla smittade, deras hjärnor blir allt ruttnare, deras samveten är bara svagt tynande lågor.”
Perhaps it’s a joke, but I don’t get it. It’s a bit ridiculous to come from a tabloid that has made it into an art form to exploit reality shows.