Media Culpa – Page 111 – Two Swedish Eyes on Media and Public Relations

IKEA in PR gaffe over sponsored links

The Swedish furniture giant IKEA is in a bit of a trouble in Norway. IKEA had bought sponsored links for “Stressless”, which is a registered trademark for sofas and armchairs owned by the competitor Ekornes. On a search for Stressless on Google, a link to IKEA came up on top, which of course upset Ekornes. IKEA pulled the ads and apologised to the competitor.

When the Norwegian news site E24 asks the Communications Manager of IKEA Norway if they had bought links to other brands owned by competitors, he hasn’t got the facts straight and handles the crisis situation very poorly.

– No, I am not aware of any, he says. But E24 does a few searches and finds that IKEA has also bought links for “Tripp Trapp”, a brand owned by Stokke.

Now, do you know if someone is mooching off your brand?

[Via Börje.]

Tags: Ikea, advertising, Norge, reklam, Ikea. Ping.

Mainstream media blogs are absent on top lists

Via BetaAlfa I found this interview with Fredrik Virtanen, journalist, tv-show host and blogger. He calls himself, I guess a bit tounge-in-cheek, “the Blogfather of Sweden”. Well, he can call himself whatever he wants, but it made me go to the blog portal Knuff and see how well journalists who blog at MSM sites are really doing. And the conclusion is that they aren’t exactly at the epicenter of the Swedish blogosphere.

A few journalist blogs are very popular, like Isobel, Niklas Svensson and Gudmundson. But the blogs who are published under the umbrella of a mainstream media site are almost completely absent from the top lists. Only Linda Skugge (at #30 of the most linked blogs and at #50 using Knuff’s own ranking system) and Helle Klein (#49 of most linked blogs).
Nerikes Allehanda is also on the list, but it doesn’t count since the URL is for its main site and not their blogs which it is supposed to.

Peronally, there is only one blog in that category that I make sure to read everyday, and that is Martin Jönsson’s blog at Svenska Dagbladet. He is on top of things, his comments add value to the stories and he is generous in crediting other bloggers.

Tags: media, journalism, bloggar, Knuff. Ping.

Lufthansa to sponsor Washington Post’s blog ad network

In January, Washington Post invited local D.C. bloggers to participate in a blog advertising network where the Post would share revenues with bloggers from ads sold by the paper’s sales staff. Now Mediapost reports that Lufthansa has signed up as a sponsor of the travel category and Lufthansa’s ads will run on all 100 travel blogs in the network. This makes the airline the first advertiser to sponsor an entire vertical category.

Swedish companies the most trusted in the world

The last few days, Swedish media have been reporting about brand consultant Simon Anholt who talked at a seminar in Stockholm this week. Mr Anholt called Sweden “a Switzerland with sex appeal” already three months ago. And it turns out you can be both sexy and trustworthy. Edelman, one of the world’s largest PR agencies, have just published the 2007 Edelman Trust Barometer and it contains a number of interesting findings. The survey revealed that “companies headquartered in Sweden and Canada are the most trusted globally; Brazilian, Mexican and Russian companies are the least trusted.”

We can also see that for the third straight year, American brands operating in Europe continue to receive a trust discount. For example, McDonald’s is trusted by 60% of respondents in the United States and by only 26% across the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

Furthermore, according to the survey “A person like me” is the most trusted spokesperson across the European Union, North America, and Latin America. In Asia, it is second to physicians. This underlines the importance for businesses to manage relations with channels where “persons like me” meet, like blogs and community sites. And with physicians…

Tags: Sweden, PR, pr, Sverige. Ping.

Carl Bildt’s blog a success

In my latest Swedish blog survey (pdf), the favourite type of blog among male readers was blogs about politics and society (69.9% like to read about this topic). So it is not surpising that Carl Bildt, Sweden’s Foreign Minister, has had a lot of visitors to his blog. During the last two weeks he claims to have had 100,000 visitors , a number few other Swedish blogs can match, if any.

And speaking of politicians who blog, this comparison between the websites of Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton is quite interesting. Obama’s site is the only one that is equipped with connections to Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. Something for Bildt to consider?