Monthly Archives: October 2008

Product Testing for the Brave

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I signed up for Fuel My Blog a good while ago and effectively forgot about it until I received an alert from them on Friday for product reviewing.  The site is offering a new service where they build a profile database of bloggers, get a pile of product to review and then match the two (amongst other initiatives to help create more value and stickiness for your blog).  You dont get paid for the review but rather free stuff which this week ranges from

Some of the products already available to send out next week are multi-packs of delicious snack bars, a brand new range of razors, gifts, unique balloons..and many more..

Its an interesting concept and challenge for PR companies – do you turn your back on a potentially hiting a large audience in an easy to access manner or insist on the usual of interaction and “control” that helps to bring a good review through.  From the initial look the companies providing the product get a reasonable amount of control over who reviews what so it could help to minimise the risk.  The products currently on offer look like low value items which would make sense but if successful it could be an easy channel for bloggers to get increased respect as reviewers and access to product.  From a company point of view it would appear that it has been pitched at getting feedback (as positive or negative reviews dont seem to matter) and could be a pre-launch initiative to enhance their product testing.

It should be interesting to see how many snack bars are reviewed outside of food blogs.

Eoin

Store Displays Gives New Window to PR

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Grafton Street experiences rates of pedestrian traffic up to 12,000 people an hour and is a ripe audience to help communicate and support PR campaigns, once you get the formula right. A lot of PR campaign focus solely on the media and forget about the impact of direct contact and using highly visible public places to give another dimension to consumers. Last year during Repak Recycling Week we placed ‘blinged bring banks’ on Grafton Street and other key locations througout the city promoting recycling. This year we worked with BT2 and artist Robert Bradford to promote recycling by putting on an art exhibition in their front window of their stores in Grafton Street and Dundrum. He creates works or art from using recycled materials. The response from passing traffic and interest in the window display had been really positive and it is a 24 hour medium for promoting the campaign. Times and Independent ran articles on the exhibition including art review.  We also mirrored with a competition in Bebo for people to send in camera phone photos of themselves at the store window.  See below for some video coverage of the launch.