Blogs and Brands

Pete Blackshaw of Intelliseek has a letter in the 22 November 2004 Ad Age that discusses the impact of blogs on conventional branding:

Far beyond their role in various forms of journalism, blogs are empowering real consumers to offer real-time narratives about issues and themes that touch their lives-narratives often grounded in real, meaningful experiences with branded products and services. Consider the tens of thousands of blog entries on LiveJournal by women and teens talking about buying their first car. Did somebody say "who needs a focus group?"

And deep consumer insights are just the beginning. The 'archiving' of consumer opinion on blogs is having a major, unmistakable 'advertising effect', and most marketers and PR professionals are dangerously oblivious to it. Blogs represent one of the fastest-growing sources of indexed content on search engines-a growing percentage of which now includes high-impact 'reason to believe' photos, video and audio.

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