My experience with digital PR began on the first week that I joined, first I was asked to sign confidentiality or a non-disclosure agreement, doing so prevents me (legally) from disclosing what I have seen, heard and done in FH. While it ensures security for the agency and the client, it is not ideally what I would want as it prevents me from disclosing what I have really been up to in the agency. However I was told that whatever was published in the media has already become secure and was ok for me to talk about.
So far I have been to two major events for Motorola, which I will talk about in my next post. The third event I attended to was something that I truly appreciated as it was the result of my efforts coming together after 2 months work, and it was a proud night for me. It was an event for MAS (Malaysian Airline System).
Let me tell you from the start, it all began in my fist week in the office when they assigned me to a new client with new demands, basically new territory for me, the agency and for PR in general. While I am not at liberty to fully discuss what we do for them but the basic objective is to do digital monitoring and brand recovery using digital media.
Using digital media we first research to find ideal bloggers that match MAS’ criteria, I was then asked to create a detailed list of bloggers that would be ideal for events that MAS had in mind. Once the list was created we then a chose a certain number of bloggers and began contacting them, my team was extremely busy with other clients so I was trusted with this task, which is the foundation of relationship building with each blogger. We also had to understand that the bloggers have their own friendship groups within the bloggers community, so it would not be right to invite one or speak to one without including another. There are also many more details that we had to watch out for, so I was asked to create a bloggers bible, where I would find out everything MAS needed to know about the bloggers through extensive research and contacts.
Soon the journey of relationship building began. We meet 8 bloggers, some in groups and some individually, we explained that we wanted their honest opinion about MAS and wanted this to be a trusted relationship. The bloggers showed their appreciation in the interest we took in them and how we didn’t simply try to convince them of how great MAS is. We in return accepted positive and negative comments with open arms and made sure they were noted back to MAS Communications Department. I must note here that I really respect MAS for its honest attempts in getting in touch with people and wanting to hear their side of the story rather then pushing for theirs, this is GOOD PRACTICE and its times like this that makes me proud to be in the industry.
Moving on, the event that was held last Saturday night may seem like any other media event where we give journalists and media door gifts, present them with a story about a product or service and they write an article on the client. No Bloggers night was far from this. The primary reason for bloggers and journalist being different is that bloggers are individual people, with opinions, choices and readers that respect them for their creativity, objectivity and individuality and it has been evident from past experience, once the readers feel that the blogger has now been bought over by a company or no longer holds original critical thoughts, the blogger immediately loses creditability and many of its readers. Furthermore they are not obliged to write because their editor told them to do so or how they must write, they have freedom to choose what angle and with what tone they write.
The Bloggers CNY dinner with MAS was a fantastic event and I got the chance to meet Malaysia’s top 25 blogger which was an honour for me. To find out more about the details of the event please to Redmummy’s blog and Rojaks, you can see pictures of my colleagues, MAS people and me
http://redmummy.com/2009/01/18/cny-dinner-wt-malaysia-airlines/#comments
http://rojaks.blogspot.com/2009/01/lou-sang-with-mas.html
The bloggers were all wonderful people with great sense of humour and really a great bunch of people to have dinner with. Best of all I was treated with respect and some of the bloggers emailed me back to thank me as I had been in touch with them. Getting this and a thumbs up from MAS made all the late nights and hard work worth it, to be recognised for your hard work is really what makes it worth it, perhaps more so then the check at the end of the month. We will be meeting up with bloggers again for the real events, the dinner was just so everybody gets to know each other, the big juicy stuff is yet to come :)
Here is a group photo of the bloggers.If anybody else is doing anything to do with digital PR then please let us know, it’s a whole new world of PR and what I have written here is merely a glimpse of it, I think its great if we share our experience on this and help each other out. I would also like to know if anybody has any questions regarding ethics of digital PR or any tips to help.
Happy Chinese New Year everybody and enjoy the holidays
Cheers
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