Prime Minister Stephen Harper has joined Facebook.

Here’s an example of an excellent viral marketing / social media campaign.

More than 25 million people have watched Utah-based Blendtec’s series of ‘Will It Blend?’ videos on YouTube.

To see all the videos, check them out here on YouTube or on the company’s Will it Blend? site.

There’s also the Will It Blend? Blog.

Since debuting in November, the videos have regularly been among the most popular on YouTube, and Blendtec’s sales have quadrupled.

Blendtec’s Total Blender, the one used in the videos, sells for US$400 and the Connoisseur model sells for US$825.

You’d have to do a lot of blending (basically every meal or at least daily) to pay that much for a blender, but the low-cost campaign is definitely very cool and very creative.  No doubt, there are many people out there that will buy the blender just because of the videos. 

Bill Gates was speaking this morning at the National Arts Centre about the coming decade of change in the world’s ongoing digital revolution.

It was a very good presentation, and the speech was very well received.  What impressed me as well was that he said he’d speak for 20 minutes, and then he did.

Twenty minutes on the future of technology and its impact on our lives.

The lesson for me?  If that only took 20 minutes, then odds are good the longest any speech should be, ever, is 20 minutes.

The event started on time, ended early, and Mr. Gates is now the proud recipient of an Ottawa Senators jersey to boot.

Welcome to Ottawa, Mr. Gates — please come back soon.

Last time I was “franked”, it was for “squiring” a client around town or something along those lines.

This time it was for blogging.  Well… not so much for blogging as for providing information to bloggers on behalf of clients – exactly the same way, as a PR professional (or flack), I provide information (press releases, backgrounders, story ideas/tips, etc.) to main stream media or ‘MSM’ as referred to in the Frank article.

I’m a subscriber to eFrank, but I don’t read it religiously.  Both times I was “franked”, someone had to tell me about it.  Maybe there have been other times that I’m not aware of?  Doubt it though.

Being slagged a little by a “magazine” that doesn’t put bylines on its articles by no means bothers me — sometimes the articles are funny when they don’t go too far over the line. Other times I feel a little dirty (like after leaving a strip club) after reading Frank.

Anyway, I saw the article (which ran a couple of weeks ago) as an opportunity for another post on blogger relations.  I did my last post on this topic after reading Ted Demopoulos’ post on Blogging for Business titled How to Pitch a Blogger.

I’m in public relations (which of course involves a great deal of media relations) and the firm I work for, Thornley Fallis, for more than a year now has been paying a lot of attention to social media (blogging, podcasting, etc.)

With more than 60 million blogs worldwide, how can we afford not to pay attention?

Thornley Fallis represents a few defence industry clients and I manage the accounts.

As part of ongoing public/media relations for these clients, 8 or 9 months ago, I came across The Torch, a blog focused on the Canadian military.  I made contact to introduce myself, identify the relevant clients I represent, ask about their interests and offer to provide information that I think may be of interest to them.  The same way I would if the Globe and Mail or CTV assigned a new reporter to the defence beat. 

Here’s a post Joe Thornley did around the time I first contacted The Torch and here’s a post on Blue Blogging Soapbox, which has an author or authors in common with The Torch, about what they learned about Thornley Fallis after checking us out when I contacted them.

Back to the Frank article, “Blogshite: The Torch” (it quotes Joe’s post, so whoever wrote it must be a fan of Pro PR).  The article suggests that I and Thornley Fallis have some privileged relationship with the authors of The Torch, that they post whatever I send them about my clients and that they attack any mainstream media (listing: Daniel Leblanc, Globe and Mail; David Akin, CTV; Mike Blanchfield & David Pugliese, Ottawa Citizen) that write less than favourable articles about my clients and their products.  None of this is true in anyway whatsoever.

The funny thing is, I in fact have less of a “relationship” with anyone at The Torch than with the journalists mentioned above.  I’ve never met or even spoken to any of The Torch authors on the phone.  Email only.

On the other hand…

I had coffee with Daniel Leblanc a few weeks ago, when he started covering defence again for the Globe.

I’ve been emailing and talking on the phone with David Pugliese for likely 4 years now and I worked with his brother for 3 years or so when I was in government.  I still have lunch with him periodically.

I read David Akin’s blog daily, we exchange emails from time to time, we’ve spoken on the phone and I’ve set-up interviews with him for clients.

Yes, The Torch has posted some stuff that I have sent them.  I’ve also sent them stuff that they haven’t posted.  The same way as main stream media sometimes write stories from releases I send them or do interviews that I pitch them, and other times they don’t.

As the blogosphere and social media continues to grow, I think I and my colleagues at Thornley Fallis are taking the right approach on behalf of our clients.

As Ted Demopoulos suggests in his post How to Pitch a Blogger: “Address us by name. Make it clear you’ve read our blog. Be on friggin’ target!”

As I said in my post, after reading Ted’s: “Really not much different that pitching a ‘traditional’ journalist.  Do some research to figure out their ‘beat’/area(s) of interest and personalize the contact.”

Some media outlets (e.g. CTV, Toronto Star) and some journalists (e.g. David Akin, Paul Wells) are embracing social media, others aren’t.  It will be interesting to watch how all this evolves and be part of it.

Thank you Frank magazine for providing the inspiration for this post.

Today, a few colleagues and I at Thornley Fallis (LeeEllen, Lauren & Joe) participated in a Ragan Communications Webinar Podcasting 101 presented by prominent blogger and podcaster Shel Holtz.

Now, I already know (I would say anyway) more than the average person about podcasting.  Current colleague Terry Fallis and former colleague David Jones have had a podcast for almost a year now.  I listen to it and For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report semi-regularly.

I’ve also participated in a lot of webinars on communications and public relations over the years.  Many of which I didn’t find that useful, didn’t hold my attention/interest and I ended up leaving early.

I have to say that I found Shel’s presentation really good.  For me, it started off a little slow, talking about RSS, only because I’m quite familiar with RSS (it would have been fine for people not that familiar with it).

But then the presentation really got interesting and informative — I took away quite a bit that I hope will be of future use in advising clients.

Shel talked about:

• How to strategize a business podcast
• The tools of podcasting, from recording to hosting
• Integration of your podcast with other online content
• How to build a community of listeners
• How to promote and create a successful podcast

Definitely worth the $329 registration fee.

Thanks for the presentation today Shel.

David Akin tipped me to this…

The Prime Minister’s Office has been putting up video of Stephen Harper speeches on YouTube for about a month now.

From David’s post:

“The whiz kids at the The Prime Minister’s Office are proving once again that – gulp — they don’t need us mainstream media types!”

For this year’s Super Bowl, Doritos, Chevrolet, CBS, and the National Football League have invited consumers to create their ads.  The average 30-second ad is likely to cost up to US$26-million.

In this National Post article published on January 17, 2007, Scott Deveau reports:

CBS is offering 15-seconds of network time for an inspiring message from one of its viewers. The submissions were uploaded on to a YouTube site and CBS Web sites, before the broadcaster selected one to be aired on Feb. 4 during the Super Bowl.

Chevrolet has honed in on its target demographic, calling on college students to pitch an ad complete with story board and script that will be selected and produced by the automaker.

The NFL will produce its ad after the winner is selected by a combination of company input and online voting after open auditions were held across the United States.

Company officials for Doritos narrowed a field of more than 1,000 pre-produced, 30-second spots to five last week. The winner will be determined this Friday by online voting for the finalists on the contests Yahoo! Web site.

Last week Edelman released “A Corporate Guide to the Blogosphere: The New Model of Peer to Peer Communications”.

Edelman says, “the paper is designed to help clients who operate across multiple regions understand how the dynamics of blogging, as well as blogger demographics and behavior vary from country to country.”

Number of mentions of Canada, where Edelman has two offices: ZERO.

Mitch Joel of Twist Image made the same observation.

I’ve been reading Ted Demopoulos’ Blogging for Business for quite a while now.

I find his posts insightful and concise.

This one offers some simple and good advice on how to pitch a blogger.

Really not much different that pitching a ‘traditional’ journalist.  Do some research to figure out their ‘beat’/area(s) of interest and personalize the contact.

A report in The Gazette today by Sarah Schmidt says “Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger wants to unseat the phenomenally successful free online encyclopedia boasting 1.58 million English entries as the go-to source for information with his new wiki project, Citizendium.”

Citizendium will still be open source, but all postings will go through expert editors and anonymous contributions will not be allowed.

“There is definitely a need for an alternative free source of reliable articles,” Sanger said.  “The main thing from the user’s point of view that Wikipedia is lacking is reliability. A lot of articles are really good, but there’s always a question in the back of my mind, ‘Can I rely on it?’”