Don’t Be The Insurance Salesman At The Party – Doing It Right
October 3, 2008 – 10:40 am | by Daryl TaySo I’m not trying to re-tell you why this analogy works, but an instance locally (ie back home in Singapore), that I feel it was done well.
The salesman at a party analogy is used a lot in blogger outreach and social media. The idea is if you’re at a party and everyone’s talking about the latest episode of Lost (and why wouldn’t they, it’s awesome), then if you’re the salesperson who jumps in and starts giving your insurance pitch, people generally get turned off.
Today I saw a Plurk from Nadnut telling us about Samsung’s Social Media Night and of course, being a fan of how blogger outreach is developing, I had to check it out.
I have to say, I am flat out impressed by what I saw. A decent venue, engagement, no “in your face” stuff, a contest that was fun and not overly campy, and what I feel is most important: generating media (and by that I mean real world media) out of something like this.
Photos the bloggers took remain on the Samsung wall. (Picture from Nadnut.com)
So the man behind this is Daniel from Samsung, who came from Social Media Breakfast | Singapore 2, but I didn’t get to talk to until Social Media Breakfast | Singapore 3, which in itself says a lot about not being pushy. When you consider the time it was from SMB2 (May) till the first Samsung Social Media Night and the effort put in to attend two SMBs (on Saturdays, no less), I think it’s safe to say they did their homework, worked on those relationships, and reached out properly.
I’m going to put it right out there: I don’t own anything from Samsung, and I don’t know if I ever will, but the fact is by reaching out to bloggers (and make no mistake, they are influencers), there are a few positive effects for the company, delivered through the readers of their blogs.
At the very least, you’re spreading the word about your new product launch that they might otherwise not read (don’t forget, we’re not reading the newspapers).
Even if they aren’t a current consumer of your product (like me), you still gain mindshare.
Even if they don’t necessarily buy your product, they can certainly talk about it to someone else who might be looking for, oh, I don’t know, a new phone.
One thing I also need to bring up, is that when I last talked to Daniel in August, he told me he was doing all this independently, without an agency. I don’t know if that’s still true, but if so, it says a lot about the state of agency work back home.
And on that note, you may have noticed that this blog post starts with “doing it right”, rest assured I have a “doing it wrong” case study (from an agency) to share. I’m just in the process of deciding whether or not to reveal names.
In related news: Social Media Breakfast | Singapore 4 is happening tomorrow morning. Are you missing an opportunity to meet people interested in your brand?
Tags: are bloggers influencers, blogger outreach, brand mindshare, doing blogger relations right, gen y not reading newspapers, insurance sales man at the party, samsung social media night, social media breakfast singapore, talking about your product, word of mouth, young upstarts
3 Responses to “Don’t Be The Insurance Salesman At The Party – Doing It Right”
By Harro! on Oct 4, 2008 | Reply
Neat post. The bit I question is “bloggers are influencers”.
It might work for a podfire launch because of the natural self-interest that bloggers have with videocasting.
Reality is that 20 bloggers typically reach out to about 100 people. And how much of that would be a serious demographic? How much would I pay for that? Food & drinks? Or more?
By Daryl Tay on Oct 4, 2008 | Reply
Hi Harro, thanks for dropping by. I feel 20 bloggers could reach a little more than that, but back to your point, the important thing is that they are reaching out to people who are more inclined to sit up and take notice and are primed to receive your message.
Sure it could cost $20, $30, $40 to pay for a blogger, but the effects are a little harder to track than that.
For example, I didn’t even attend the first HP mini event, but I read about it and blogged about it, everytime someone mentions they want a “portable” PC I say “what about the HP mini?”.
I personally feel that is a result I’d prefer to have compared to paying a lower per person cost to a newspaper with say, 300,000 circulation, but most of them don’t notice the ad, don’t talk about it, and aren’t engaged with your product/brand at all.
That of course doesn’t mean the answer to everything is blogging and/or blogger outreach, but for the proper product with proper research, I think it can definitely be beneficial.