Interesting piece on Sony PlayStation in PR Week and how the brand, after stuffing up its first foray into the blogosphere in 2006, is back blogging, albeit in a manner more transparent and authentic than its initial effort.
Two years ago, Sony - with the help of its promotional agency Zipatoni - created a fake blog (aka 'flog') entitled 'All I Want For Xmas is a PSP' in which a guy named Charlie apparently tried to help his friend Jeremy to score a PSP for Christmas. Anyway, Sony was sprung and as a result the brand copped a pounding.
Here's how Advertising Age reported the cock-up at the time. For a more caustic version of events, here's the Ad Rants version!
When it unveiled its new company blog, Sony's Director of Corporate Communications & Social Media, Patrick Seybold, told readers:
That was in June of last year - 12-plus months later and the blog Sony hoped would engage consumers and win back trust seems to be working, if the PR Week story is anything to go by. Indeed, a quick scan of the corporate blog shows it's certainly generating buzz, with some posts attracting 300-400+ reader comments.
PR Week reports that data collected by Google Analytics shows that visits to the PlayStation blog are "400% higher, page views are 94% higher, and new visits are 16% higher compared to video game sites of a similar size".
Advising Sony in development of the blog was PR firm, Voce Communications.
Click here for Voce's blog.
