Once Bitten, Sony Learns the Power of Authentic Blogging

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:

"Now, what we've learned, perhaps the hard way, is that a blog like this is really about you and the things you want to hear, share and discuss with us."

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.