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Shopablogic

Sober IT truths from the island-state

by Suzanna Low, Singapore

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Blogs going commercial

Apr 28, 2008 23:16

I attended a blog network event hosted by Ogilvy 360º Digital Influence at the Ogilvy building this evening. It was called the Blog Open Room.

Various Ogilvy clients like Nokia, BMW and Intel, its partners as well as well-known bloggers were invited. Obviously, I was invited as a client but I also presented myself as a blogger.

The session kicked off with John Bell, MD of Ogilvy 360º Digital Influence, in an opening speech. However, I was wondering why his presentation seemed to be speaking to the bloggers more than the marketers. Afterall, three quarters of the guests were either Ogilvy clients or marketing partners. After the presentation, guests were invited to mingle and interact with each other and, being a blog event, blogs were the main topic of conversation.

I spoke to various people and found that blogs have become not just the latest "in" marketing tool for advertisers, but also a form of communication within companies. It was no surprise when I heard that the CEO of Hotel InterContinental has his own corporate blog so to create a bond and closer ties with his staff. Obvously, it's an internal blog.

Social Media Marketing was also the key topic which marketers and advertisers now feel plays a crucial part in marketing on top of the usual print and TV commercials. As the ROI (return on investment) numbers are more upfront, marketers are putting more of their advertising budget into online advertising and are also willing to explore the use of Social Media to spread the word around for their products or campaigns.

Having been in the Internet business for more than a decade, I really wondered at what took marketers so long to open their eyes to online media marketing. Search, social networking and Adbanners have been around way before Facebook. But I guess in a way we, as Internet media companies, should thank Facebook as it woke up all the sleeping giants with its social-networking platform. Blog monetization was also touched upon and it's no surprise that well-known bloggers around the world get paid to host ads on their blogs.

I'm glad I attended this event even though it turned out to be more of a networking session. Still, it was good to know that big advertising companies like Ogilvy are making efforts to advice and educate their clients on the benefit and power of Web 2.0.

Guests of Ogilvy Blog Open Room.

John Bell presenting.

Check out more photos taken from the Open Room

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About Suzanna Low

Suzanna Low has more than a decade of hands-on in interactive and graphics design, e-commerce and online marketing. In fact, true to the Singapore culture, she's a diehard shopaholic and fancies herself a pioneering e-retailer who learned the painful way how to set up store back when ecommerce emerged on the Internet landscape. Low also claims to speak feline language and sometimes seeks approval for her blog topics with her two house cats.