The NMA this week quotes some interesting case studies about how brands have been experimenting with blog-based marketing in the US.

Levi’s, Nokia, Audi and Budget Car Rentals all ran campaigns on blogs last year, of which Budget’s was probably the most fun, rejuvenating the slightly tired format of the online treasure hunt by posting daily video clues on a blog, linked to stickers placed around US cities (nudged on by a tempting prize of $160,000). Budget sensibly hired BL Ochman to create the campaign, which was run exclusively through bloggers and blogs.

Blogvertising looks like it can offer significant value to brands - if they get it right. Budget’s low-cost campaign drove 20,000 unique visitors an hour to their blog, with several thousand registering to play. The campaign was also in the upper quartile in terms of click-throughs. Audi used just 0.5% of its advertising budget on blog ads, which drove 29% of traffic to its site.

With advertising on bulletin boards and chat rooms generally spurned, it may be hard for marketers and advertisers to get their heads around just how different blogs can be. Every decent branding book worth its salt is clearly tells businesses to stop pushing their messages out and to start pulling their consumers in. Blogging is going to play a huge role in this. As ever, the trick will be getting it right - a challenge for the innovators, but tough in an industry that’s long had the monopoly of owning the message.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 7th, 2006 at 6:12 am and is filed under Advertising, Business blogging, Blogging, Market Sentinel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.