Bruise Relief in Advertising Age
Posted on 12. Jan, 2010 by Becky in Our Blog, Press
Notes from Swagapalooza
by N. Sedef Onder (excerpted)
Last week I attended the first-ever “Swagapalooza,” which was billed as an “experiment in viral media” and allegedly featured the world’s most-followed bloggers, twitterers, and digital influencers, all gathered at a nightclub in Manhattan to review new companies showcasing their products and services.
As we know, swag bags (or “goodie” bags) are often superficial aspects of an industry conference, awards banquet, benefit or other event. At Swagapalooza, far from being an afterthought, they’re the main event. Nobody in attendance was pretending this was anything more than a series of shameless, promotional plugs by entrepreneurs — all documented in real-time in a meta, self-referential style by a live Twitter-feed broadcast on a monitor immediately to the right of presenters onstage. The effect was an entertaining social-media Gong Show of sorts. Live tweets ranged from hysterical and often harsh commentary on speakers, products, and audience members… to annoyingly distracting asides — depending on your perspective.
PR’s come a long way, baby. In the New PR, the free stuff is the “pitch” or newshook. The bloggers are the new journos. But for emerging businesses presenting at the event, which included Switch2Health, Surprise Industries and Bruise Relief® among others, it was an opportunity to introduce and market their products with the goal of creating online buzz via social media channels.
It remains to be seen what the impact will be on their brands and bottom lines, but considering the virtually zero level of investment of all involved, it’s hard to see a downside. From the perspective of building name recognition and visibility for brands and featured products, any return at all will be a bonus. Can’t beat that, especially in the current economic environment.
