Behind the Buzz - digital and interactive advertising and marketing

Berocca Care pack for Bloggers

by Rachel on June 24th, 2008

You may have read an article in the New York Times in early April about how blogging is bad for your health. After some high profile blogger deaths, they examined the stress involved in writing a high profile blog, that depends on breaking news and scoops to get the traffic and the ad dollars.

The Idea

Berocca, the fizzy orange vitamin drink that I know some of my friends swear by, are now offering a Blogger’s Relief Pack, to help you manage that stress that comes with the need to write and write. It’s got a stress ball, USB “stress” button, bubble wrap keyring, a stabby penholder and a pack of Berocca. Sin up to receive the pack; in the future they may feature your blog on their site. This isn’t the only thing they’ve been doing with bloggers, as last month they sponsored a Blogger Meetup. They’re getting a lot of coverage for the promotion, which looks like it’s a good RoI.

What I think

I’m a little uneasy with a company jumping on a news story that came out of a couple of deaths, it seems a little opportunistic. However, as a more general statement of blogging being stressful and here’s a product and some other toys for free for you to play with, then it’s good. There’s no expectation in the sample process that you’d write about them, but they are targeting a group that is more than likely to mention the giveaway anyway, so they get the online mentions with out doing heavy marketing on the product.

It’s all about getting people to try the drink, sample the product and getting them to tell their friends. Bloggers are automatically more likely to let people know about how they feel about products and a quick glance at the search results means they are doing that in droves. Looks like a success then.

The Pitch

I got a very pleasant email from Outside Line, who are working with i-Level, Berocca’s agency, to drive this campaign. They have written about the promotion on their own blog. The email was fully personalised, gave me plenty of information and links with a final apology if it’s not what I wanted to hear (more than most PR people do). In this case, I’m happy to receive more tips form them if they carry on like this.

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POSTED IN: Buzz Marketing, Consumer Packaged Goods, Pitches, UK Marketing