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More Chic than Geek:Marketing at BlogHer
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by Jordan Yerman | July 19, 2008 at 11:32 am
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The BlogHer conference is underway in San Francisco (July 18-20), and of course an event like this is huge for companies who want to woo tastemakers and others who, by definition of attending this conference, tell others what they are doing.
It's not surprising that Macy's and iRobot (Roomba!) would be present, since their advertising traditionally targets women anyway. However, the lack of serious tech marketing described below is sort of weird.
These women are bloggers serious enough about what they do to attend a conference. They clearly have more than a passing interest in tech, right?
Not to downplay the tech. Nintendo sponsored a Wii Fitness booth, and iRobot, a new sponsor in 2008, showed off its autonomous vacuum.
Why is this important? Internet advertising is still struggling to pull its weight, despite the Web's fast audience growth and widespread usage.
BlogHer's conference at least shows that more Main Street companies are paying attention to women online. (BlogHer recently teamed with NBC Universal's iVillage to better sell to these advertisers.)
"This is a hugely important audience for us," said Ellen Lewis Gideon, vice president of corporate communications for Sesame Workshop, which is here promoting a new Web site for toddlers set to launch this fall.
In fact, that's the marketer's argument across the board. Women, particularly mothers, wield enormous buying power in the home, and women are increasingly spending their time online. What's more specific to this conference is that women are often blogging about products, services and programming within a community of their peers.
Microsoft and Hewlett Packard are sponsors, though, hosting free 10-minute massages in the "makeover pavilion."
But olive oil?!
C'mon.
Less EVOO, more EVDO.
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Jordan Yerman
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (2)
at 01:29 on July 20th, 2008
jordan, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 18:50 on July 20th, 2008
Thanks Jordan. Just wanted to let you know that the cnet story was a bit off on HP and Msoft offering masssages. HP offered laptop "makeover" to help optimize performance, Microsoft hosted a breakfast "ask-the-experts" with experts on such topics as SEO, Vista and Windows Live Writer. Symantec offered laptop security "makeovers" as well. We would of course love more techie sponsors and the kinds of gear demos and giveaways you mention, but did want to give props to the tech companies who showed up and did techie stuff :)