Recently, Google Country Consultant Aileen Apolo spearheaded the uber-successful Taste Asia event, which gathered more than 150 Filipino bloggers in one big food festival at the Taste Asia restaurant at the SM Mall of Asia. SM leveraged the power of blogging to promote their new resto and their spacious Hypermart grocery. Clearly, all their efforts have paid off. Bloggers are one of the most difficult groups of people to please. Well, at least I am. But judging from the amount of blogs buzzing about how much fun they had and how they loved all the free food, I’d say SM pulled it off quite well. Unlike marketing campaigns done on television, radio or SMS, an online marketing campaign like this costs much less but has deeper multiplying effects. When a blogger posts something on his blog, that is permanent advertising right there. Then, when his/her visitors read it, they will be encouraged to try the product and write about it too, if they have a blog. And then there’s the word-of-mouth factor to consider. Even though bloggers don’t get to talk much in the offline world, instant messengers (i.e. Google Talk) bridge that gap very easily. And you can’t discount Friendster, Multiply and other social networking sites where people rave just about anything.
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