March 17th, 2006
Does Blog Marketing Work for B2B?
So Microsoft is going after IBM with a $500 million marketing campaign, which apparently doesn’t include a large role for blogs or other “hot” viral marketing tactics? Hmm, go figure:
The campaign began yesterday with eight-page advertisements in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and other newspapers. The $500 million to be spent over the next year will include ads on television, newspapers, magazines and online, and for Microsoft-sponsored events. Microsoft’s advertising agency is McCann Worldgroup in San Francisco, a unit of McCann Erickson, which is part of the Interpublic Group of Companies.
Microsoft is on the bleeding edge of corporate blogging, with Scobliezer and a myriad of MSDN blogs. (Which costs them pretty much nothing.)
So why do they feel the need to dump half a billion dollars into “traditional advertising”?
Could it be that, despite all the hype, blog marketing for is not quite ready to move the mountains of major B2B marketing objectives?
Which is not to say that Microsoft’s $500 million on traditional advertising is going to be well spent — and not that they will have any way of knowing, since most of it is unmeasurable “brand” advertising.
It would be great if Microsoft COULD pioneer a viral approach to B2B marketing. It’s amazing how little discussion B2B gets in the whole 2.0 marketing revolution discussion. You would think it’s only consumers who have money to spend.
If Web 2.0/social media/etc. want a piece of Microsoft’s $500 million (and other big B2B budgets), it’s going to have grow up a lot faster.
Subscribe to Publishing 2.0 | 
Follow on Twitter
Topics: Advertising ROI | Blogging | Blogs | Brand Advertising | Microsoft | Web 2.0
Powered by 
Design by 
It’s not that surprising, Scott. Blogs are a way of increasing interactivity between people, not between companies. Companies don’t read blogs. Blogs are not a hammer that will work with every advertising nail.
Mathew, that makes no sense on so many levels.
First, who makes the B2B purchase decisions for a company? A bunch of machines? And do you think that $500 million in advertising is aimed at some non-human entity? Do “companies” read the Wall Street Journal?
No, PEOPLE do these things. If corporate buyers don’t read blogs, that’s a problem with blogs, not with the people who buy stuff for companies.
Scoble and the other 2500 Microsoft employees who blog do it on their own time, discussing what they choose to discuss. On more than one occassion, Micrposoft PR has infrmed bloggers of upcoming news and has asked them to participate in issues. But Microsoft cannot direct their blogging army to become part of some integrated marketing campaign to take on a cmpetitor.
Thanks god.
More about Thumbnails in Picture Galleries Google Now Publishing Sports Scores Via SMSDoes Blog Marketing Work for B2B? Is it Clooney or is it Memorex? Dell, you’re in trouble now links for 2006-03-17 So how would you solve Iraq? Pandemic.net Quelle Dell? Accounting for Click Fraud in PPC Advertising ROI Stanford Journalism Fellowship: Citizen Journalists Welcome to
ã“ã®ã‚Âャンペーンã«ã¯ã€Âblogã‚„ãÂÂã®他ãƒÂイラルマーケティングãÂŒã€Âå«ã¾れã¦ã„ãªã„ã“ã¨を指摘ã—〠B2B市場ã«ブãƒÂã‚°ã¯効ã‹ãªã„ã®ã‹？ã¨å•Âé¡ŒæÂÂèµ·ã‚’ã—ã¦ã„る。 オリジナル記事ã¯ã€ÂDoes Blog Marketing Work for B2B? è«–æ—¨ã¨ã—ã¦ã¯ã€ÂB2Bã«もブãƒÂã‚°ã¯効ãÂÂï¼Âã¨ã®çµÂè«–ã®よã†ã ãŒ〠æ£直ãªã¨ã“ã‚Âã€Âç§Â見ã¨ã—ã¦ã¯ã€Âä»–ã®消費財ã¨ãÂÂらã¹ã¦〠効率性ã¯薄ã„ã®ã§ã¯ãªã„ã‹ã¨感ã˜ã¦ã„る。
Scott,
Could it be that the ad-agencies, not Microsoft, don’t see the value? McCann is one of my clients, and when I did some work on the Australian entity in January, I casually looked to see trends in media buying of internet advertising. Nothing stood out - which is probably why it did stand out for me.
Advertising on the internet is seeing amazing growth. Likewise, China is seeing amazing growth. Same thing with Albania. You see crazy growth when there is a lot of catching up to do, to build the basic infrastructure. By no means is internet advertising ready to take over the baton as the dominant way of communicating to people.
Don’t associate the high growth of online advertising, with it reaching maturity. It’s still in kindergarten.
[...] Publishing 2.0: Does Blog Marketing Work for B2B? Published 2 days, 21 hours ago in Blogs So Microsoft is going after IBM with a $500 million marketing campaign, which apparently doesn’t include a large role for blogs or other “hot” viral marketing tactics? Hmm, go figure: The campaign began yesterday with eight-page adv… [...]
[...] On my last post about corporate blogging Shel Israel commented: Scoble and the other 2500 Microsoft employees who blog do it on their own time, discussing what they choose to discuss. On more than one occassion, Micrposoft PR has infrmed bloggers of upcoming news and has asked them to participate in issues. But Microsoft cannot direct their blogging army to become part of some integrated marketing campaign to take on a cmpetitor. [...]
So why do they feel the need to dump half a billion dollars into “traditional advertising�
Because they wanted you to blog about it