Smirnoff and London Bloggers Meetup
Last night, I went along to the London Bloggers Meetup, as sponsored by Smirnoff. As I wrote earlier, Smirnoff are doing more grassroots work, sponsoring these sort of events, mostly through the efforts of their PR team from Splendid.
It seemed they had a hit on their hands, as both Annie and Julius commented. Great drinks – the Smirnoff Mule being the featured drink, plenty of food and great hospitality in the Diageo Bar.
Plus, personalised cocktails. They’d done their research, looking at everyone’s blogs and designing something to match what they saw. In my case, they chose the ‘Big Apple’ which was the Mule with added apple and mint which turned out to be absolutely lovely. We all (well, those who remembered to grab one) got a freebie to take home and make our own Mules.
image: from me
As an outreach event, I thought this was pretty much spot on. The conversation around Smirnoff was all positive and everyone seemed to be really pleased with their individual cocktails. These events don’t scale much beyond the 40 or so there, but they all add to the overall online profile of the brand, to the perception amongst influencers.
As a final note, here’s a picture of me the last time I was in this bar, back in early 2006.
image: from me
What an interesting idea – are there many companies sponsoring blogger meetups? It’s pretty brilliant from a marketing standpoint and great for relationship building with people who actually have a following of readers. I imagine we’ll be seeing more events like this in the near future.
Hi Rachel – amazing write-up! We’re all *blushing* at your very kind words. I’m glad you liked your special cocktail! I’ve just dropped you the recipe via email, so let me know how the mixing goes…
Hopefully see you again really soon… Chiswick?
Rax
Reading this article, I tthought, it’s a shame I missed it. Where was it advertised. We are a new online business magazine for female internet heroes, http://www.thenextwomen.com and we would have loved to see other editors and bloggers.
Simone, it’s a Meetup, so you have to join the group at Meetup. Plenty of female internet heroes there