Toshiba Blogger Trials

I’ve written about Toshiba before, with their Love to Lead campaign. I was quite pleased recently to be offered a Tecra A8 Notebook to trial as part of the talkToshiba programme but quickly realised it was a European initiative only so would not be able to get one. It turns out I was recommended by a friend who had not realised the restrictions. Instead, I asked if I could get someone in the programme to answer a few questions. Up stepped Jason, the campaign leader, who sent this through.

RC: Can you describe the overall programme and the objectives? How’s it working so far?

Jason: talkToshiba provides links to Toshiba notebook-related articles, reviews and conversations. We also build relationships with people who are active online and distribute notebooks to bloggers and forum members who then review them.

RC: How do you choose people to receive a test machine? [This is a very common question asked from PR and other agencies doing outreach - how do you find people. I think this team have an advantage as the programme is more than a short-term campaign where you need a lot of buzz in one go; the longer timeline allows them to follow recommendations.]

Jason: It’s essential that potential triallist have an established online presence. Sending a notebook to people with a day-old Myspace account would be a sure way to loose quite a few notebooks and the reviews produced would be unlikely to be very incisive :-)

We’re also not keen to replicate the technically-focused reviews with benchmarking tests and the like which can be found on many PC sites – talkToshiba trials are all about how the notebooks fit into triallists’ lifestyles. Our aim is to reach out to a wide range of people and Jenny and Lucy [others on the team working on the programme - my initial contact was with Jenny] regularly suggest bloggers who they’ve come across and feel would add something to the campaign. Finding the right people isn’t easy, but using regional and specialist blog directories and blogger communities such as http://www.blogcatalog.com/ certainly helps.

RC: What sort of guidelines/policies do you give them about the machine [I asked this in light of the MS Vista promotion from Edelman]

Jason: All we ask is that an honest review of the Tecra A8 is posted on the triallist’s blog. Oh, and we prefer triallists not to test EasyGuard’s disk protection features by performing drop tests etc :-)

RC: What do you do about negative comments?. [Again, this is a very common question amongst brands and companies that are just starting out in the space]

Jason: Negative comments can often be the most positive of comments. Issues raised can then be addressed. It’s important to realise that not everybody will like every feature of a product. Indeed, some may not like any features at all. If you know your product (see below) then you’ll be able to anticipate, respond to and allay concerns.

RC: Any pieces of advice you would offer to companies/agencies doing this?

Jason: It’s vital to know your product well. Technical specifications are usually easy to find, but its performance in ‘real life’ will determine how people react to it and help decide whose hands you place it in.

Thanks very much to Jason for doing these – eventually ;) So how are they handling the results of the trials? They pull them all into a blog. The blog is in three languages, pulling together reports from their triallists and linking out the their blogs. I like this one from Rebecca

Admittedly there is little to report back on the look. It’s grey. It’s a laptop. A comfortable keyboard which I could really bang out the writing on without the fear killing the keys. Oh and the simple things that make me happy – the little green on light on the caps key.

They even have a Twitter feed to post links; the blog is fully web2.0′d, with all the snazzy little icons to send posts hither and thither around the web. (and they are on mybloglog, jaiku, blogcatalog. I could keep going and going. Now, all of this social media placement could be to push bad results about the programme down the search list, it’s a common tactic. But even digging down I found nothing but positive (including this interview at prblogger, which tells me I need to improve my email interview technique!). Overall, this is a winner, an outreach programme that connects with the users and avoids the pitfalls that have befallen previous attempts.