How to influence bloggers and win customers
By Bala Shah

Sometimes just having a good product is enough.  Google never had a huge advertising budget and grew to its gigantic size only because of a great product.  Sometimes, you have the best product, but still keep a tight leash on the media.  Apple gives access to its managers and products only to journalists, who in their view, write positive or ‘balanced’ stories.

But for most business, using every trick in the book to influence the newspapers, blogs and TV stations, is an accepted way to do business.  While these business practices are not illegal, they are unethical.  The public is not happy and there is a move to ensure that every journalist and/or blogger declares even the smallest possible conflict of interest.

Big business needs media to tell the public about their products.  The media needs new products and technologies to keep their readers engaged. Corners are cut if either side compromises this balance.

The latest such case is how Palm Inc is trying to get favourable media for its new smart phone Palm Pre launched last week.  Palm Inc has tied up with the third largest telecom carrier in USA, Sprint Nextel, to package its phone Pre.  Pre has been launched to compete with the Apple iPhone and RIM’s Blackberry.

The general consensus is that it is a good phone with all the features needed to make it a desirable product.

So, how did Palm ensure that its good product got as many positive reviews as possible?  Firstly, by ensuring that only pro-Palm or neutral newspaper, TV reporters and bloggers were given phones to review before their release to the general public.  A few journalists, in their quest for exclusive access to trend setting products, do offer favourable reviews.

Palm ignored America’s No. 1 tech blog Techcrunch.

Many of such marketing techniques by phone companies would remain secret if not for feuding tech journalists.

America’s No. 1 tech blog Techcrunch and its founder Michael Arrington were not given a Palm Pre to review before its release. And this exclusion caused some heart burn. During a discussion on technology on the American show ‘Gillmor Gang’, Techcrunch founder Michael Arrington asked a well known American journalist, Leo Laporte, who was reviewing the Palm Pre, if Palm had given him an advance to review.  At best, the implication was that every journalist should reveal if they were given ‘special’ access to a new product;  and at worst it was a suggestion that Palm was buying good press by giving favourable treatment to some leading journalists.

All hell broke loss.  American tech journalist Leo Laporte lost his cool and hurled expletives at super blogger Michael Arrington.  The technology show ended in acrimony and it was pulled from air. (You can see Leo lashing out in the link in this article)

In the ensuing debate and discussion, a few things became public.

The first was that to keep an aura of neutrality,  Palm (and all phone companies)  officially request that their expensive phone be returned after review.  But journalists rarely do, and phone companies do not make an effort to get their expensive gadget back. Both see such a gift as a perk of the job.

American tech super blogger and businessman Robert Scoble wrote in to Techcrunch to say how the Amazon Kindle team stopped giving him products to review after a critical write up by him. By all accounts, Kindle is a great product and the most popular electronic book reader in the world. But even Amazon only likes bloggers who write positive things about their products.

Palm,  like Apple,  has decided that India will get its products long after their American and European clients.  But when Palm Pre does get launched in India,  do expect some Indian  bloggers to have the inside running on their rivals.

Palm would not be doing anything new in India.  Nokia,  which has the largest share of the market in India,  has been wining and dining Indian journalist for more than a decade. Good products plus good press equate to great profits.