I’m in agreement with you, Lorraine. Seagate did not have common ground (as I put it;) their 3M’s were clearly out of alignment (as you succinctly put it.) Blogging as a media may be fine for Seagate but they certainly got the other two M’s wrong.

@Tom,

It’s a shame that I can’t talk about this at length but I’ll give you the short version: essentially the influencers we’ve identified are acting as spokesmen for us and we’re both providing a consistent message to an active audience.

They aren’t salesman in that they’re actively pitching our software, but rather they’re saying that our software is an example of something that can handle a lot of the legwork in key areas of presentation design. It’s a bit more passive than direct selling and the best part is that it’s authentic: if the influencers we identified didn’t like our product or didn’t think it was suitable for their audience then they wouldn’t even mention it. I guess in that sense it’s a bit different than a sponsorship - if our product isn’t convincing enough to turn our own influencers into believers then we don’t pursue an outward-facing relationship.

I think Scoble is a nice guy, but I wouldn’t pick him as an influencer. He’s a bit too enthusiastic, too impulsive, and I think a lot of his audience feels that way too.

* Market
* Message
* Media

For any campaign, now more then ever these three elements must be in alignment.

Where did the Seagate go wrong? Not all IT people are bloggers, and not all bloggers are hardware junkies. Robert Scoble was the perfect fit for a campaign to promote blogging software, but not the hardware that runs it.

Without knowing the details of your particular deal I can’t tell for sure but it sounds to me like the person your company is working with is actually using your product. If that’s the case I’m not sure I’d consider that person an “influencer” under the common definition of “someone who influences merely by suggestion.” If a person is actually giving a demo, even if it’s given during an unrelated presentation, I think I’d consider that person more of a salesman (which is something I completely agree with).

But I will agree on one point, the Valleywag article is stupid. Even if Stock price was a valid indicator of a company’s overall health (it isn’t) you can’t necessarily fault marketing for the success of failure of a company. Beyond that there’s the question of their choice of sponsor. I’m actually one of the (seeming) few who actually have respect for at least some of what Scoble’s done but I can’t say I’ve met, spoken to or read the blog of many others who think highly of him. I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who thinks highly of his technical acumen.