Making Tablet PC Evangelism Wholly Transparent

Having bloggers evangelize Microsoft's Tablet PC is what Steve Rubel suggests as an answer to Robert Scoble's vexation on the seeming invisibilty of the Tablet PC ... From Tablet PC please take the hundreds of thousands of dollars you might be earmarking for a new ad campaign and invest it in getting systems in the hands of non-geek bloggers/influencers who are leading business thinkers. Let them evangelize it offline and [on]. They will do a much better job of marketing Tablet PCs than an ad on ABC, CBS, NBC or Fox ever could. All I would like to add to this excellent thinking is related to making sure such an exercise would be wholly transparent, leaving no doubt at all in anyone's mind exactly what the deal is here. Taking a leaf out of Marqui's book with its Marqui makes a communication management system and they pay certain bloggers $800 a month to blog about their product, where each blogger is wholly free to write whatever they like about the product, supportive or critical. Each blogger is required to clearly disclose his affiliation on his blog, and Marqui publishes a list of all paid bloggers on their website, including an Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 (what a mouthful!). Rather, any blogger who gets a free Tablet PC as part of such a suggested evangelism campaign should very clearly identify that fact. Microsoft, too, would name all the names. Also bring in the providers of the actual hardware, the Tablet PCs themselves - get Acer, re-defines marketing and PR - the business benefits could be huge as with such transparency comes greater credibility and trust in the writing, the writer and the sponsors. Link: Steve Rubel post Neville Hobson is the author of the popular Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson's blog: