Brand Vs. Content; Moo and Nokia strut their stuff

So at Yahoo! there has been a certain amount of debate about how much brands would want to associate themselves with user generated content (UCG). We have Yahoo! Answers allows users to ask questions and get answers from other users. I know at least one brand has ’sponsored’ a section. Sainsbury associated themselves with the food section.

Recently I have noticed a few instances where my online blog posts have caused me to start getting inbound traffic from major brands. In particular from Moo and from Nokia. It seems like both of these site present feeds from Technorati against on links to their domains or terms like “N95″ or “Moo Card”.

It raises an interesting question about how much brands are willing to risk taint for buzz. I don’t know if there is some kind of authorisation process being used to check content, but I doubt it. In which case it’s obvious that bad press as well as good will get linked from the brand sites regardless.

I find the attitude of exposing the brand this way very brave but also very refreshing. I genuinely believe that Nokia are currently making first class products. If a company is brave enough to expose themselves in the way Nokia is, they probably believe it too. It’s almost like they are willing to take the heat for a bad product with the glory for a good one.

I really feel like this is the way things are going. The amount of backlash that a certain companies got handing out freebies to A-list bloggers expecting good reviews is pretty validating. With the power of this distributed media medium it feels like at least a couple of companies are willing to be judged on their products not their PR. Go Moo and Nokia.

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blogs, nokia, n95, ugc, usergeneratedcontent