I overhear my husband, an influential tech blogger, on the phone laughing as he tells a start-up CEO, "your product is probably not worth much, if you don't manage to piss off an influentiual blogger or two. I wouldn't have even wanted to try your product if I hadn't read that it made Mike (here he refers to another influential tech blogger) rant so vigorously. As soon as I read his post though, my interest was peeked and I had to check your software out." Robert gets hundreds of calls from PR agencies and tech companies to write about and review their products so that his readers (which are atleast a few hundred thousand) would know about the product. He is giving the business person some good advice while calming him down about the recent controversy regarding the comapny's product. He is probably referring to the well known fact, all PR is good PR, but I also think that he is reffering to another fact of life, every crisis gives the opportunity for improvement and for great leaders to emerge. I wish Lori Dolginoff, in charge of creating Johnson's Camp Baby, had heard his words after the blogstorm broke out in the mommy blogosphere about why two influential mommy bloggers had been disinvited from their event.

 

If I had any doubts about going to Camp Baby it all disappeared after talking to Lori yesterday. She is a take charge, transparent, accept responsibility and learn from mistakes kind of person and I applaud her for that. She was faced with a blogstorm when two influential mommy bloggers wrote about how they had been disinvited from Camp Baby for not being able to attend the full program and get this, for daring to want to bring their baby to Camp Baby. Neither one of these had happened if the PR agency had chosen a personal approach to the bloggers, if they knew who their target bloggers were, and if the wording of the invitation and the naming of the event had been more clear.

 

I didn't receive the first two invitations because they were sent as general emails sent to all kind of mail that ended up in my junk mail due to the spam filter. The third email though came from an actual person from the PR agency who nicely wrote to me about how the camp was filling up and they would really want me to come and please RSVP as soon as possible. I went back to my junk mail box and found the original invitation. Then like every good blogger I did a little research. Nothing on the Johnson's website or any of their ad agencies about this program that I could find. Was this a phishing scam or was somebody playing a joke on me? So I digged a little deeper and went to the Mommy blogs to find out if any one else was talking about this and of course wanted to know who else was going? There I found some good chatter about the excitement about going to Camp Baby. Ok so this was legit and all kinds of mommy bloggers were attending. I started to get excited and I responded affirmitively. I am event planner though and when attending an event I never take things for granted and I need to check everything out.

 

The event was called "Camp Baby" and they were reaching out to Mommy bloggers most of whom had attended execellent Blogher events and were used to having child care available at the events and it was a Johnson & Johnson's event for Gods sake so I thought  I should and could bring my baby with me. Since there was nothing written about the details of child care, however, and the registration website seemed to be closed off due to the capacity being full, I thought I would research the blogs and see what other moms were doing. That's when I read about one of the mommy bloggers being disinvited because she wanted to take her baby with her. How could you invite a nursing mother to an event about babies and expect her to come sans baby? A company that makes baby products should know their audience better. Johnson was losing a great opportunity to reach out to nursing mothers and in fact was shunning them.

 

That wasn't the only thing though, another mommy blogger was being disinvited because she couldn't attend the full program as she was speaking at the Blogher conference which happened to be taking place at the same time as Camp Baby. Having the Johnson's event coincide with a very popular mommy blogging event was bad enough, but inviting a speaker from this event and treating her well could have given Johnson an opportunity to expose their comapny to all the audience at the Blogher event. Instead they were kicking the speaker out of their program. Another clear marketing loss.

 

Reading these posts made my heart ache for whoever was behind organizing this event. It was clear they had their heart in the right place. They wanted to reach out to mommy bloggers and let them have a great time while giving them an opportunity to try out some of the company's products. It was obvious they had worked very hard to organize this event, but it seemed they had made a couple of mistakes which had backfired in a blazing blogstorm. Being an event planner and having made mistakes in my own time, I wish I could tell them, hey people are much harsher online than they are in person. Just pick up the phone and reach out to them. The key to dealing wiht bloggers is all about the personal touch. You'll see that they are only human and will be much nicer to you in person. And as my husband had said, this was a great opportunity for any company to show how they can handle a PR crisis, make friends with bloggers by reaching out and learning from their mistakes and come out even stronger.

 

I am so glad Lori called me, so I could talk to her (it seems she already knew about the personal appraoch and learning from mistakes and was on the right track). From what I have read it seems that Johnson has started on the right track and I can't wait to see what they will be presenting at their camp. Oh and I am taking my baby with me. I am paying my Mom's way to come with me and stay at the hotel. My mom will be staying at the hotel room with my baby, so she can take care of him while I attend the sessions and I will break away every once in a while to check on them. I realize I am lucky to have my mom come along with me and I am looking forward to posting about what I learn from camp baby and to meet Lori and her team.