Addressing the Matchstick issue

As I said before, I am one of those Vancouver bloggers that got a free, Nokia 6682 cellphone to use, abuse, and write about. The hope is that you come through my blog, catch a “buzz” over it, and wander into your local retailer to throw some cash down on this piece of hardware.

Let me be completely and totally honest. Getting a high priced cellphone for free is freakin’ sweet. When this offer came my way, I fought over the legitimacy of such an offer, and Rebecca echoed the warning bells of anything looking this good must have some sort of catch.

Well, what is the catch? None really. There is nothing that you sign your life away for. You do have to give Matchstick, the company behind this marketing campaign, your contact info. That put up more flags for both me and Rebecca, but let’s be clear about the fact that we’re married. Giving our info to a marketing company screams phone calls in the middle of dinner for weeks to come.

Once the phone arrives in your mailbox, it’s yours. They just hope that you’ll blog about it. Additional to the phone, I received a Bluetooth headset, 512Mb memory card, and a stereo headset. The phone actually came with a pair of headphones, but they’re black. The other pair that was sent along with the phone was white so one could fit in with the trendy, white earbud wearing iPod masses.

There is some follow up that comes with the deal though. I made it very clear to Matchstick that I wanted all forms of contact to come through email, and if they needed to speak with me directly, then I would call them. In fact, I talked to them today upon receiving an email from them last week. The conversation was just to see if I had any questions about the phone and stories about using the phone itself. I did have a handful of technical questions for them, but they’re just a marketing company. I’ll hit those details in another post later.

The other follow up that I have to look for is an online survey. Quantative data that they want to collect about me using the phone. Makes sense, right? I’ve filled out numerous surveys in my life in the hopes of getting something free in return. If you send me something free first, then you bet your ass that I’ll do that survey.

So how do I feel about doing this? There is a part of my soul that feels like there is some selling out going on here, but I like being some one who can be apart of reviewing a product and actually do it with some honesty. Like I said, I’ll get into more of those details later, but it’s not the absolutely, greatest phone that beats out anything else out there that you could buy. It’s also far from being the worst.

I really do like this concept of “buzz marketing”. Word of mouth. That’s what this is. It’s not over paid actors telling you that they use this phone, it’s the best, and you should, too. I’m just a guy who blogs among the community of other bloggers with connections to the city of Vancouver.

In fact, did you listen to the last episode of my podcast? I had a chance to meet a fellow blogger who got the same deal, and it was quite possibly some of the best content to come from the podcast yet, even if it did promote a product. But ask yourself, would you rather listen to us wise crack about this Nokia or have some high paid actor or actress speak at you? It feels good to know that there are people out there trying to break from the static model mass media uses for advertising.

Back to the topic of Matchstick and this whole concept of getting a free phone for blogging, I like being apart of the effort. I’ve read about some people being annoyed by their tactics as well as some people being sour that they weren’t picked. It’s a unique opportunity to be apart of, and I think I just got lucky. And if you want to see some of the pictures I’m taking with the phone, check out this set on Flickr.