Leeds Blogger Meeting

When I am now writing this post, the event I am talking about was already almost 4 weeks ago. However, I was very busy these past weeks during October, and so I have a bit of a backlog (instead of weBLOG, this is then a bacKLOG - I wonder if someone already has copyrighted the term KLOG; if not, then I am doing this hereby!).

Back on 1. October, NEON, a digital PR company, had asked if bloggers in Leeds would come to an evening event for a meet-up. Sounded very interesting, and so I went. I was one of the first ones there, but after a while the space at the Cuban restaurant Azucar filled up. I met people whom I so far only had known through their Twitter ID or their blog alias.

NEON hosted the evening, providing drinks and a buffet - very nice! The reason for this was that they wanted to present to us bloggers a campaign organised by their customer Havana Club. This is a manufacturer of rum. Now I understood why they served those mojitos! They were of course made with that Havana Club rum.

So what is the big deal? Well, Havana Club set up a website about Cuba and especially about the city of Havana at www.havana-cultura.com/, and NEON wanted us to have a look at it, give them feedback about it, and - write about it on our blogs.

This is an interesting approach which appears to become more mainstream: to market a product or service not through the traditional channels, but through the "viral" social networking communities.

Of course, me posting my KLOG so late somehow misses the point of the blog "spreading the word"... but I still want to give a few comments. The site www.havana-cultura.com is actually quite nice. It highlights artists and cultural events in Havana. There is a map which allows users to locate artists and their work in Havana. Very flashy and visual intensive site, looks very good!

There is also a treasure hunt organised by Havana Club, using their Twitter feeds - the Twitter feed gives some clues, while the answers are on the havana-cultura website - the competition closes around 31.October.

Here is a picture of Krista handing out a prize to Jonny at a raffle during the evening blogger meeting.