Daimler Chrysler clueless on blogs

In another ‘you can have a lot of money and so called high powered PR people and still be an idiot’ story, Daimler Chrysler has launched a blog for journalists only, locking out bloggers, the true influencers on the net. They define journalists as those who work for a ‘known and established media organization.’

According to Toby Bloomberg writing in BusinessBlog Consulting, a very, very well read blog, her registration was turned down with this email explanation:

Thanks for your interest in TheFirehouse.biz, the Chrysler Group’s media-only blog. We will issue media registration rights to members of the working press only. A member of the working press is one who is paid as an employee,freelancer who regularly contributes, or representative of a known and established media organization (newspaper, magazine, television, radio, etc.) If you would like to resubmit your registration, we would be happy to reconsider it.

B.L. Ochman, showing she knows a heck lot more about Internet marketing than the clowns doing PR at Daimler Chrysler, puts it well.

Listen up Chrysler: blogs are an established medium, many blogs have more readers than many MSM [Mainstream Media] these days, and guess what: MSM reads bloggers for leads.

Someday companies, who have historically used a particular PR, Web development, or marketing agency, are going to stop listening to such companies who don’t have a clue about blogs and use some of the upstart blog companies & consultants to do their work. But gee, it was only a few weeks when I heard about Findlaw’s new blog offering to lawyers – an offering that sure showed that FindLaw didn’t have a clue when it came to blogs.

Sources: B.L. Ochman’s weblog and Adrants