Notorious Beam Team

Interesting story from a disgruntled travel writer called Christine Gilbert, on Almost Fearless...

"The recent Spirit of Exploration Contest held by Bombay Sapphire (the gin in the blue bottle) asked bloggers, like me, to write a single essay about, wait for it, The Spirit of Exploration. At first I thought this was a great idea and even sent it to some of my online contacts encouraging them to submit. But it occurred to me: this was a blog with no traffic, they wanted free content from bloggers, the bloggers would hopefully send their readers to the site and if you won (by getting the most positive votes, ie. you sent the most traffic), you get a jpg icon that says “Bombay Sapphire Winner” to post on your blog. You write, send them traffic and get nothing but a jpg I could have made in Photoshop.



Disappointed, I decided to write a snarky version about the Spirit of Exploration and submitted it as my form of protest. I began,

“The “spirit of exploration” is a carefully designed play on words intended to make you purchase high end liquor.”

I then proceeded to cram the essay full of random observations about travel, listing as many countries as I could and generally being a wise ass. They posted it. Clearly they weren’t even reading these things. If you’re curious, you can read the full version here."

It's a great example of how decently brands should treat people but don't. Whoever was running the Bombay Sapphire blog really should have known better. Because this is quite embarrassing.

It also highlights the delicate way that blogger initiatives need to be executed. There's nothing worse as a blogger than to get some ill thought out, flaky approach from a brand your not really engaged with.