Bloggers love free schwag

On the last page of Business 2.0’s September edition is a very interesting marketing success story. Sprint Nextel came up with a great way to launch their Power Vision mobile-phone service which offers live TV, multiplayer games, and more, over a fast EVDO connection. In January, Sprint begin offering free phones and service to bloggers under what they called a “Sprint Ambassadors” program. 400 bloggers signed up and the service was mostly highly praised.

Of course, the conversation turned to the question of blogging-for-promos itself. D.C. blogger Rob Goodspeed said “If the brave new world of viral marketing means more free stuff for me, I’m all for it.” Sprint’s blogging promo seems to be working: a Google search turns up 4 million hits and 1.2 million new users have signed up for the service since launch. It looks like Hugh and Stormhoek aren’t the only ones to realize the power of the blogosphere.