A blog that casts a shadow over the Land Rover Brand.

Neville Hobson talks about PR Week's feature on Reputation Management questioning whether Blogs cast a shadow. In it he quotes, Mark Rogers, of  Market Sentinel  "PROs must realise more consumers find a company through Google than going straight to its homepage, and that's where they will see blogs mentioning that company first."

I have recently waged war on Land Rover in my very own Case Study on Blog Brand Terrorism. (see www.haveyoursay.com) I wrote to both the PR manager at Land Rover UK as well as their PR Company but without response. Despite the lack of response from the Communication leaders, I am pleased to say that I am taking delivery of a brand new replacement Land Rover Discovery on Thursday.  The dealership only started taking me seriously when I referred them to my blog's URL.

I am now receiving 700 hits a day on this site- the bulk of which are being referred by MSN.com, search.yahoo.com and Google - I was surprised that Land Rover didn't ask me to take the website down when they agreed to replace the car. They either don't understand Blogs or they consider themselves too important to take a single individual seriously. Oh to measure how many potential Land Rover clients I have steered into the jaw's of their competitors!

I will write to the Land Rover Marketing Director Andy Griffiths to thank him for my replacement Disco but I don't expect to hear back from him... as far as blogs are concerned - I think Land Rover's PR and Communication function have their head buried in the sand. I wonder if I would solicit a response out of Ford int he US (Land Rover's ultimate owner) - now that's something I am going to try.