LG Mobile faced challenges competing in the saturated European mobile phone market. With little brand awareness, LG used a strategic PR campaign to build credibility and influence bloggers. The six-stage campaign had LG join online communities to comment and share information, building trust over time. Bloggers then reviewed LG phones, sharing positive reviews that increased buzz and sentiment toward the brand. Measurement showed the campaign met LG's objectives by creating more buzz than expected and matching or exceeding competitors' influence. The innovative online strategy successfully increased LG's online presence, consideration among buyers, and overall awareness in the European market.

1. LG Mobile How PR Helped LG to Achieve its Corporate Mission and Objectives

2. How a Korean-based conglomerate plans to overtake Europe The mobile phone market in Europe is highly saturated and competitive The big players like Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson own the majority of shares LG Mobile had little awareness among the customers LG Mobile did not have the means to launch a massive advertising and communications campaign PR comes along as a cost-effective and highly useful communications tool

3. LG Mobile Mission & Objectives Competing with the big guys Building awareness cost efficiently and innovatively Increasing LG consideration when buying a mobile phone Increasing/creating online presence and buzz Creating positive sentiment towards LG products

4. PR can help LG reach the opinion formers After a thorough research LG decided to focus on the blogosphere with the help of the bloggers(the opinion formers) LG hoped to reach the vast majority of people interested in design, technology, innovation and style .

5. The Campaign – a brain child of pr The Six Stages of Persuasion : Presentation – the audiences are presented with the key messages Attention – repeatedly those messages are exposed, so that the audiences start to recognize them( 1 out of 4 blog posts were about the new handset) Comprehension – the audiences comprehend the value of LG Acceptance – the audiences finally start believing in the messages, because they come from a trusted source – a member of the community Retention – remembering the messages Action – this is where the behavioural change comes in, audiences start buying LG handsets.

6. Why blogs became useful for PR In a world where people lose trust in advertising and traditional brand messages, blogs are a great tool for companies to raise their profile Bloggers are considered to be media and technology savvy people who are bias and reliable. The new consumer generation reads about products in blogs not in the product description Bloggers are open to a dialogue with the brands

7. Putting an LG face to a blog LG decided to join the community of bloggers and become part of the conversation This will allow the brand to be recognised as an online citizen who is interested in the latest trends Dealing with comments and enquires to the blog, as if LG was a real person Management of blogger relations

8. How to become one of the boys This is the stage when LG joined the blogging Community. The publics were not yet trusty of LG ’ s motives. The LG persona started to comment and share information with the bloggers. The last stage finds LG as a well-known and trusted member of the community where LG may even shape the debate ’ s direction.

9. Building the relationship To get to the community member stage LG had to go through a building credibility phase. In PR it is very difficult to make people believe that a brand or a person is not doing a certain deed for the wrong reasons. The trick was to convince the bloggers that the LG persona is genuinely interested in the discussions online and wants to be useful for the community.

10. Phase 1 – building credibility

11. Make your voice heard After building a positive relationship with the bloggers it was time that they found out about LG Mobile products and start commenting on them or in best case scenario - praising them. Mobile phones were sent for reviews, so that the primary audience, in this case the bloggers, can share their thoughts about the products with the secondary audiences.

12. Phase 2 - Influencing

13. Supporting activities LG created supporting profiles in social media websites to boost their online presence Facebook – Fan pages and groups for LG Mobile showcasing mobiles and creating interaction between the audiences and the brand/company Twitter – announcing news and following bloggers Wikipedia Flickr Youtube Events were held where technology savvy people were invited to share their opinion

14. Measurement: Primary LG Mobile PR campaign met all the objectives of the company: The amount of buzz that was created was even more than expected originally The sentiment was overall positive and was comparable with the direct competitors The share of influence was matching and sometimes even better than those of the competitors

15. Measurement: secondary The campaign was additionally measured on: Reviews and comments in the blogs The LG blog itself – its traffic, link hits, etc. Youtube video channel – views and comments Facebook – number of fans Twitter – number of followers

16. And the winner is… The innovative and pioneer for this time campaign was overall successful. The facebook, twitter and the other profiles are still active and visited even today The LG Mobile blog is still running and even has grown to 8 other languages This LG Mobile case will stay in the history of PR as one of the most creative and successful online campaigns of all times

17. References: Wilcox, I. et al . (2011) THINK Public Relations . Pearson Education L‟Etang, J and Pieczka, M (2006) Public Relations, Critical Debates and Contemporary Practice Lawrence Erlbaum Brown, R. (2010) ‘LG Mobile: Utilising the blogosphere to increase buzz and drive positive sentiment of mobile phones’ in Moss, D. and Powell, M. Public Relations Cases: International perspectives . 2 nd ed. Routledge. Pp59-75 Balter, D. (2008) The Word of Mouth Vol. 2 . Print Matters Inc. http://www.lgblog.co.uk/ (accessed on 6 Jan 2011) http:// www.facebook.com /LGUK (accessed on 6 Jan 2011) http://www.youtube.com/user.LGBlogUK (accessed on 6 Jan 2011) http://twitter.com/#!/LGBLOGUK/ (accessed on 6 Jan 2011)