Sponsored Panel – A Sneaky Brand Push

When you see “sponsored panels” listed you get the notion that the session is going to feature branding messages, company representatives and schwag. Not really what I was interested in. But in this case the topic was something I very much was interested in: “How to Scoop the Story on Your Blog.”The panel was sponsored by Utterz and when I entered the room I was strongly encouraged to sign up for their mobile blogging service because that was going to be the topic of the panel. Mobile blogging? Is that in the title of the panel I chose? Confusion set in.They were clever marketers- Utterz published a great topic to get bloggers there and then attempted to hook attendees into signing up for their service in order to get the most benefit out of the panel, whether or not they wanted the service or not. It annoyed a lot of conference goers there because if anyone wanted the service, all that needed to be done was to go upstairs to the Utterz tradeshow booth and get the full tutorial there. Needless to say I got up and left with my promotional cow keychain (“Utterz” – get it?) And to top it off Utterz promoted their panel at the trade show booth, too.