Blogging for freebies

Remember back last summer, when I was part of that free Nokia smartphones for bloggers campaign? I am feeling almost ridiculously priviledged to be lucky enough to be part of another PR blogger outreach campaign, this one for the Motorola KRZR phone. Two free phones in a year - how lucky am I?

So, you ask, who do you have to know to get a free phone? In my case, I got involved because I met Brendan from Hill and Knowlton (the PR firm handling the campaign) through the other stuff I'm doing on social media.

Hmm, you say. And you ask, what portion of your soul do you have to sell to get a free phone? It's a pretty sweet deal. Hill and Knowlton gave me a shiny new KRZR phone and some accessories. I'm free to blog about (and with) it however I choose. I can keep the phone or give it back at the end of the campaign. Not a bad deal, eh?

And it came in this fancy-ass secret agent shiny briefcase. When I mentioned to Beloved that the boys could have it to play with, he said he wanted to keep it to bring his lunch to work. The whole family is entertained by the box, let alone the phone inside.

When I got that Nokia phone this summer, I can't help but think that the campaign managers at Matchstick got a whole lot less than their money's worth from me. I mean, my sad two or three posts including some pix of us at the beach pale in comparison to the kind of analysis that some bloggers wrote (post one of five, no less!)

I'm not exactly a smart phone kind of girl. I never did use more than a few of the features on the Nokia. To be honest, although I like it because it was free, and far fancier than anything I'd buy for myself, I never did warm up to the Nokia. Within a couple of days, the view screen on the front was damaged from just carrying it around in my pocket or purse, and after about six weeks I suddenly couldn't enter any alpha characters into the phone book. I continued to use it as a phone, and occasionally as a camera in a pinch, but most of the features were beyond me.

What I wanted was a flip phone that was sophisticated enough to take pictures and video, and maybe hold some MP3s. A couple of games would be nice, and any Internet connectivity would be gravy. But simple.

Conveniently, that pretty much exactly sums up the KRZR. It's aethestically pleasing, easy to use, and fun to play with. I'll take some photos this weekend (there's a KRZR photo group on Flickr) and post them, but I wanted to get this post up to say thanks to the guys at H&K for the phone. So far, I love it!