Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Lance Armstrong Blogs His Come Back Plans



On Tuesday, September 9th, Lance Armstrong made an important statement via a video blog post (seen above). Armstrong declared his plans to return to professional cycling in 2009 as a strategy to fight cancer. This video blog serves as a teaser for his appearance and further discussion of his comeback and LIVESTRONG plans in New York City at the Clinton Global Initiative on September 24th.

What better way to inform the world than to post a personal video post on his organization's blog? The 45 second video statement was picked up by television channels and other news outlets worldwide and aired later that evening.
It was a great idea for Armstrong to go about blogging this news. His camp has not paid for any publicity or airtime but has already received impressive attention just by blogging. More evidence that the power of social media is astonishing and has a large effect on PR. Which lead me to wonder if the press release was created before or after the blog post? Judging from the quotes used, it was created after Lance's video blog had been made.

Already his blog post has received 550 comments from supportive readers all over the world.



2 comments:

Jessica Mosley said...

Wow, pretty impressive. On the line of how much attention this post is getting that is great and it saves them money in the PR aspect anyway because so many people would have known without the press release. So therefore no shelling out for a press release.

Sherry Mauch said...

I also think that this is effective because it is so personal. When people on the internet watch it, it feels more down to earth and as if he is personally telling his fans rather than using one of his representatives on the news or something.