Getting the hang of blog-related marketing

Marketers are trying to figure out how to use health care and medical blogs to pitch their products. A lot of the early attempts have been ham-handed, such as advertising for bariatric surgery on a cancer patient's blog or surrounding posts that criticize drug makers with DTC ads for the drugs mentioned in the blog.Thinklabs is being more intelligent with its sponsorship of this year's Medical Weblog awards. The company is providing an electronic stethoscope as a prize, touting its sponsorship online and having its PR agency contact bloggers like me.Clive Smith, Thinklabs' CEO and a blogger himself, says in a press release:

Thinklabs' electronic stethoscope helps doctors and nurses listen to their patients' hearts and lungs with greater clarity. Blogs are the stethoscopes of the Internet, listening out for anything that doesn't ring true, and bringing attention to problems that would otherwise go undetected.

Pretty clever positioning.Just to make sure people are interested, Thinklabs is throwing in an iPod, which lets users record heart and lung sounds from the stethoscope... or listen to AC/DC while writing up patient reports.